What is the Government doing?

Already the Government has introduced a range of policies that promote personalised learning.

• The Primary and Key Stage 3 National Strategies are helping raise attainment, particularly in literacy and numeracy.
• There are new vocational GCSEs and A Levels.
• To stretch those at the top, the Gifted and Talented programme provides extra challenges, including through the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth (NAGTY) which runs residential summer schools for 1,000 pupils a year.
• The DfES e-strategy, Harnessing Technology: Transforming learning and children's services, March 2005, is helping schools maximise the use of ICT.
• The Building Schools for the Future programme, launched in February 2004, will ensure that every secondary school has the facilities it needs.

A personalised approach to supporting children means:

• Tailoring learning to the needs, interests and aspirations of each individual
• Tackling barriers to learning and allowing each child to achieve their potential

One more unworkable idea from those in the know?

Ask professional educators and you might get an answer like this: "Personalised learning is about learner-managed and co-constructed learning - the shift from dependency to independence and interdependency - and invitational learning and assessment."

I took this from a website dedicated to personalised education. If you can make sense of it, you are a much better person than me.

It also talked about the "re-integration of learning, life and community", making use of "catalogue and natural versions of curriculum and assessment" and "de-coupling of age-stage progressions".

NCSL's Leadership Network established a research project to explore, describe, report and comment on the approaches of schools across the country that were endeavouring to meet the challenge of personalised learning.

Eight headteachers and/or deputy headteachers/vice principals were invited by the Network to become research associates, and between them they would explore each of the five components set out by the DfES, selecting their own focus.

Becta has produced a document outlining its current position on personalisation and ICT. This indicates how the use of ICT can offer greater flexibility in terms of time, place and space for learning, the type of content and ways in which it is delivered. Such elements may support a more personalised education system.