New research from the organisers of UC EXPO claims that just 44 percent of British people believe that the current school curriculum does enough to provide students with the collaboration skills they need for modern working life. According to the study of 2,000 respondents carried out in February of this year, 70 percent of the UK workforce already believes that collaboration is very important in the work environment. But just over half (51 percent) either never collaborated or collaborated infrequently in school, and 37 percent stated that collaboration wasn’t an important focus of their education.
In fact 55 percent of people working in education who took part in the survey believe that not enough is done to provide students with collaboration skills, with one teacher noting: “The emphasis is on learning facts and passing exams rather than allowing for development of skills such as group work or team work which help with other skills. The last National Curriculum was purely skills based and went too far, this is the other extreme. I do try to include more group and team work as it makes a more resilient and independent worker, but the kids prefer to be told.”