Creating Better Schools by Design

15th December 2022Website Admin

Creating Better Schools by Design

David Jackson

 

Ask most people to draw a house and nine times out of ten the house they imagine will be a square box, with four square windows, a pitched roof with a chimney, and often some smoke curling into the sky.

We share a mental model — a blueprint — for what a house is and should look like. We don’t stop to wonder:

  • Does our house have to be square or could it be a different shape?
  • Should it be one storey high, or two, or three?
  • How many windows of what size should there be, really?
  • What purpose does the chimney serve?

Our shared ideas about schools are fixed in much the same way.

There are variations, but our mental model for school tends to include classrooms, corridors, rows of desks, students grouped according to age, one-hour lessons, subject teaching, tests, and so on. This model is based on schools designed in the past. We don’t stop to question whether the school, which we are after all drawing in the C21, should be — needs to be — very different from the blueprint created decades ago. We might ask:

  • What ideas about learning are informing the layout of our school? What might classrooms look like if we thought of them as places where great learning can happen?
  • Does all learning need to be packaged into ‘subjects’?
  • Are one-hour lessons the best unit of learning?
  • Is one teacher with 25 students better than two teachers with 50 students?
  • Why are all students assessed at the same time when they mature differently?
  • Do we have to assess by written exams emphasising memory?

… and so on.

Designing a new school for real is a chance to ask questions like these, and to ensure that the new school is more than just an improvement on the existing model.

“Gesher undertook a serious school (re)design process that placed the needs of their students at the heart of decisions about their new school design.”

At Gesher School, staff, students and parents know how badly a change to the model is needed because most of Gesher’s learners have struggled in schools like the one most of us would draw. So, Gesher undertook a serious school (re)design process that placed the needs of their students at the heart of decisions about their new school design.

Gesher was transitioning from a highly successful primary school to becoming an all-through learning community and needed to find a new school building and facilities, recruit staff, create a secondary school curriculum and reframe its mission and identity.

The leaders of Gesher School knew they needed to go way beyond improvements on the existing model, to design a whole new way of thinking about and doing school, in ways that learned from and built on their experience with primary-age children. They asked:

How might we design an all-through school that will offer success, enhanced self-esteem, personal efficacy, and progression opportunities for all our young people? 

Secondly, in doing so, how can we involve multiple stakeholders in our design process?

Thirdly, how might we stand on the shoulders of existing practices around the world?

The design process that Gesher School entered into comprised eight workshops, each involving different stakeholders, which resulted in a school blueprint for:

  • A bold vision and purpose; and
  • A set of values-based design principles; which were
  • Brought to life in plans for a range of innovative features that add up to a very different kind of school.

Upwards of 100 school staff, parents, students, community members, and other local stakeholders contributed to this seriously intentional and inclusive school design process.

Each issue of The Bridge will address an aspect of Gesher’s school redesign process. This issue focuses on the first two of the eight school design workshops that Gesher School undertook, which concerned (i) purpose and (ii) design principles.

(i) Purpose

Gesher’s discussions about purpose started with identifying their ‘non-negotiables’. Non-negotiables tell everyone what is and is not on the table; what is and is not within the scope of the school design team to change. Examples might be ‘no selection by ability’ or ‘the school will be co-education’ or, in Gesher’s case:

  • We are a school for a specific cohort of children with SEND, including language, communication and social pragmatic issues.
  • We are a Jewish faith school.
  • We utilise real-world learning and projects to foster curiosity and connect our young people to authentic issues and problems.

These clear non-negotiables influenced design features relating to Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) provision, to faith observance and understanding, and to the design of curriculum and pedagogy.

A further key defining issue for Gesher to articulate was purpose – the vision and outcomes to which the school community would aspire. Being clear about what the school had to achieve with and for students; about the purpose of learning; about what matters for the community of the school — staff, students and parents – was an essential bedrock of the design process.

Within the current system, aiming for good examination outcomes is a given, and if that was all that mattered, then job done. However, during the workshop, through extensive discussion – and many post-its – it became clear that exam success on its own was not nearly enough. In brief, the outcomes Gesher agreed are that young people should become:

  • Skilled for the future workplace
  • Qualified for the next stage (exam results plus)
  • Independent learners
  • Confident in their sense of self
  • Builders of meaningful relationships
  • Ethical and responsible citizens.

These, one might hope, could be purposes shared by most if not all schools, but two things qualify them as exceptional in Gesher’s context.  The first is the inclusiveness of the intent. They are purposes for all students, regardless of their prior educational history or unique needs.  The second is to remember that Gesher is a school for children with identified SEND needs, most of whom have been unable to thrive in mainstream schools.

“Staff engaged with mini-case studies of interesting and successful schools around the world to draw from them the particular design features that inspired them.”

(ii) Design Principles

Workshop two was exclusively concerned with design principles and involved staff at the school considering  the question: What would be the design principles or features of a school that can confidently achieve these outcomes for all its learners?

Staff engaged with mini-case studies of interesting and successful schools around the world to draw from them the particular design features that inspired them. They used this as a basis to shape their own, then tested the resulting principles they created together using personas of children at Gesher, asking: Would this work and how would it work for Amy or Peter?

Next Time — Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment

Agreement on these three components — the non-negotiables, purposes and design principles — precedes work on designing the more practical features of a school. Clear purposes provide a constant reminder of exactly what we aspire to achieve with and for learners and their families. Design principles provide the guiding architecture that relates to these purposes. They are ‘laws with leeway’ that frame what we do and how we do it. They are also the features that unify and inspire those who work in a school, and they guide and discipline decision-making.

With these three in place, the design process moves to consideration of the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices that will be informed by and consistent with the design principles and which will enable every student to achieve the outcome ambitions. That is for next time.

Designing New Schools in the USA

In America, there is a long tradition of creating new school designs. Some of the most successful schools in the world have been created in this way – Expeditionary Learning schools; High Tech High (some of whose resources we share later); Big Picture Learning schools; New Tech Network are all examples. The Gates Foundation alone funded more than 2,500 ‘small school models’ across the United States, and New York alone has 200.

Not all of these new school models have been equally successful, of course. However, their students consistently outperform their peers in conventionally sized and structured high schools with comparable demographics. There are some common design features across the majority of these models — and they are very different from the conventional UK school — they all:

  • Focus on the centrality of relationships and personalising learning — have ‘advisory’, where advisory is the soul of the school, symbolising relational support for students
  • Include project-based learning, an engaging and empowering pedagogical model, which also requires teachers to collaborate as designers of learning
  • Have a pervasive cultural identity and school-level ownership of what matters, including what is assessed and how and by whom it is assessed
  • Facilitate powerful and sustained adult learning.

The Cost of Not Having New Models in the UK…

Not to foster innovation in school design means that we constantly focus on striving to improve the existing school model – a model more than 100 years old and out of date.

It is a model with multiple features crying out for redesign. For example, it has failed to achieve equitable outcomes, or to address socio-economic challenges, or to engage disengaged learners — or to fully engage most learners, for that matter. Nor has it provided teachers with an intellectually challenging profession, or excited and involved parents around the experience of their children.

 

Professional Prompt Questions

  • The design process described above is effective applied to existing schools as well as new ones — revisiting purposes and design features together as a prelude to reviewing wider practices.  Might this have value for your school?

  • The review detailed above distilled six clear outcomes that Gesher is committed to evidencing for all learners. Does your school have similar clarity about its purposes?

GESHER ATTENDS ELNET EVENT

13th December 2022Website Admin

In November, Gesher attended a reception to mark the 2nd year anniversary of the Abraham Accords, hosted by Elnet UK and the Board of Deputies, the keynote address was made by Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak.

Gesher’s blueprint and design principles have been informed by best practice from schools and learning communities all over the world including India, New Zealand, the United States and Israel. The school has been working with Elnet over the last year to highlight to central Government, in particular the SEND APPG, best practice in Israel in terms of teaching and learning and early identification of SEND. 

Putting Design Principles at the Heart of a School – James Wetz

1st April 2022Ali Durban

Putting Design Principles at the Heart of a School

James Wetz

I was involved in an advisory capacity during the gestation of Gesher, and at its birth. Asked for this journal to reflect on that period in this extraordinary schoolʼs development, I am driven back to my own belief system -to what the education project is all about. In summary, there are three questions or ʻasksʼ that I would put to all those who work in our schools.

The first: Reflect on how important relationships between staff and young people are

The first challenge to historical models of schooling is that we should reflect on just how important the staff who work with young people in our schools are for each and every young person, and in particular for those more challenging young people who find it difficult to engage with their schooling. This leads at the outset to an emphasis on four key ideas:

  1. That relationships should be the building blocks of school design
  2. That we all learn in and through relationships
  3. That we cannot teach children we do not know and know well
  4. That teaching is a ‘relational activity’ based on ‘educational tasksʼ.

 

The second: Take a holistic view of education

The second challenge is that we see young peopleʻs educational journey from early
childhood to young adulthood in a more holistic way and, additionally, that we ensure
that there are three equally valued and interrelated components to the educational
design, namely:

  • The importance of relevant learning
  • The personal and social development of young people
  • The professional care and intervention we provide for more vulnerable young people.

 

The third: View building resilience and emotional capital as key toeducational provision

The third consideration is that we should, quite simply, view emotional capital and resilience as being a crucial part of a teacherʼs role and a schoolʼs mission.

 

How do these three features relate to Gesher School?

One of the first conversations I had with the schoolʼs founders, Ali and Sarah, was around establishing the core values and principles that would be central to the design of their school – what would be the conceptual framework and belief system that should inform the design of the school they wished to create?

The four underlying principles that were to inform policy and practice in this new school built on the three belief statements set out above, have remained constant to the design and working of the school over time.

They are:

  • The importance of relationships in the education of young people
  • The importance of a holistic approach to the education of young people
  • The importance of building resilience in young people
  • The importance of responding to each young personʻs needs and aspirations

 

It felt important from the very early design of the school to create a constant emphasis for school leaders, be they the Founders of the school or the Headteacher, to see themselves as architects and designers of the school community in its deepest sense. These design principles would be meaningless without those leaders living them and supporting practice that had these principles at their heart.

“We need to see young peopleʼs educational journey from early childhood to young adulthood in a more holistic way.”

 

So what could this new school, Gesher School, and other aspirational settings look like if these core principles informed policy and practice and were evidenced in the school?

The key design features of a school that I believe are essential have little to do with buildings and technology provision, important though these are. Rather, they are very specifically those aspects of the school which give explicit meaning and expression to the core principles of a school. Let me share a few of these that I hold to be important for all schools, which have been embedded in Gesher School and I hope continue to be so as they evolve into an all through provision. Whilst I cannot explore these features in detail here, they are for me essentials of what outstanding schools should demonstrate.

They include:

  • The importance of ritual
  • The importance of celebration
  • A listening culture with and between young people
  • Giving teachers time to think about young people
  • Talking together about young people
  • Planning collaboratively to meet the learning needs of young people
  • Paying deep attention to transitions and the managing of endings
  • The importance of roles and boundaries
  • Putting in place effective professional supervision and role consultation for teachers
  • For teachers to have a therapeutic disposition informed by training in attachment and trauma informed approaches
  • The importance of human scale and the primacy of relationships
  • An emphasis on the importance of living in community.

 

Concluding thought
This is an urgent call for us to set aside preconceived notions of how schooling should be and to think deeply about what it could be or would be if it were to work well for those young people who are currently finding school so difficult to engage with.

 

Case studies of really well designed schools

As part of authoring and presenting a Channel 4 Dispatches programme titled ‘The Children Left Behind’, I was able to film in the small school movement pilot schools in Boston and New York. Here I met two quite remarkable school leaders and schools. Peggy Kemp, Headteacher at Fenway High School, held staff meetings every day of the week with the total commitment of the staff team and asked just one question of them at the end of every day: ‘Who has not been seriously engaged in learning with us today?ʼ On the day of my visit, when invited to the staff meeting that day and in response to this daily enquiry from the Headteacher, teachers raised the needs of three young people: a boy who had ‘kicked off’ in a bout of extreme anger during the morning session; a normally confident and engaged girl who had seemed sad and withdrawn; and a boy who had missed two weeks of schooling because of domestic upheaval and who was clearly not coping with the work.

What was important, though, was not just their identification as young people of concern on that particular day but the immediate responses of the staff team: “I live near the family of the boy who ‘kicked off in anger’ and will visit on my way home”; that they as a staff group would meet and greet the withdrawn girl with greater love and affection the next day; and that an immediate tutor intervention was necessary to enable the boy who had missed two weeks of school a chance to catch up and cope with his programme.

Linda Nathan was school leader at Boston Arts Academy, which teaches the curriculum through the arts. Linda sees relationships as the essential building blocks of her school and stresses that teachers just cannot be ignorant about the lives of the young people they teach. She sees the need for teachers to show unconditional commitment – persistent care – that the young people should know that the adults will never give up on them, whatever they do. This is the culture of her high-achieving school, where attendance rates are high and exclusions almost unheard of. The staff in her school had a commitment and an understanding to think deeply about the needs of young people who present with challenging behaviour, by providing and affirming a holistic approach to education and seeing relationships as the building blocks necessary for any school if young people were to thrive. There was an understanding that recognised that disaffection from school is often rooted in a lack of early affection; that very challenging behaviour is often a communication about need from children who are acting out due to remembered hurt of earlier neglect, abuse, loss, or separation.

 

 

  • Professional Prompt Questions
  • What principles are your school currently built on?
  • If you could design your school from scratch, what principles would you want to guide the way you set up your school? Can you think of a way to embed them where you are now?
  • Is the building of positive relationships between staff and students explicitly designed into the way your school operates? If not, how could it be?
  • Looking at Jamesʼ list of outstanding school features — how many do you recognise in your own school? Would you like to implement any of these?

 

 

James worked for over 30 years in state education, 16 as a secondary school Headteacher at both St. Laurence School Bradford on Avon and Cotham School in Bristol. He retired from the role of the Principal of Cotham School and the North Bristol Post 16 Centre in 2004. Subsequently, he has been National Director of Human Scale Education and co-founder of the Consortium for Emotional Well Being in Schools. He has published widely, most notably ʻUrban Village Schools – putting relationships at the heart of secondary school organisation and designʼ, which was published by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in November 2009 and launched at the RSA in London. In 2008 he authored and presented a ʻDispatchesʼ Programme for Channel 4 titled ʻChildren Left Behindʼ based on field work in the small school movement in Denmark and the ʻPilot Schoolsʼ in Boston and New York in the US. He is currently an advisor or trustee of multiple innovative educational and cultural ventures. He is married to Diana, with three children and eight grandchildren.

Gesher Design Principles

29th March 2022realsmart admin

Gesher Design Principles

EVERY YOUNG PERSON IS PROFOUNDLY WELL KNOWN
Learning at Gesher is founded on relationships and attachment:

  • Adults know students as both young people and learners
  • Young people know and support one another
  • Gesher is a community of ambition built on relationships and compassion.


PERSONALISED LEARNING INFORMED BY YOUNG PEOPLE’S PASSIONS AND INTERESTS
At Gesher young peopleʻs learning will be highly personalised:

  • Fostering curiosity and discovering passions and interests
  • Developing from that to ambition and engagement
  • Ensuring holistic growth and development


ACADEMIC RIGOUR AND AUTHENTIC REAL-WORLD LEARNING

  • Learning at Gesher will be academically rigorous and authentic – connected to real-world tasks in the adult world
  • Learning will take place in school, in the community and through internships in the workplace
  • Young peopleʼs learning will include real-world projects, appropriate skill-based learning, and authentic real-world assessments
  • We will design together rigorous and engaging projects that will develop young people’s sense of agency, ability to collaborate constructively and encourage collective
    achievement.


A CULTURE OF REFLECTIVE PRACTICE AND COLLABORATIVE PEER LEARNING

  • Gesher has a culture of staff reflecting and thinking about their practice together, and collaboratively planning how to improve outcomes for each and every young person
  • Gesher has a culture of peer teaching and tutoring enabling young people to learn from one another.


PARENTS AND COMMUNITY AS PARTNERS IN LEARNING

  • Parents are critical partners – expected to play an active role in their child’s school and home learning
  • At Gesher, parents are our partners in their child’s education, and our community supports and enables learning to happen
  • Gesher engages with the wealth of experience and expertise in our community, and we create opportunities for volunteering.