​From Plato to Aristotle, Rousseau to Kant, and Dewey to Montessori, those who have thought deeply about education have always envisioned balance. Articulated in ways that reflect their times, they all contain three themes: the development of the intellect, the nurturing of the moral and emotional self, and the ability to act effectively in the real world. It is perhaps best summed up in the work of the Swiss educator of the Enlightenment, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, with his work on ‘Head, Heart and Hand’. For him, it was essential to develop all three areas, and critical to find harmony between them.

This thinking has inspired our new book A Practical Guide to a Big Education, which offers an approach to leadership, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment that balances Head, Heart and Hand.

As many of us who have spent our lives in education can attest, in recent years it has often felt that we're living in a time of imbalance. In the drive to achieve better grades and rankings, important things have been lost along the way.

There is growing recognition of this on a policy level. We have seen for example the recent Curriculum and Assessment Review acknowledge the need to change the way assessments work at 16. We have also seen elements in the new Ofsted framework, such as inclusion. But we know that norms have been established in teacher training, leadership, accountability measures and governance structures that mean a rebalancing is going to take serious time and commitment.

The positive news is that there are many inspirational case studies already in the system and many of them feature in the chapters of the book, with lots of practical tips and tools school leaders can use and learn from.

These schools often start with long term sustainable school cultures that give professional colleagues agency. If leaders aim to empower young people, then it stands to reason that they have to empower the people who work with them too. Examples include powerful professional development models, groundbreaking peer review processes, and cutting-edge leadership tools influenced by best practice in other sectors.

Underpinning a balanced approach is recognition that children and young people are exactly that, children and young people; they are much more than data points on a spreadsheet. Education needs to support their emotional and ethical development, not only because it is an end in itself, but because the research shows that it is an essential component for long term sustained success, academic or otherwise. We find many examples of inspirational practices up and down the country in which young people feel valued, seen, and supported to be their best selves. These range from restorative approaches to behaviour management to the creative use of play, and from carefully structured learning outside the classroom, to how lunchtimes are orchestrated.

The third driver for rebalancing is preparation for the future. The world is changing at an unprecedented rate not least because of AI. The old certainty of exam grades, university degree and long-term job is gone. If we are to prepare our children and young people for the world as it is evolving, we then need highly developed critical thinking skills, independence of thought, authentic creativity and emotional intelligence.

This cannot be nurtured through a system that is overly focused on the ‘Head’ and then tested through high-stakes exams tied to high-stakes accountability measures. Whilst strong foundations of knowledge and understanding are essential, preparation for the second-half of the 21st century requires schools to embrace more expansive approaches that go further. Well-executed inquiry-based learning, design thinking projects, entrepreneurial experience in the real world are just some of the many examples that are out there. We also require a revised system that recognises and values a young person’s attributes beyond a narrow set of exam results.

When we look back at the history of education we can see that we are living in a time of anomaly; one element of education has been prioritised at the expense of the others. This is now the moment where we need to get back to an approach that enables the next generation to find sustained success – academically, emotionally and practically. It is time for a great re-balancing.

A Practical Guide to a Big Education – Balancing Head, Heart and Hand

Robert Lobatto and Sarah Seleznyov