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When there are too many learners to know - go human scale

This article originally appeared on the Future Online website as part of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) support programme.

"You can’t teach kids if you don’t know them" - Patrick Kelly explores human scale education and how the ideas are taking root.

This autumn headteachers and senior managers in schools will receive an invitation to a series of seminars on 'human scale education'. Backed by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Human Scale Education, a small education charity, the seminars will aim to provide school leaders with an antidote to some of the problems caused by the huge scale of many secondary educational institutions.

Human scale education essentially breaks up large schools into smaller units and allows staff and pupils more space to develop a relationship of trust and support. The philosophy has been adopted by hundreds of schools in the United States and already 40 schools have been given grants by the Gulbenkian to work up ways in which their schools can espouse the principles of human scale education. A number have gone even further, radically restructuring to create 'schools within schools', and some BSF schools have been designed and built to incorporate this newly favoured style of autonomous units within a larger entity.

Of course, the idea of human scale education is not new. Concerns about the 'massification' of education and giant comprehensive ‘education factories’ date back to the 1970s. But the idea has been given a new lease of life with the recent emphasis on personalised learning and the success of an American movement to restructure huge public schools into smaller, more manageable units.

That movement, the Coalition of Essential Schools, now embraces hundreds of schools across the United States, and one state, Pennsylvania, is planning to reorganise all its schools along human-scale lines. In the UK, 40 schools have been examining ways in which they can apply those same principles - and four have already reconfigured their structures to create schools within schools.

"Human scale education is an idea whose time has come"

Simon Richey, education director of the Gulbenkian suggests that human scale education is an idea whose time has come. Personalised learning may be the current buzz phrase, he points out, but how can it work in large-scale secondary schools? “Size is a barrier”, he says. “Teachers are frustrated because it is difficult to get to get to know their pupils. Pupils also feel a sense of alienation and find it hard to develop a sense of allegiance to these large institutions.” Many of the problems with truancy, exclusions and poor performance can be laid at the door of that alienation, he claims.

Gulbenkian wrote to all schools in the UK, offering them the chance to apply for grants of up to £15,000 to think about ways in which could make their schools more human scale. The charity has also sponsored visits to schools in New York and Boston, published papers and has held two conferences in conjunction with the National College on the idea. A book on human scale education - is to be published later this year.

“What we are advocating is not smaller schools,” he says. “We are saying that larger schools could look at ways in which they can restructure or reconfigure so that they can apply the idea of human scale. It’s not a panacea but it does make it possible for teachers and pupils to have a better learning relationship.”

"'Small is beautiful' defence against education factories"

Stantonbury Campus in Milton Keynes is one of the longest established example of schools within a school. The concept was pioneered by the then headteacher Mike Davies. Inspired by the movement for 'small is beautiful’ and worried about the danger of creating an education factory - (Stantonbury has 2,300 pupils), he set up a series of 'halls’, each with around 500 pupils.

“Relationships with teachers count,” says Mike Davies. “Only they know how to do things differently with individual children - when to accelerate the learning, when to slow things down and how to get the best out of a person. That’s what human scale education is doing - setting up relationships and getting to be a better person - which is what education is supposed to be about.”

He adds, “The whole idea of worrying about size is not an end - it’s merely a means. Its a means towards more flexibility and more responsibility and allows people to organise themselves differently. It re-empowers teachers.”

At Stanley Park in Sutton headteacher David Taylor is a convert to the idea of human scale education. He is already applying the principles of human scale education to Stanley Park - but in 2010 the school will move to a new, enlarged site and he is excited at the prospect of being able to give the schools-within-schools concept an appropriate physical form.

The new school will offer 210 places per year, 350 sixth-form places and provision for 35 children with mild autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) as well as for 56 children with moderate ASD. When new pupils arrive at the school they will be allocated to one of three schools - World, Performance and Trade and will enter the Excellent Futures curriculum - which emphasises skills rather than the body of knowledge approach.

The names of the ‘mini-schools’ reflect some of the options available within the schools. Thus World will specialise in foreign languages, Performance in dance and music, and Trade in design and art. But this is not streaming - mixed ability sets exist in all three schools. Pupils will have a ‘home’ school and move around other schools for optional subjects. Tutors will teach their students for at least 12 periods a week.

The system is designed to build long-standing relationships with the schools. When you have a large unit, it can be prone to a lot of errors,” says David Taylor, "particularly over such things as choosing options. Many of our kids come from environments where they don’t trust relationships - unless you build up relationships where there can be a level of trust, you will get nowhere.”

Under the human-scale approach, the strengths and weaknesses of individual pupils will be known by their tutors who can offer much more useful support for their decisions. The future as Taylor sees it lies in creating a learning environment much more suitable for young people - in effect dismantling the traditional Key Stage 4.

"'Small scale' paying dividends before new school opens"

David Taylor is pleased that the approach, even before the new school is open, is beginning to pay dividends. Stanley Park is among the top ten most improved schools in the country and local primary school applications have doubled this year.

Perhaps the best example of what a human scale school of the 21st century might look like is at Brislington Enterprise College, one of the new wave of BSF schools in Bristol. Principal John Matthew said that the schools was designed around the question: "How do you make the scale of an organisation intelligible to an individual student?"

“When we talked to stakeholders about what the new school should be like," he says, "we realised that we were in danger of replicating that which people disliked most about the old school - the scale."

The new school is designed , says Matthew to instill a sense of belonging and a spirit of adventure as well as high academic standards. Brislington has seven learning communities - two at Years 7 and 8, two at Years 9 -11, one post-16 and one each for students on the autistic spectrum and with physical disabilities.

Each community has its own director and occupies separate spaces along the central ‘street’ of Brislington’s new £38 million building. Each has its own administrative space and staff. Pupils spend 60 per cent of their time in their community, leaving only for specialist teaching. Each community is broken down further with a couple of dozen pupils in a learning family - a kind of mixed year tutor group which meets four days a week to discuss learning issues. Matthew himself is part of such a group and is happy to ask pupils what they think of their teaching.

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