EDUCATORS and entrepreneurs have never been entirely comfortable bedfellows. Teachers put huge effort into ensuring that young people are instilled with a broad range of knowledge, yet businesses argue their skills are not always suited for the real world of jobs and careers.

It’s an old debate, but it has been given new currency by the current Covid-19 pandemic. This is likely to lead to a permanent change in workplaces with employees needing to adjust to homeworking, international competition for jobs, more self-reliance and higher levels of creativity.

Is the Scottish education system ready for this brave new world? Some business leaders have their concerns it may not be. Among them is Jonathan Golby, CEO of Peak Scientific, an Inchinnan-based company producing high performance gas generators for use in laboratories around the world.

The business is an exemplar when it comes to exports. All its manufacturing takes place in Scotland and more than 95 per cent of its products go overseas. It turns over £75 million annually and has 535 employees.

Mr Golby is an advocate for schools taking a more imaginative approach to teaching that is responsive to the needs of modern employers and encourages innovative thought, analysis and critical thinking.

One result of this is that Peak Scientific has become engaged with NuVu, a US-based education initiative that has rolled out a pioneering teaching model known as NuVuX.

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NuVux replaces conventional passive learning by taking a more hands on, open-ended approach. Students design everything from social robots through to community focused interactive murals and urban design projects featuring environmental issues.

This real-life approach has been deployed in Scotland and has led to the creation of a £2.5m innovation school at Kelvinside Academy in Glasgow. It has also now been adopted by Dollar Academy in Clackmannanshire through its Dollar Discovers programme. 

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Jonathan Golby explains: “We became involved with this programme and provided sponsorship for it at Kelvinside Academy, where we continue to passionately engage with it. 

“We did this because we felt at times that we were struggling to get the right talent into the business – it was becoming increasingly obvious that it wasn’t all about the grades that people had achieved through the traditional education system. 

“The NuVuX concept really resonates with us, particularly because we have a business that’s focused so much on research and development and product development. Having people that are able to problem solve, think creatively and collaborate is really critical.”

He is not a complete iconoclast, believing that NuVuX should sit alongside conventional teaching and its exams and grading-based ethos rather than replacing it. “However, an evolution is required.

“We feel quite passionately that what both we and the employees of tomorrow need is for businesses to be able to remain competitive in a global marketplace. Things are different to how they have been historically. 

“We need to have people coming through the system that aren’t necessarily the best academically but have got the ability to get involved in critical thinking and problem solving – to have a resilience about them. Perhaps they haven’t had the ability to build that with more traditional methods.”

The current system, he feels, is “a little bit too rigid, a bit too regimented” as it fails to cater optimally for these pupils who are not the most academically minded.

“They need a route to show their skills and to show that they can develop themselves into being the people industry requires for the future. Having said that, a lot of people who are academically astute are getting a lot from the NuVuX programme too.

“It’s about teaching them the life skills they would not have had just by being academically brilliant. We know from our own experience in recruiting people – and we have a fairly robust process – that it’s not the grades on the CV of the individual that will swing the balance. 

“It’s about that individual’s ability to apply themselves, to collaborate, to really work in a team and to solve problems. It’s about more than them having the As and Bs.”

Within the present global jobs market, Mr Golby believes, fostering innovation and creativity are hugely important. “I think the Scottish education system could do more to embrace this, to remain at the forefront and to be class leading.

“The types of jobs that are going to be out there in the future are going to be very, very different. Scotland isn’t just going to be looking internally for employees – it will be casting its net further afield. 

“We’ve already found ourselves doing that at times.”

In practical terms, what does this mean? “We are only ever going to be as good as the individuals we employ who can deliver change in the growth of our business. Our success is completely down to them. 

“The worry for us is that Scotland can’t breed and develop the talent we need here, we will fall behind other nations.

“That could mean companies choose not to invest in the UK or that they invest elsewhere in the UK rather than in Scotland.

He adds: “I think we have an opportunity, and I’m optimistic that this opportunity can be embraced. However, that hasn’t really happened so far. 

“Kelvinside Academy and Dollar Academy have taken on this NuVuX initiative and benefited from it, but there are thousands and thousands of other schools out there that could do so. The opportunity is there to pivot and I hope that happens.”

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Kelvinside pupils first to benefit from NuVux approach 

THE pilot project that brought together educational innovators NuVu with Glasgow’s Kelvinside Academy began in 2017. It was the first of its kind in the UK and has been judged to be a huge success.

Boston-based NuVu was launched in 2010. One of its co-founders is architect and urban designer Saba Ghole, who is now the organisation’s Chief Creative Officer

She explains: “Education has changed very little in a century while the world and jobs markets have transformed radically. If we’re preparing pupils for the real world, why is learning in the classroom so radically different?

“We’re excited to work with schools throughout the UK to provide a different model approach – one that helps pupils unleash their creativity and connects their learning to the challenges they face in the world around them.”

Another enthusiast for the NuVuX programme in Scotland is accountant Donald Wilson, who is chairman of the governors at Kelvinside Academy.

He says: “This model gives children a real problem-solving tool. The world is moving so quickly that if you go into a traditional job it may disappear. 

“NuVuX embeds a different set of skills and a different way of looking at the world’s problems that young people can draw on at any point in their life.”

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He describes this as an embedded approach not available within the traditional education system. “One of the reasons I endorsed it is that it’s based on an entirely different set of learning skills.
“It involves problem solving, perhaps failing, and talking to peer groups about why you might have failed. 

“It means collaborating to come up with alternatives and ultimately working through to a solution.”

Mr Wilson believes NuVux tests students’ ability to work in teams and to deploy their abilities in real-world situations rather according to textbook orthodoxy.

This provides benefits in both their future business and personal lives.

“Throughout my career I’ve seen intelligent people fail and seen people with poor exam results succeed.  

“I saw instantly that the NuVu style of training children in a different way was what we were looking for.”