Placement instead of age

Age is a rough guide to readiness

An earlier version of DreamSpace Academy's system grouped its stages by age. Nearly all schooling does this, and it makes timetables easy to build. But it measured the wrong thing.

Before teaching something, a facilitator needs to know whether the learner already has what the lesson builds on: the prerequisite. Age goes along with that, loosely, among people who have moved through school at the usual pace. Many of the academy's learners have not, for example:

• adults coming back to learning;
• young people whose schooling was interrupted;
• learners who are years ahead in one subject and starting from zero in another.

For them, the link between age and readiness is too weak to rely on.

Where readiness can be measured directly, using age as a stand-in adds mistakes, not simplicity.

What the research shows

Research on how children develop is often quoted as a reason to group learners by age. Read closely, it says the opposite.

• Children can grasp saving and selling very early[43].
• Understanding profit depends on first understanding how to compare prices. That is a specific earlier idea, not a birthday[45].
• Hands-on enterprise education for young people changes their mindset (persistence, creativity, planning ahead) more reliably than it changes their business knowledge[39].
• Guidance should be greatest where learners know least, and should ease off as they learn more[17, 15].

Every one of those findings is about a prerequisite, something a learner needs to know first. The studies report results by age only because they studied school classes, which are grouped by age. Age was how the people in the study were chosen, not the cause of the result.

Treating the age as the finding, instead of the knowledge it stood for, is the most common misuse of this research when courses are designed.

How the placement check works

Every course publishes a recommended order, so a beginner always knows where to start. Anyone can start at a later point by passing the placement check for the course they want.

Moving between stages works the same way. A learner moves to Maker when they choose a subject, and to Innovator when they are skilled in at least one. The step to Changemaker needs evidence of work rooted in a problem in their community. Each move depends on a condition being met, never on a date.

What removing age bands costs

Grouping by readiness instead of age has real costs.

• Groups are mixed by default. One session often holds learners at different levels and of different ages. That needs tasks that are easy to start but can be taken a long way (a low floor and a high ceiling), and a facilitator who is comfortable running them. See facilitation.
• Placement checks take facilitator time. A date of birth does not.
• Timetabling is harder. Groups cannot simply be put together from a list of names.
• Safeguarding still requires knowing who is a child. That is a real and separate duty. It is the one place age is used: to keep children safe, never to decide where they are placed.
• Some partners expect age groups, because school systems are built on them. The academy's approach has to be explained to them, not assumed.

Why no typical age is published

No “typical age” is published for anything, not even as a description.

The reason is practical. A typical age printed on a page gets read as a rule, by exactly the people the programmes most want to reach:

• the adult wondering whether a robotics or music course is for someone their age;
• the parent of a child who is ready early;
• the young person who left school and thinks it is too late.

A line meant to help people picture who is in the room ends up working as an entry requirement, without anyone deciding that it should.

The STEAM programmes are for everyone. Placement is by evidence.