OK, start the clock!
There is a great deal that is terrific in our schools – there always has been and there always will be – but many children struggle with aspects of the current system. For all of its successes the system has often allowed too little opportunity to focus on the overall development of children and has pressured teachers and children to succeed in high-stakes testing, skewing the system toward a very particular approach to teaching, learning and assessment. Many teachers and school leaders have been dissatisfied with the focus that schools have been required to take and a worryingly high proportion have either left the profession prematurely or remained to suffer stress, exhaustion and disillusionment. These trends have worsened since Covid when mental health issues among children and teachers grew far worse. There has been growing support for a different approach but these pressures remain. Current Government reviews and legislative changes promise significant improvements but my fear is that they will leave too much of the present structure unchanged.
So what am I proposing?
We clearly need to maintain an intense focus on teaching and learning – teachers are trained to teach and schools exist to support learning – but I do not believe that this is incompatible with a focus on the wider development of children than happens in many schools at present. It seems to me that the teachers and school leaders in the best schools manage to combine the good teaching required to develop children’s learning with their work to develop the children in their care more broadly. The latter I refer to as the growth of the child. So I propose that schools – particularly but not exclusively primary schools – might benefit greatly from seeing themselves as what I call Learning and Growth Communities.
Let’s take a look at each of these three words. First, Learning.
A school which fails to produce learning of an appropriate standard is failing as much as a medical practice which fails to ensure appropriate health outcomes. We must though, reduce certain kinds of work so that we can shift the way teachers’ time and energies are allocated. I would describe the approach I recommend as being “child-centred” but, in using this language, I am very keen to avoid the educational culture wars which have enveloped those labelled “traditionalists” and “progressives”. These labels have done more harm than good. It is important that schools continue to follow their own paths toward their pupils’ learning outcomes although some approaches seem much more compatible with what I propose than others. The Francis Review and other changes will determine much that will happen in the coming years anyway but there will always be space for creativity.
Secondly, Growth.
We need to take the widest possible view of growth. I take the term to include the physical health and development and the emotional and psychological well-being of children and their teachers. But while we can all recognise that a child’s growth will be impeded by illness or injury, it can be affected too, sometimes in less obvious ways, by poverty or mental health challenges. Children brought up alongside violence or addiction or exposed to inappropriate experiences in the real or virtual world will not grow as they might either and there are many other circumstances which have positive or adverse effects upon a child’s growth. There has rightly been great emphasis in recent years on safeguarding – of protecting children from the worst dangers that can befall them – and this vigilance must of course continue. But we must work to help children to thrive as well as to survive and we should go even further, by noticing and, where possible nurturing, the interests, skills and personal qualities which might lead them to present and future fulfilment. Those three guiding ideas then – surviving, thriving and fulfilment – are central to the model I am recommending. Good classrooms and schools take these into account already, to different degrees, but ideally, however they achieve this, I would like to see all schools making these values explicit and central to their mission. Some would argue that attending to these things is a distraction from our main job, an impossible burden on top of our work as teachers. “Teachers are not social workers or child psychologists” is a common way that this objection is expressed. Let me say straight away then that I agree with this reaction – indeed, I have uttered similar words myself at times of stress in school – and we must therefore argue constantly and loudly for huge increases in the professional support that schools have available for their children – child psychologists, social workers and others.
And, last but not least, Communities.
There are many ways that we can describe groups of people coming together for particular purposes but community is the word that I believe best describes what we should aim for in our classrooms and in our schools. For our schools are not just organisations or institutions and still less are they companies, corporations or firms (though some recent changes seem to be leading us ever further in that direction). None of these words describe the feelings of communality, the ethos of mutual support and the unconditional sense of belonging that are conveyed by the word “community”. A community is a group of people – both adults and children – who work together for common ends in ways characterised by respect, acceptance and mutual support. In a strong community, great emphasis is placed on connectedness between all members but a strong community looks outward too. A community feels safe and secure and, within certain limits, membership of the community is not temporary or dependent on success of any kind.
Shifting the focus in schools
To develop both learning and growth and to make our schools and classrooms begin to feel like communities which foster these goals, we need to shift our focus. Hence my strapline, which is at the top of every page of this website: Shifting the focus in schools. One of my central aims is to develop a system which is manageable by busy teachers. There is a great deal more that I could say about Learning and Growth Communities and I could share a great deal more with any group of teachers and school leaders who would like me to work with them to develop these ideas further.
Thank you for reading.
Please contact me at john@learningandgrowthcommunities.com if you would like to discuss these ideas further.
