Whole Education

Context: This project is a partnership of Homewood School and Sixth Form Centre and Hugh Christie Technology College, with the support of Hollingworth Business and Enterprise College in Rochdale and Kent County Council.

Aspiration: It seeks to transform the current physical and temporal limits of school, creating opportunities for students to learn outside school at any time. They aim to facilitate knowledge exchange and co-created solutions between the pilot schools, their 3,500 students and other interested Building Schools for the Future (BSF) schools in Kent. The field trial will develop a flexitime toolkit that enables schools to stretch the boundaries of learning and push forward the developing concept of the 'distributed workplace'.

The development of the toolkit will enable the schools involved to support cohorts of student engaged in learning outside the boundaries of the school, tracking what they do and accrediting their work. The project will explore the notion of attendance as engagement in learning, rather than physical presence at a school site for a fixed period of time. The project will also look to inform the design of new-build schools, questioning assumptions about the required physical capacity of a school building, enabling them to ease overcrowding in popular schools and accommodate unexpected rises in pupil numbers without further capital expenditure. This will contribute to a radically different rationale for the design of new large schools in the local authority of Kent.

Outcome: Hugh Christie have implemented staggered day for students on level 3 courses, in new BSF building. 16+ recruitment up from 170 to 195. Including Y11 on 16+ courses number is 253.

Summer 2007 results:

• 5A*-C 68% (up 6%)

• 5A*-C w E/M 32% (up 9%)

• Maths 45% C+ (up 17%)

• A Level 98%

• A level at AB 37% up from 23%

School now plans a time of stability through 2007-9. However planning for 2009 (introduction of Diplomas) is already in hand. With the experience of the field trial the school is better placed to undertake development alongside and linked to consultation. They are looking at curriculum for the future: two eighteen month programmes covering years 9 -10 -11.

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