Aspire, Inspire - 'The Future’s in Your Hands'

I have two highlights from this week:

Firstly I was privileged to attend and give out some awards at an extraordinarily professional, moving and inspiring Celebration of Achievement for all schools and those in education across Barnsley on Thursday – a recognition of talent in all its forms. The finale was a quite brilliant performance of a student-composed song, ‘The Future’s In Your Hands’, by a special Celebration Brand and choir of 200+ young people of all ages, to a backdrop of pictures of children and choirs across the borough.

As I have blogged before, Barnsley has a fabulous long-term vision for education but it is so tough to turn around decades of lack of ambition, under-achievement and shortage of jobs. The event convinced me of the criticality of sophisticated marketing and communications as well as education policy – and this was a great start.

Secondly, having got back from Barnsley just before midnight, I switched on the TV to find singer Paloma Faith sparking a debate on BBC1's This Week with Andrew Neil, Diane Abbott and Michael Portillo. She was very eloquently advocating a transformation of education, by putting much greater emphasis on emotional intelligence and ensuring there were more practical and vocational opportunities for teenagers. Thanks Paloma! We'll be in touch...

At this rate Edge will soon be able to change tack from “this is why we need more practical and vocational education” to “this is how you do it…and here are all the brilliant examples already taking place”.