Independent learning

This week we welcome Bryanston's Deputy Head (Academic), Dr David James, with a blog on independent learning.

Bryanston has a long commitment to promoting independent learning: in every weekly assignment period, correction period, and subject room, this approach is visible, pushing our pupils to take ever greater responsibility for their own learning. Of course, that does not mean that the teacher removes him or herself from the process. Instead, an effective teacher knows when to give direct instruction, and when to provide the appropriate levels of support the pupil needs to go beyond what is prescribed in the National Curriculum.

But how is that balance struck? How does a teacher know when to intervene, and when to allow the pupil to try, sometimes fail, and learn to succeed? To some extent the answer is: we never know for sure, and there are challenges within every aspect of ‘independent learning’ that pupils, parents, teachers and policy makers have to be aware of before they start advocating it as some sort of panacea for every conceivable educational situation.

Independent learning is often a matter of judgment by an experienced teacher. Get it wrong, and difficulties may arise, but get it right, and you can inculcate in a pupil an attitude of mind that can last a lifetime. However, we live in an educational system that seems to conspire against it: increasingly prescriptive curricula, more rigorous assessment, league tables, high stakes final examinations, among other factors, contribute towards creating a situation where anything that is not clearly focused on measurable outcomes - on the part of the school and pupil – is considered a potential distraction.

But teachers have to persevere in trying to make pupils increasingly responsible for their own learning because the alternative is...what? Spoonfeeding? Do we conspire in creating a culture of risk-averse, over-dependent young people who are ill-equipped to deal with the demands of higher education and the pressures of work (but who might get good examination results)? Few teachers have gone into the profession to do this, although all will have felt competing pressures to do just that.

What we have to do is develop in our young people an ability to work on their own, and with their peers, both in the classroom and outside. We have to provide them with the skills to self-monitor, so that they know that they are progressing (or not), and to see work not as something to endure, but as something that is enjoyable and, ultimately, liberating. But we cannot assume that pupils will somehow, instinctively, know such things, and have the intellectual apparatus, to achieve an independence of mind.

Great schools develop in their pupils a real pride in their progress, but also an understanding of how they develop. And great teachers give their pupils the vocabulary to make sense of their own learning. Key to this is discussion, and reflection. Bryanston does both through the weekly charts, and through our unique tutorial system, but these can only ever work effectively if the pupil learns to play a full and active part in each: it is in both that a personalised focus of academic achievements (and challenges) is developed. And when this happens, ideally, pupils begin to learn that education is not something done to them, but with them, a joint endeavour undertaken between teacher and pupil, and with a shared destination in mind: independence in the truest, and most empowered form, because it comes with a real sense of purpose and responsibility.

Against the clock

It’s a term of exams; one which is more complicated than any of my teaching career, as the latest round of national exam tinkering starts to bite. The country’s Year 12 pupils (we call them A3) are engaging, depending upon their choices, in a mix of legacy and reformed A levels - and it is a cocktail that is producing headaches across the country. Our job, parents and teachers, is to keep our charges sane. And to allow them to do their best.

Exams are one of those unavoidable snapshots of life; not attractive to many of those engaged in them, apart from a few odd souls who relish the adrenalin rush of proving themselves against the clock and without access to any notes that may help them. I remember my tutor at college, the wonderful Stephanie West, asking me as I was getting a little ‘stressed’ preparing for my unseen papers in Greats (which means ‘Finals’ in almost every other part of the world): “If we found a new manuscript of a Greek author, to whom would we give it for the better translation: a nervous finalist student in an exam with no dictionary, or a focused and rested expert in a library surrounded by all the texts one could possibly need?” That helped me a lot to realise what a damn silly idea in lots of ways an unseen translation exam is. It has to be done of course, but the aim of the test is not the production of a perfect translation, but the production of the best you can do in the most unnatural of circumstances. Doing well in exams is all about recognising upon what it is that you are being tested and making your peace with that.

My husband is a big horse-racing fan. He often talks to me about the horses, the trainers and the races and I understand a (very small) percentage of what he says. This is of course the secret of a long and happy marriage. He talked to me recently about ‘breeze up sales’, in which young horses (two-year-olds) are galloped (‘breezed’) for a quarter of a mile or so, the better to inform the on-looking prospective purchasers as to their potential as racehorses. Recently, it has become modish to time this test gallop. And still more modish to pay the highest price for the fastest horse. This has resulted, of course, in young horses being specifically prepared to excel in the test gallop, with less regard for their future health and racing prospects.

I was struck by, and indeed moved by, some of the language of horsemen who see the limits of this exercise. One said: “It’s a fad. But the shrewd guys are seeing through it. They know that if you push these young horses too hard, their heads will be fried, their legs will be fried, and you can forget any idea of them becoming racehorses. Best of luck to these lads with their stopwatches … I know we’re being penalised for not doing fast breezes. But our turn will come. People will come full circle.”

We all have to do ‘breezes’ against the clock. We call them exams. But whilst we accept we have to do them, and that it is generally a good thing to do well in them, I do hope that by next year we shall indeed be seeing a full circle. We will very soon be returning to the days of a two year sixth form (i.e. no AS exams) and, by 2019, we’ll be going back to something like 1926 and the School Certificate, with GCSEs graded 1-9, rather than A* to G. With that might return also the educational memory that not everyone is supposed to get only the highest grade; not everyone is first in a particular race. Or as another racehorse trainer put it: “A lot of the real ‘road runners’ that break the clock at the sales don’t turn out to be ‘race runners’, so to speak … and some of our best horses were bought simply because we liked their make and shape and attitude.”

I have two OB daughters in their early twenties who I very much hope, having been pretty decent ‘road runners’ at Bryanston, are now much more importantly ‘race runners’. All I have ever cared about is their ability to be independent, happy, and fulfilled. I wish them lives of brave choices and paths explored. I wish them loving and loved. These ‘breeze ups’ or exams are, and always have been, just irritating snapshots on the way to these greater goals. I do very much hope that between us we can make sure all our children have the right priorities in life. Some of achieving that is in making sure we don’t buy into any nonsense.

In other words, focus long-term. Or if you prefer, it’s not the snapshot or the stopwatch that matters but how it fits into your plans for a happy, fulfilling, and contributory life.

A2 Charity Weekend

This week we are delighted to welcome the Heads of School, Nancy and Sam, as guest bloggers. Alongside their team of prefects, they recently organised the annual A2 Charity Weekend, in which the entire year group worked together towards the common goal of raising funds for their chosen charity. At this year’s event pupils surpassed their fundraising target and you can read more about the weekend here. In their guest post the Heads of School explain why they chose PumpAid as their charity and what they learnt from organising the weekend.

Two weeks ago we led the A2 year group (year 13) in organising a fundraising event for a charity of our choice. This year we chose to support PumpAid, a charity based in London but which operates in Malawi. Our aim was to sponsor the building of a water pump for a village in rural Malawi.

Having done some research it really hit home how pressing the issue of access to clean water is. We had no idea the conditions that some people were living in, and indeed how far reaching the problem is. Water-borne diseases are currently the main contributor to child mortality in Malawi, so there is an obvious health impact caused by the lack of access to clean water. However, what we hadn’t appreciated was the additional social issues the problem creates. For example, the long distances that children, mostly young girls, have to walk every day to collect water is having an impact on their education, as they have less time to spend in school studying. Hopefully with the funds that we have raised we can stop this for around 240 people and provide a community with water for generations to come.

In terms of what we have learnt from the weekend itself, the experience has not only been incredibly humbling, it has also taught us a lot about organising charitable events like this. It was such a good thing to do and has really helped us to appreciate not only how lucky we are at Bryanston, but also how we can truly change other people’s lives through small events like these.

As part of the weekend a Bryanston pupil composed and performed a song especially for the event to support PumpAid. You can watch the video of it below.