Where will I do my pineapples?

The Little Book of building a whole new school

Gill Kelly, Ian Gilbert, Ian Gilbert

• Verlag: Crown House Publishing
• Jahr: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781845907624
• Thema: Education
• Thema: Education General

Imagine the scenario where a newly appointed Deputy Headteacher in charge of Curriculum is suddenly asked questions like How many RJ45 sockets would you like in your new classroom? What type of cabling would you like? Cat 4 or 5? Add this to the relentless drive to raise standards as well as organising the timetable, teaching, doing break duty and offering a friendly ear to staff... you get the picture. Written with the perspective of a senior leader, with many amusing and bizarre stories, this book describes how to keep sound educational principles at the heart of a Building Schools for the Future project. This book is not about the new building, it is about building a whole new school and the struggle, against all odds, to keep people and learning at the centre of the whole project. What came out of the process was a school that had a variety of learning spaces, fully trained staff, modern ICT and a bespoke year 7 transition curriculum. It was the only school building in the country to be delivered on time, within budget, with a ground breaking CPD programme. This is not to say that everything went smoothly. There was a lot of pain along the way, and many lessons learned about how to manage change. Perhaps more significantly, Where will I do my pineapples?' is about people and the potential to change thousands of lives.

Chapter 1

I’m the Tena Lady

There are three constants in life … change, choice and principles.

Stephen Covey

One of my strong memories of the ‘visioning conference’ in the first year of our build programme was of a teaching colleague delivering a presentation on school design to 300 people. The audience was made up of staff, students, governors, local authority representatives, government officials and eminent delegates from the world of architecture.

The focus of the talk was the layout of the ‘learning space’ (a classroom in old money), with particular reference to the proximity of toilets. To describe this particular colleague as eccentric would be a bit of an understatement, but she ended the presentation with a plea to the listening throng to consider the plight of young people with bladder weaknesses. As she sat down from her exposition she whispered in my ear the immortal words, ‘I’m the Tena Lady.’* As a senior leader I failed miserably to keep it together after that and I giggled throughout the next two presentations.

My point is that my wonderful colleague was concerned about the details of a learning institution and how they would affect the people within it. The staff and students of the new school environment had survival needs that had to be met. However, before we could consider such tiny – but significant – details, we had to dig deeper still and get to the root of our moral purpose. We had to answer three important questions:

1. Why are we here?
2. What as educationalists do we want to get out of this process?
3. How will we approach the responsibility of building learning for the future?

The conference, which was conceived by the school’s head teacher, David New, was intended to stretch the thinking of the delegates – to get them to consider alternatives to the nineteenth-century model of teaching and to capture the opinions of stakeholders on the future of education. In particular, we wanted their views on how a learning school should look in the twenty-first century.

To achieve this we had to examine our moral purpose as educators and create a vision from there. What evolved from the conference became for us a seminal document, ‘A Beautiful School’ (see Appendix 1), which became the guiding force for the project and gave us the strength to resist outside pressure to do things ‘their way’. This was soon joined by another hugely important document, ‘A Day in the Life of a Year 8 Student’ (see Appendix 2), which also visualised what we were hoping for at the completion of the project.

Will Ryan in his book Leadership with a Moral Purpose comments on the pressures faced by schools and the responsibility we have as leaders to hijack the agenda in the interests of children and their learning:

In short the pressures all come from the outside into the school. The time has come to turn the processes inside out. Those who have the knowledge and understanding of a school and its community should claim autonomy and turn primary education inside out. They should lead the school to a brighter and better future through their own minds, hearts and knowledge of the community they are serving. They should use the best of the outside – without being a government puppet. The balance of power needs to shift towards those who have the expertise, the passion, the energy, and the belief to do the right thing. (Ryan, 2008: ix)

It is important to remember that architects, quantity surveyors, local authority project managers and the like are not educators. You will be confronted with BB98 (a briefing framework for secondary school projects) and many other restrictive formulae for your project. Remember, this is not legislation; it is guidance. There will be many voices telling you what you can’t do. Hold your nerve. You are the lead professional in terms of education. It is vital that you challenge what you are told and justify all decisions from an educational perspective. This is particularly true when it comes to ICT. Do not be fobbed off with technospeak or seduced by ‘kit’, terabytes or megahertz. In fact, when it comes to ICT have just one golden rule: if it doesn’t have a positive impact on learning, don’t bother.

It is also important to remember who you are doing this for: your current students and the thousands of students who will follow them deserve the very best learning environment which reflects the value of an excellent education. Even though there will be many more reasons to play safe than to be adventurous, resist them. Be courageous. Do not let the children down.

To be a brave leader, I had to be sure of our ground when it came to our vision for learning. To achieve this, the school embarked on a journey of exploration and analysis to come up with the answer to the question ‘What is learning?’ This is where Ian Gilbert, founder of Independent Thinking, came into the picture. It was October 2007, and Ian had come to deliver an INSET day. He had the staff roaring with laughter and thinking differently at the same time. He really challenged them to look at education in a different way.

Ian gave me the idea of putting together a ‘Learning Manifesto’ – a declaration of belief for the way we wanted learning to be in our school. I began the process of consulting with staff, students and parents, something that was very painful at times, as it made them challenge the status quo – something many people had invested time and energy into keeping over the years, but the outcome was the Nailsea School Learning Manifesto which established the backbone for our ‘language of learning’.

Nailsea School Learning Manifesto

We believe that:

1. Nailsea School is an inspirational learning community, where every member is regarded as a learner.
2. Learning does not happen in a vacuum; a positive emotional sense of well-being is vital in the learning process.
3. There are differences in the ways boys and girls learn.
4. All staff have a role to play in fostering a desire to learn as well as encouraging ambition, hope and optimism in our learners.
5. Lesson design is based on the concept of ‘high challenge, low stress’ and will stretch the abilities of all learners without anxiety or pressure.
6. It is acceptable for people to make mistakes and fail and be rewarded for trying.
7. The learning brain is one which requires stimulation, oxygen, water, movement and review in order to make connections between brain cells.
8. Learning is not about ‘one size fits all’; learners have multiple intelligences and achieve in different ways.
9. Learners are responsible for their learning and should be involved in the development of learning strategies.
10. Learning should be real and make connections with the world we live in.
11. A common language to facilitate learning should be used within the school as well across phases.

The vocabulary was important as we needed an agreed way of talking about teaching and learning. As a school community, we had to establish the shared understanding of how effective learning was going to be achieved otherwise we would be creating a new campus that would be simply a great thrill or a huge disappointment, depending on your outlook on education. I am not saying that we managed to get all staff signed up to the Learning Manifesto, but it made the expectations of the school very clear and its values were woven into our lesson observation criteria.

My point is that without a shared understanding of what learning is, and why we as professionals get out of bed each day, it will not be possible to create a vision for a school that is owned by the community it serves. The Learning Manifesto may well be similar to something you a...