20 Minute 'Lessons' - the key to unlocking the timetable?

How a school chooses to use the limited time that available to it says much about its philosophy. 'Time' is perhaps the most important scarce resource. What a school really stands for is seen most clearly in the decisions it makes about what is compulsory and what is optional; in the relative time allocation to each subject at each Key Stage; and in the balance between the academic, co-curricular and community activities.

Given our freedom from the National Curriculum and the level of competition between our schools, these debates and discussions are particularly important for those of us who work in the Independent Sector.

Here at Berkhamsted, this term marks the launch of our new structure to the week which is the result of a two-year review and rethink of the curriculum and timetable. The great driver for this change is that we wanted to put in place an extensive and structured co-curricular programme that would be delivered within the school day - in addition to our before and after-school programmes. The challenge was how to create space for an extended lunchtime without having a detrimental impact on academic teaching contact time.

Our solution is innovative and, to my knowledge, is original: we have divided the whole week into 20 minute units of time. Every activity between 0900 and 1620, starts and finishes on the hour, 20 past the hour, or 20 to the hour.

Structuring the timetable in this way provides enormous flexibility. Not only can lessons be 40, 60, 80 or even 100 minutes long, but it is possible for KS3 to have 60 minute lessons and KS4 and KS5 to have 80 minute lessons. [We don't actually have any 20 minute lessons.]

One of the greatest challenges that faces anyone developing a Secondary curriculum is the 'bottle neck' of Year 9, when it is desirable that pupils have regular lessons in every subject in the curriculum prior to making their GCSE options. Many subjects need double lessons [Art, Music, Drama, DT, Science - for practicals]. For schools with a rigid 35 or 40 minute lesson structure this means devoting 70-80 minutes to each subject - which simply does not fit. However, with the 20 minutes unit structure, because it is possible to deliver a meaningful 60 minute practical lesson at KS3, you can to fit a greater number of lessons into the school week.

One downside, if indeed it is that, is that morning break and lunchtimes don't always fall at exactly the same time. This may make for a more dislocated school community - especially for the teaching staff who will also not have a shared break-time. However, there are the obvious advantages of a more efficient, staggered access to dining and other facilities.

There are a number of unique features of Berkhamsted that make this approach particularly attractive. The "diamond" structure of the School poses us a number of challenges: our boys 11-16 and girls 11-16 are taught separately on two sites some half a mile apart. The sixth form and the teaching staff have to move between the site. The 20 minute timetable allows for a more efficient transfer between campuses without wasting lesson time - we have achieved this by the sixth form having two 20 minute breaks, rather than one 40 minute break. Furthermore, most staff tend to be based on one or other campus means that that it is not possible for staff to meet daily at break anyway, so the timetable changes will have less of an impact at Berkhamsted than it would perhaps have in other schools.

I would like to pay tribute to Mr Will Gunary and his timetabling team, who took an idea and made it reality.

Will Michael Gove allow ICT to revolutionise British Education?

Last week Michael Gove made a very interesting speech to a group of distinguished mathematicians and scientists, unsurprisingly, about the importance of Maths and Science education. One of the most significant parts of the speech was when the Secretary of State came on to discuss the place of ICT in schooling:

"Harnessing technology in the classroom

"In addition to the debate over what is taught, and the issue of who does the teaching, we also need to think about how the teaching takes place. So as well as reviewing our curriculum and strengthening our workforce, we need to look at the way the very technological innovations we are racing to keep up with can help us along the way. We need to change curricula, tests and teaching to keep up with technology, and technology itself is changing curricula, tests, and teaching.

"ItunesU now gives everybody with an Internet connection access to the world's best educational content. Innovations such as the Khan Academy are putting high quality lessons on the web. Extremely cheap digital cameras and the prevalence of the Internet allow teachers to share best practice and learn from errors." [My emphasis]

Gove raises a number of important issues here that have the potential to revolutionise British education:

• It is refreshing that the Secretary of State is indicating that wants to see a much more collaborative approach towards the sharing of best practice, resources and content. He acknowledges that ICT has an important part to play in providing the vehicle for this to happen. A more collaborative approach both between schools and between the Maintained and Independent sectors is clearly the way forward. ICT has enormous potential for bringing teachers together and putting teaching and learning at the heart of the educational agenda. Clearly there are small pockets where this is happening, but we have a long way to go.
  

• Does Gove's reference to iTunesU and to the Khan Academy indicate that the Government is happy to give up a degree of central control of educational resourcing? We have had a supply-driven - as opposed to a teacher demand-driven - educational agenda for most of the past twenty years. The DfE and LEAs have allowed educational suppliers to set the agenda for too long - suppliers telling schools what they need (Interactive Whiteboards, VLEs et al.) rather than teachers demanding want they need. Standards will rise by stepping back and allowing teachers to commincate and share how they are promoting learning.
  
  I am sure that his approach is driven by fiscal restraint. However, it is encouraging that Gove's solution is to embrace existing platforms rather than falling into the trap of his predecessors who no doubt would have wasted an enormous amount of money setting up a "national teachers' collaborative network". (I'm sure that Apple are delighted to receive the endorsement of the Secretary of State for iTunesU!)
  

• Most interesting is Gove's reference to testing. e-Assessment has long been the elephant in the room in the classroom ICT revolution debate. I have argued previously that the British examination system has become too dislocated from key working practices in wider society (In the C21 adult world, when does anyone ever sit in silence without access to technology? - See my previous blog post e-Assessment - the case for the defence). Is Gove here indicating that he is willing to embrace e-Assessment as part of the GCSE and A-level assessment regime? Given the imaginative work being done by the team at AQA (see my Can e-assessment maintain the "Gold Standard"?), I certainly hope so.
  

I am sure that the key to raising educational standards is for the Government to intervene less, to encourage teachers to share best practice and to remove the administrative burden so that they can spend more time being creative about how they promote pupil learning.


Michael Gove's Speech in full: Improving maths and science education Wednesday, June 29 2011

Niall Ferguson: Challenging how we teach History

The highlight of this year's ISC Annual Conference was having the opportunity to listen to Niall Ferguson outlining his concerns about the way in which schools are forced to teach History in this country. I have recently started reading his [so far] excellent book, Civilization: The West and The Rest, in which he comments on the problem,

"In schools, too, the grand narrative of Western ascent has fallen out of fashion. Thanks to an educationalists' fad that elevated 'historical skills' above knowledge in the name of 'New History' - combined with the unintended consequences of the curriculum-reform process - too many British children leave school knowing only unconnected fragments of Western history: Henry VIII and Hitler, with a small dose of Martin Luther King, Jr."

Introduction p.18

He develops these ideas further in the Preface to the UK edition,

"Watching my three children grow up, I had the uneasy feeling that they were learning less history than I had learned at their age, not because they had bad teachers but because they had bad history books and even worse examinations.

"For more than thirty years, young people at Western schools and universities have been given the idea of a liberal education, without the substance of historical knowledge. They have been taught isolated 'modules', not narratives, much less chronologies. They have been trained in the formulaic analysis of document excerpts, not in the key skill of reading widely and fast. They have been encouraged to feel empathy with imagined Roman centurions or Holocaust victims, not to write essays about why and how their predicaments arose.

"In The History Boys, the playwright Alan Bennett posed a 'trilemma': should history be taught as a mode of contrarian argumentation, a communion with past Truth and Beauty, or just 'one fucking thing after another'? He was evidently unaware that today's sixth-formers are offered none of the above - at best, they get a handful of 'fucking things' in no particular order."

Preface xix

I am sure that Niall Ferguson's observations ring true with many history teachers, who feel boxed in by examination specifications and bemoan the loss of the opportunity for real historical study, particularly at A-level.

No one wants to see a return to History solely being about the rote learning of historical dates and of the names of the kings and queens of England, but I have been concerned for many years that young people lack a simple historical framework on which to hook ideas. Without such a framework it is not possible for young people to make connections between events and to develop understanding and insight. It is reassuring that such an eminent and well-known historian as Niall Ferguson is taking up the cause.