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EDUCAT ION IN CAMBR I DGE
area being increasingly upfront about addressing this, upping their pastoral care resources, making it easier for students to know who they can speak to when they’re in distress and feel confident that they’ll be listened to, taken seriously and helped. Some schools go even further, featuring failure prominently on their websites and stressing not just that failure is part of life but also that success isn’t just about exam results and academic and sporting achievements, but related to qualities that include kindness, patience and persistence. One important task will be to ensure that the amazing resources our area has to offer are accessible to everyone who lives and works here. One local charity sends therapists into schools in our area, using fun, arts-based activities to support troubled and anxious children and give them strategies to cope. Almost half the 1,000 or so they help in a year, they say, are from low income families – something that can have a major impact on their emotional wellbeing. No longer is education merely about realising academic potential. Today, it’s all about equipping children with the superpowers they’ll need to cloak themselves with so that they can adapt to change, relish new ways of doing things and, if necessary, reinvent themselves to succeed in a succession of different careers. In the past, someone starting out in a career could be reasonably confident of ending up in fundamentally the same line of work. Schools and colleges nowadays are responsible for setting young people on paths that could lead just about anywhere. Can we do it? If any area is geared up to embrace a challenging future, it has to be ours. There’s an old Chinese saying, ‘May you live in interesting times.’ It was originally intended to bring bad luck to enemies. Round here, it could be more of a blessing.
CAMBRIDGE EDUCATION GUIDE
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