Chronicle January 2021

29 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

The new Roe Reading Room in the Christie Centre

downplays the emphasis of the pressurised exam and seeks to reduce the associated potential teenage mental health issues of a single moment of success or failure. Instead, the assessment approach within the new courses highlights the need to build a more diverse portfolio of skills. ‘Education is not the filling of the pail, but the lighting of a fire.’ WB YEATS We do not discount the skills developed through a core programme of GCSEs; to hold information in memory enables effective communication under pressure and does allow for deep thinking. The practice of knowledge retrieval clearly trains some elements of the brain. It is simply that this is not the only important skill. We want to develop and celebrate other abilities and to take advantage of the enhanced neuroplasticity of the teenage brain. The overarching vision of the St Edward’s education is an exploration of what it is to be human and an individual within a community. GCSEs limit our ability to have

the conversations that relate to personal development. The boundary that is too often placed between the academic and pastoral elements of nurturing a young person is, quite rightly, blurred at St Edward’s. The kernel of our new programme is the emphasis on the coaching relationship between teacher and pupil. Our skilled teachers work with pupils to help them understand themselves, recognise strengths and weaknesses, build resilience and light a spark. The Pathways and Perspectives courses are a key part of our holistic approach to the process of young people becoming. I have emphasised the relationships between the assessment framework, teaching practice and the skills young people need to fully develop as lifelong learners. What is learnt matters, of course. The new courses, with external monitoring from Buckingham University, enable St Edward’s to use its independence intelligently – ironically an unusual thing in the sector. We control, to a large extent, the knowledge on offer to the pupils and can make pertinent to them learning that is relevant to their lives now and in the future – medicine, engineering, entrepreneurship, urban design, set building, sound design, oceanography…….. In short we can

excite them to think more broadly than a predefined syllabus allows and to follow their passions. Importantly we can adapt as pupils adapt. The practice of teaching (pedagogy) evolves and is intertwined with the content pupils learn. At St Edward’s we have taken off the handcuffs of GCSEs and freed ourselves to look at the pupils in front of us with fresh eyes. The education establishment is taking note.

William Olley in a Design and Entrepreneurship lesson