1970 to 1980 has been a decade of change in schools. This is summarised in the 1971 Feasibility Study for the Sutton Centre project, from which I quote:
There will be no perceptible line of demarcation between school and adult education facilities, or between sixth form and youth service. Coffee bars and dining areas will serve the school and the adult community alike, so that it will be impossible to say where the school facilities for physical education end and the Sports Centre begins. The concept may not be easy to visualise. If we think of a school as schools used to be, buildings full of rows of desks facing blackboards, institutional in atmosphere, authoritarian in organisation, monastic in their seclusion, the concept is impossible to visualise. But schools are changing. In basic design, in furnishing and equipment and, more and more, in their attitude to their pupils, they are places in which pupils, far more mature at any given age than preceding generations, are treated as young adults. Some pupils will, indeed, legally be adults before they leave school. Formal institutional classrooms have given way to comfortably furnished discussion and seminar rooms, bare wooden floors to carpeted areas, glazed brick dadoes, and dark brown and green paint to colourful and attractive finishes and well designed soft furnishings. Laboratories, workshops and craft areas have become more sophisticated, as befits an age of rapid technological and scientific progress. Provision for physical education has become more varied and aimed towards leisure pursuits rather than Swedish drill and team games. In short, schools have become places for young adults to grow up in; by the same token they have become places in which mature adults will be more readily at home.
In its concept, the Sutton Centre drew some inspiration from two other sections of the education service: primary schools and adult education.
In good primary schools we see classroom management at its best. Despite large classes and no free periods for teachers most classrooms are lively, stimulating environments conducive to positive learning. The teachers are able to cope with wide ranges of ability, with numerous activities, and with almost constant parental interest and involvement. On visiting such a classroom one cannot but be impressed by the amount of involvement and by the number of activities taking place simultaneously. Secondary school teachers are amazed to see how smoothly and competently the primary school teacher involves everyone in the room in learning activities. Often secondary schools will send their less motivated pupils to the primary schools to assist as part of work experience schemes. These pupils, too, are caught up in the active participation which prevails; and caught up in a way which the secondary schools themselves often fail to initiate or emulate.
In adult education two of the main features found are the block of time for teaching and the approach in treating students as mature. Further education seems to avoid talking down to students by creating an easy informality. The advantages of the whole block of time for the practical subjects has been claimed for a long time. For example, home economists are desperately handicapped by time blocks of less than two hours. The pupils cannot prepare food, bake it and get it out of the oven before it is time to go, let alone discuss their results. The same sort of problem affects academic areas such as science as well. In adult education many students have achieved creditable results in their one two-hour session per week. If, in the secondary school, we could fuse what is best in primary schools with what is best in adult education then substantial progress would be achieved.
With this in mind the Sutton Centre operates a unique timetable in the context of a unique atmosphere. Our block timetabling of one lesson in the morning, one in the afternoon and an optional one in the evening (called âeleventh sessionâ) is attractive to adults and particularly to those in shift work. These adult students regularly join our classes. A two-and-a-half-hour session makes the effort of attending school worthwhile. If we compare this with the common system of eight half-hour lessons each day it is easy to see the advantages to the adult and part-time student. The advantages to the school of youngsters seeing adults in learning situations are tremendous. When the children see adults desirous of knowledge and willing to pursue the opportunities presented by the community school the hope is that the children, too, will wish to continue, or return, to learn later in life.
In our eleventh sessions at Sutton Centre children of all ages, including friends from primary schools, come quite voluntarily in the evenings from 6.30 to 8.30 pm for extra work. We find the work-rate of these motivated students quite remarkable and very rewarding for our teachers. Our teachers, like others, need job satisfaction and they find it particularly in our eleventh sessions. Visitors to the Centre are always most impressed by the involvement and attention of students during a two-and-a-half-hour session and especially when they see no appreciable fall-off in attention because of the long blocks of time. They are even more bewildered when informed that three hundred pupils will choose to study mathematics for a whole week during our âSuspended Weeksâ.
Using large blocks of time enables uninterrupted involvement. It also keeps movement around the Centre to a minimum and therefore avoids wasting time. Equally at Sutton Centre, which is a community centre, the staff are encouraged to see themselves as officers of the local authority, servants of the community and friends of all. A major aim of the Centre is to attract its clientele to return year after year and to enjoy the learning activities. Fortunately, the building is aesthetically attractive to both children and adults and it is easy to have one standard of behaviour throughout the Centre.
Work at the Sutton Centre, then, is based on the premiss that it is very difficult to isolate one aspect of schooling from the total scene of education. This premiss will lead us eventually to consider community education as a vital step in the wellbeing of society. For it is not solely a question of how to group children for learning activities but how we treat one another and how the ethos of caring for each individual is communicated, caring for each member of the âfamilyâ despite physical and intellectual differences, despite differences of attitude, temperament and motivation. This is the crucial element in successful schooling.
With this in mind, I shall look in turn at the quality of relationships in schools, the nature of teaching and the implications of societyâs needs for curriculum planning.
