SUBMISSION 14
Memorandum submitted by the Centre for
Education Leadership and School Improvement (CELSI)
EDUCATION ABOUT, AND ACCESS TO, THE MOVING
IMAGE: THE ROLE OF THE BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE AND THE FILM COUNCIL
I have pleasure in submitting this evidence
to the CMS Select Committee.
My first professional contact with education
and the moving image came as a teacher of English in secondary
schools in the 1960s and 1970s. I retained my interest in media
education when I joined Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Schools
(HMI) in 1980, and was the point of reference within HMI for media
education from 1982 until 1989. During this time, at the request
of the then Secretary of State, Sir Keith Joseph, the DES published
Popular Television and Schoolchildren, of which I was the
principal author. In the last 15 years I have retained my interest
in moving image education within broad consultancy work, and the
Centre for Education Leadership and School Improvement (CELSI)
has been awarded contracts both by the British Film Institute
(bfi) and by the Film Council (FC) to undertake developmental
or evaluative tasks concerned with moving image education. At
different times, therefore, I have both worked co-operatively
with the Education Department at the bfi, and been asked
to evaluate aspects of its work.
I believe that the Education Department of the
bfi has been at the forefront of educational thinking and
practice in moving image education for the last 30 years. It has
provided a coherent and consistent framework for teachers in primary
and secondary schools to teach about the media, and has produced
teaching materials of high quality. It has also provided relevant
and practical training for teachers through both short and long
courses.
Its advocacy of media education within the school
curriculum has met with less success than it deserves. There has
been much ambivalence within Government (and society) about the
respectability of "media studies", and some reluctance
to acknowledge it as a separate discipline. Within the National
Curriculum it has been envisaged as an element within the English
curriculum, and also relevant to aspects of art and information
technology. The priority within the current curriculum given to
basic skills in English, and to a somewhat mechanical definition
of information technology, has meant that the cultural context
of moving image education has until now been undervalued. Too
often, too, moving image education has been seen in schools as
an analytic activity, without opportunities for practical work.
The Education Projects staff at the bfi have been amongst
the first to recognise and promote practical media work, both
within the formal school curriculum and in informal out-of-hours
learning, as a complement to more traditional analytic work. There
is clear evidence in CELSI's contracted evaluative work for the
Film Council of the value of such practical work, particularly
with young people at risk of exclusion or disaffection from the
formal education system. The inclusion of Citizenship within the
National Curriculum, with its commitment to empowering young people
to be knowledgeable and active citizens, is likely to provide
more opportunities for both analytic and practical work in moving
image education.
CELSI's most recent work for the bfi,
Mapping Media Literacy, concluded that overall levels of media
literacy in young people are still low, despite some examples
of excellent educational practice, much of it stimulated and supported
by the bfi. The main reason for this is that policy-making,
planning and provision in media education within the UK are fragmentary.
It may well be that stronger backing from senior managers at the
bfi for its education work, and from the Film Council too,
would have delivered a more positive and consistent national picture.
Four recent events in particular provide grounds
for optimism that the work done within the bfi's education
department may be built on:
— the arrival of new digital technology
has the potential radically to change media education, and already
has stimulated radical reviews of current practice;
— the setting up of the Film Council
and its early work suggests a new and more systematic structure
for this kind of work at central, regional and local levels. The
Film Council should take a more strategic approach to education,
and should actively promote partnership between the bfi,
the regional screen agencies, and the film industry more generally;
— the Communications Bill has given
Ofcom the duty to "promote media literacy". This offers
an obvious opportunity to redefine the term "media literacy",
and to ensure that the skills required for such literacy by both
young people and adults are fostered in both formal and informal
educational settings; and
— finally, the recent appointment of
a new director of the bfi offers the chance to give much
higher status within the bfi's priorities to educational
activity, and to encourage a more collaborative approach to education
within the bfi so that the most effective and efficient
use is made of their considerable resources of educational expertise,
archives, and educational materials.
28 February 2003
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