The Governors and Senior Leadership Team felt that this year
was the time to re-evaluate the teaching day at the Winston Churchill
School. The school needed to evaluate
whether or not our current school day is the best mechanism for providing the
quality curriculum time essential for outstanding progress and academic
achievement, and for producing young people who are ready for their next step
in life once they leave our school.
Our current school day has been with Winston for decades;
indeed, it is a legacy from the reaction to the teacher strikes of the
1980s. It has some benefits: parents like the fact that the younger
students are able to get home in the light, even in the shortest days of the
year; some parents use their children to pick up younger siblings from junior
schools who finish later than 2.30pm; some very busy youngsters who have
evening activities are able to have enough time to complete all homework prior
to their evening commitments.
However, there are some major issues in the school day for
both teaching and learning:
·
Lunch is very short (30 minutes) - this leaves precious
little social time for our students, and therefore students do miss out
on learning some of the softer social skills needed for life.
·
Due to this, the day is extremely condensed. This means that for both students and
teachers there are 6 hours of schooling, with high impact teaching and
learning, with just one 30 minute break.
Staff find this hard as there is no setting up time (or, indeed,
convenience breaks). Students find it
hard to be the active, engaged learners that we encourage them to be in this
concentrated period of time. We have
noticed on our Climate Walks of lessons this year that behaviour and engagement
falls away during periods 4 and 5.
·
Our school site is large - we are the largest
11-16 school in the whole of Surrey.
Students are encouraged to ensure their punctuality is excellent, and
almost all strive to do this; however, this is very difficult when it takes 5
minutes to walk from one side of our site to the other. Therefore, our one-hour lessons are often
50-55 minute lessons by the time all students have arrived. Cumulatively, this means that many hours
of education are being lost through the course of the academic year with
the current school day system.
What has happened
so far this year
A Working Party was set up to review the school day, with representation
sort from a complete cross-section of staff, both teaching and
non-teaching. The Working Party consisted
of 18 volunteers, from a variety of backgrounds within the school:
·
Class teachers
·
Learning Support Assistants
·
Science Technicians
·
The Site Team
·
Cover supervisor / organiser
·
Year Leaders
·
Subject Leaders
·
A teacher governor
·
Member of the SLT
Among the group were colleagues who were also parents at the school;
colleagues who had experience of different school days at other schools; some
of the teachers with the fullest timetable in the school; and some teachers
who, due to teaching more than one subject, are very peripatetic during the
school day.
This meeting had the agenda of stripping the school day away and
starting from scratch - how would we create a school day that best fits the
core purpose of the school.
The working part met for two long meetings to put together a proposal
for a new school day.
After this, the proposal was taken to the Senior Leadership Team, who
discussed it in two meetings. It was
then taken to a Student Voice meeting, where the representatives of the student
body were shown the proposed new school day, and they were given time to
reflect on the changes and give their initial feedback. The Head Boy and Girl then came to an SLT
meeting to give further feedback.
The proposed new school day was then discussed at a Teaching and
Learning governors meeting in January, where they gave their support to further
consultation.
It was then shown to the whole school staff during the whole school
inset on January 24th 2014. Staff were also
provided with the opportunity to feedback on their thoughts of the proposal.
What does
the Proposed New School Day look like?
It was decided to not change the current system of lunchtime, as
any change would lead to too long a lunch.
It was decided to include a morning break of 20 minutes for the
whole school instead. Movement time
of 5 minutes was added between lessons (when required) so that students are
ready for the start of every one hour lesson.
8.25am -
Initial bell sounds
8.30 -
8.50 - AM Registration Period / Assembly
8.50 - 8.55
- Movement time
8.55 -
9.55 - Period 1
9.55 -
10.00 - Movement time
10.00 -
11.00 - Period 2
11.00 -
11.20 - Morning Break
11.20 -
12.20 - Period 3
12.20 -
13.50 - Period 4 / Lunch (with the
same pattern of split-breaks as we currently have)
13.50 - 13.55
- Movement Time
13.55 -
14.05 - PM Registration
14.05 -
14.10 - Movement Time
14.10 -
15.10 - Period 5
15.10 -
End of school day
What are the Advantages
of this School Day?
· Movement time will allow for hour-long lessons
to actually be hour long learning experiences.
· The movement time will allow staff to set up
their lessons so that they run smoother and will be 'higher impact'. This will
inevitably lead to better teaching and better learning.
· The morning break will allow for more social
time, as well as meeting times, and time for students who need to 'play' - so
sports facilities will be open each day.
It will also enable small amounts of practice time for key events (sports
teams/orchestras, etc). It will also be
a punitive time for students if needed.
· There will be opportunities for eating at break,
but the majority of the lunches will now be eaten at a time much more suitable
for a traditional lunch (between 12.20pm and 1.50pm as opposed to starting at
10.50am as we currently do)
· There will be potentially less time when
students arrive home after school where they are left to their own devices as
parents are working so cannot be there to receive them.
Whenever change such as this is proposed, it is often hard
to look beyond the immediate impacts to one's self; however, the job of leading
a school means that some decisions will need to happen that create changes that
do not please everyone, but are essential for the growth and improvement of the
whole school. This is certainly one of
those; and although there will be some parents who will feel that the change
will negatively impact on their lives and routines, the benefits to the students
and their learning has been the driving force behind this proposal, and we are
sure that anyone who studies this document can recognise that.
What are the next
steps
We warmly invite you to an afternoon session of discussions
about the proposed changes on Monday 10th March from 4.30 – 6pm. This will be an informal setting with tables
chaired by the Headteacher, the Senior staff, and also the Student Voice
(including the Head Boy and Head Girl).
At this time you will be able to discuss the changes and bring any
concerns you may have to our attention.
The school is in communication with the Bus Company, to
ensure that bus timings take into account the change to the school day timings.
The school will be taking the proposed day to the Full
Governors meeting at the end of March for ratification, ready for its
commencement in September 2014.
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