LEARNING GAP
emphasises curiosity and creativity, while ‘The Responsibility for Learning’ balances personal discovery with collective responsibility for the process. This sense of the social is driven home in the focus on ‘Empathy and Caring’ where both teachers and students are valued and where mutual trust is a key component. Adding to these foundations, the principle of ’Success and Failure’ not only celebrates achievement and success, but insists that students benefit from their failures, so that they learn to persevere when things don’t go well. Something which Outward Bound courses include in their learning process. ‘Collaboration and Competition’ teaches personal and group development, so that the student is not in competition with their peers, but rather tries to outshine themselves, to better their own successes, to reach their own standards of excellence. A number of other principles, including
‘Diversity and Inclusion’, ‘The Natural World’, ‘Solitude and Reflection’ and ‘Service and Compassion’ reinforce the ethos of care, individual and group strength, alongside love of the natural environment and a sense of stewardship towards the earth. Since the schools are built on the idea that we learn better through the differences between us, learning groups are always heterogeneous, rather than streamed.
Kurt Hahn – ELS and The Outward Bound Trust Though ELS chimed loudly with Gwyn ap Harri, he did not at first make the connection to The Outward Bound Trust. He discovered that EL schools were explicitly founded on the philosophy of Kurt Hahn, the German educator who was the co-founder of The Outward Bound Trust in the UK in the 1940s. The Outward Bound approach had been exported to the USA and became the inspiration for EL. So when Gwyn ap Harri realised the connection, not only did his attraction to High Tech High’s methods become explicable, he also realised that Outward Bound’s philosophy had, for him, come full circle. Back in the UK, Gwyn ap Harri got together with Andy Sprakes, then Head teacher at
Campsmount Academy, Doncaster and encouraged him to visit San Diego to see for himself. Four years on and the pair are reflecting on the success of their first two years as CEO and Executive Head respectively of the XP school in Doncaster.
XP School XP opened in 2014 and has a deliberately small student intake of 50 per year, divided into 2 groups. Students are chosen randomly, not on the basis of catchment area, class or ability, therefore fully working with the EL principles of diversity and inclusion. Adapted for a UK context, XP’s character values are those of ‘Courage,
Respect, Craftsmanship & Quality, Compassion and Integrity’. Added to this is the relentless focus on “character growth and beautiful work”. The National Curriculum is delivered through interdisciplinary ‘learning expeditions’ where students work on projects chosen for their relevance to their local community, with the finished products designed to affect positive change. Key to all of it is a sense of community and common purpose and so it is vitally important to the school that children begin the school year totally ready for seven years of working together in a new way. The school year has unconventional term times
compared to other UK Academies. This consists of 5 terms of 8 weeks with a 2-week holiday in between and a 4 week holiday in the summer. This arrangement allows for the school year to begin in August and for new Year 7 intakes the first thing that happens is students board a bus for a four day residential course at The Outward Bound Centre in Aberdovey, Wales. This sounds fairly daunting, considering that the random allocation and small intake means it is very unlikely that students will know one another, but the decision is a purposeful one. These four days will be the first introduction to ‘learning expeditions’ and prepares students for their school year ahead.
The first learning expedition – The Outward Bound Trust An essential element at XP is its pastoral system, which is built on the idea of ‘Crews’. Students are put into a group of 12 or 13 - their crew - of which they will be a member for the duration of their time at XP. This is no mere lip service, the crews spend 45 minutes each school day together in quality, in-depth discussion and activity. In Aberdovey, the question ‘What is Crew?’ is
introduced and becomes the focus of learning and team work for the whole four days.
July/August 2016
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