HMCI Christine Gilbert's long expected report on personalised learning was published a couple of weeks back by the DfES, with a fair amount of media coverage. The vision of Ms Gilbert and her colleagues for the changes to come in schools education over the next decade and a half seems to be somewhat lacking in ambition, as she herself acknowledges:

"Many of the elements of personalised learning set out in this report will be familiar, since they are at the heart of the very best learning and teaching."

Of course, Gilbert's concerned with system wide change rather than cutting edge innovation, but her "vision" seems to hinge on learning from existing examples of good practice, which makes one wonder what these leading schools are expected to do over the 13 years which Gilbert allows for the others to catch up.

There is talk of accelerated improvement and progression, but not of the radical transformation which some have held out hope for. The understanding of personalisation here seems to be little more than adding in a tight feedback loop from assessment for learning to the existing practice of differentiation. In terms of the crucial question of "Who personalises learning", the answer in the report is very clearly the teachers, with a new role of the 'learning guide', which seems not too distant from that of house master, or indeed form tutor in many schools. Whilst Gilbert acknowledges that "few aspects of the future can be predicted with accuracy and confidence", she indicates that "taking responsibility for, and being able to manage one's own learning" will be one of the skills necessary to adapt to a changing world. Yet those who were looking for a high level of autonomy being devolved to the learners themselves, with a clear acknowledgement that it is the learners who are principally responsible for their learning, and thus a recognition of the more radical "choice and voice" form of personalisation, will, I think, be disappointed by this report.

On the one hand, Gilbert acknowledges that the skills necessary to cope with a changing world and a knowledge-based economy are given little weight in the National Curriculum, and thus sometimes neglected by teachers and undervalued by pupils, but on the other, she remains absolutely committed to a National Curriculum, described in terms which seem little removed from its present incarnation, with pupil choice being in terms of such radical, ground breaking ideas as "project work, out-of-classroom activities and ... clubs within and beyond the school day". I fail to see how one can have genuinely personalised learning when every child is required by law to be taught exactly the same body of knowledge etc as every other child. In a paragraph which reminded me of Yes Minister, Gilbert's group, tasked with making recommendation to support the delivery of their "vision", advise setting up another group to recommend how the National Curriculum and associated assessment should be changed, although the emphasis does rather seem to be on ways of tweaking the tests rather than dealing with the content.

Gilbert does identify "far greater access to, and reliance on, technology as a means of conducting daily interactions and transactions", as one of the external change forces; However she doesn't seem to recognize how technology itself is changing, and will no doubt continue to change. The opportunities for personalised learning opened up by widely distributed networks of learners, and by technologically enabled long-tail provision, seem to have largely passed her by, or been rejected.

On the plus side, I'm delighted to see that the review group haven't gone down the road of advocating individualised learning systems, with a succession of learning objects being delivered to pupils working in some degree of isolation. Although social learning doesn't receive a prominent place in the report, it's there in the detail of how they see learners becoming more engaged, through:

"dialogue between teachers and pupils, encouraging pupils to explore their ideas through talk, to ask and answer questions, to listen to their teachers and peers, to build on the ideas of others and to reflect on what they have learnt, [and through]
collaborative relationships which encourage and enable all pupils to participate and which develop pupils' skills of working ... in groups, enabling teachers and pupils to move learning forward together"

There's also a recognition that there's more to pupil voice than the school council, with at least some acknowledgement that pupils can be

"learning resources for one another, helping their peers to learn and develop, within the classroom and beyond".

Which, in ICT terms is at least a step towards a collaborative, constructivist learning environment, away from simple resource/activity presentation platforms. That said, Gilbert seems to see the impact of ICT in very traditional, Web 1.0, terms: administration, creation and delivery of lesson materials, and handheld technology - she does acknowledge a place for collaboration and informal learning, but it does not seem to be a priority. She states that:

"It will be important that decisions on the use of the new technologies be taken in the context of a clear vision for personalising learning and be informed by comprehensive objective advice in order to present good value for money"

Which is fair enough. However her suggestion that Becta has a key role in providing such advice seems, perhaps, optimistic, given the way the way we've seen Becta transform the notion of a 'personal online spaces' into institutional learning platforms and advocate procurement of expensive commercial platforms rather than supporting schools in the deployment of open source software without any licence costs.

Whilst assessment for learning is nothing new, I'm pleased to see it getting recognition as a powerful force for change in this report. We've been exploring this here at Alton over the last term, and I think the focus on 'feeding forward' rather than merely 'feeding back' is an effective one, encouraging teachers to see the time inevitably spent marking as an intrinsic part of the teaching process itself. Moodle's portfolio of assessment tools are important here: it's great to see how the immediacy of feedback which online marking provides can really encourage pupils to learn from mistakes, and peer review and assessment tools such as wikis, forums and workshops have much to commend them. Gilbert sees teachers' use of data to inform teaching one of the weakest areas in practice, but I suspect that's as much because many of the existing MIS systems (or indeed a number of VLEs) haven't really be designed with teachers needs in mind as anything else (qv NFER).

The emphasis on the role of parents is an interesting one. I'm quite certain that parents' active involvement in and support of a child's education is a key factor in raising attainment, however, I'm not as sure that it's invariably going to lead to more autonomous, independent learners, and there's the potential here to widen cultural divides, even if Gilbert is concerned not to extend the digital divide.  It's curious that Gilbert et al suggest making lesson plans, assessment results and learning materials available to parents who want access to them, without explicitly granting the same rights to the learners themselves.

I detect, I think, the hand of Professor David Hargreaves in the discussion of knowledge creation, capture and transfer that forms part of the group's vision for CPD. The emphasis on making opportunity for teachers' professional reflection is encouraging, particularly for us edubloggers, a network which has evolved without government intervention or particularly encouragement and which might yet provide something of the "system for innovation in learning and teaching to direct the complex processes of knowledge creation, capture and transfer" that Prof Hargreaves, Ms Gilbert et al are looking for.

Despite the relative lack of emphasis on pupil autonomy, there is an acknowledgement of the need for more professional autonomy for teachers:

"Teachers need to be able to choose the practices they change and the techniques they use... Giving teachers the choice about the specific changes they make will mean that they are more likely to take responsibility for them, while allowing for collective and consistent strategies to be developed school-wide"

and

"A system-wide strategy to help the teaching profession to innovate, to do things differently in order to do them better, is key to transforming pupils' learning and achievement'

Which, if this is the right thing to do for teachers, rather begs the question about why not for the pupils too? 

I have perhaps been too critical here of a report which, undoubtedly, moves the debate forward and which has certainly raised the profile or personalisation. I'd have to agree that "better outcomes will be achieved if users become participants and share a sense of collective responsibility and achievement". I think my sense of disappointment comes from comparing the relatively conservative approach here, to some of the more ambitious work in the field, such as that of Charles Leadbeater for Demos, and the Learners' Charter which formed part of Futurelab's report on personalisation, both of which I'm sure the Gilbert group must have seen. Still, perhaps for system wide change, this gentler approach may be the best way of getting things done. As Gilbert has it,

"Making small, incremental changes is more likely to result in sustainable change."