RSA: the original social innovation organisation

What is the RSA? And what does it stand for in a modern society? These questions are often asked of the 23,000 current members of the movement founded in a London coffee house in 1754 by William Shipley, a drawing master from Northampton.

Shipley’s aim was to promote wealth creation, while always recognising that the benefits of that wealth must be felt throughout the whole of society for it to be of real value to the nation.

Since that time, the RSA has continued to work with a wide range of partners to encourage progressive initiatives of all types. It encourages original and creative thinking in areas that have shaped the modern world: industry, technology, education, design and the arts.

With a unique record of achievement over the last 250 years, the RSA and its Fellows (as members are now called) have revitalised its original mission to focus on five social and economic challenges, summed up as bright ideas, zero waste, capable people, strong communities and global citizenship.

The RSA Coffee House Challenge

In March 2004, to mark the RSA’s 250^th anniversary, and in partnership with Starbucks, the RSA Coffee House Challenge organised hundreds of teams all over the UK to discuss a wide range of problems and challenges related to the RSA’s manifesto themes, and to seek practical solutions and innovations. History shows that when ordinary people work together in this way it can often lead to new and better ways of doing things.

With RSA Fellows acting as co-ordinators and with help from local schools, sixth-forms, further and higher education colleges, universities, local community groups, businesses and local government, this project brought together the private sector's enterprise with the public sphere's creativity of thought and civic leadership.

The results were very positive and the website is still going strong.
Join in with interactive fun and take the Coffee House Challenge at www.coffeetropolis.com

The RSA Curriculum Network

The RSA is looking for schools (primary and secondary) to join its Curriculum Network. If you are interested in developing and testing a curriculum based on the RSA competence framework, then we would like to hear from you. The Network aims to build on the success of the recently completed Opening minds project.

The project report, Opening minds, taking stock, published in June 2003 outlined the work of the original half dozen schools and the fascinating outcomes they achieved. Pupils and teachers enjoyed and were excited by the new curriculum. The project showed that this new model can:

improve students’ achievement as conventionally measured by testing,
improve students’ motivation, attendance and behaviour, and
improve teachers’ motivation.

The RSA believes a curriculum should:

offer young people an education that meets their individual needs,
have a purpose they can understand,
connect with their lives,
help them learn the values and cultures of their society, and
prepare them for the future.

And we believe that a curriculum built on a competence framework (which is shared with the students) is more likely to achieve these purposes than the traditional subject based curriculum.

A competence-based approach

Our curriculum is based on a framework of competences – the outcomes of education. We consulted widely with teachers and head teachers and they helped us to produce 5 groups of competences:

For citizenship,
For learning,
For managing information,
For relating to people, and
For managing situations.

It is a large and complex framework and our project schools have, each in their own way, used it as the guiding principle for the organisation of their curricula. The schools – all secondary comprehensives – volunteered, and they vary in terms of size, location and intake. All wanted to improve teaching and learning.

Most of the schools developed a new curriculum for Year 7; one concentrated on 1 or 2 of the groups of competences, but most used all 5. Although each school developed its own, bespoke curriculum, there were striking similarities in how they approached the task and how they structured their new curriculum. Most developed an integrated curriculum using projects. They moved away from subject based teaching and found innovative ways of using subject content as the vehicle for developing the competences. Coverage of subject material was not skimped. On the contrary, schools noted that the project classes were making great progress and often tackling material from Years 8, 9 and even 10.

New ways of working

The teachers involved worked in new ways; they often worked in teams to prepare and teach the projects. Some taught out of subject for part of the time – challenging to professional attitudes, but proving to be very effective. This team approach meant that it was easier to map commonalities across subjects and also to eliminate much of the duplication which currently exists. Teachers told us that despite the large amount of work involved, they felt professionally re-energised – even though they were challenged by the learner-centred methods associated with this curriculum.

Students found the project work hard. But they enjoyed it and welcomed they way it helped them understand why as well as what they were doing.

Since we published the report, we have established a Network of some 200 schools and organisations interested in finding out more about how the competence framework works. One of the Network’s main aims is to help us spread good practice so that the growing number of schools planning a competence based curriculum can learn from the original project schools. We want it to be collaborative – schools sharing information and ideas and learning from each other. We will run seminars and events, and will publish more exemplars of competence based curriculum materials. The Network is funded by the Innovation Unit (DfES), the Lifelong Learning Foundation and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, together with the RSA’s own Shipley Foundation.

If you would like to find out more please contact Lesley James at the RSA.

Email: lesley.james@rsa.org.uk
Tel: 020 7451 6862

For more information about the RSA, visit www.theRSA.org

RSA: 250 years of inspiring the future

www.theRSA.org