Better for the young people of this country – and the world – than the Queen’s Jubilee is the news that a secondary school in the North of England has taken up Breakthrough to Learning and is preparing to use it throughout the school from September!

My last blog recommended a lecture on the revolution in education by Professor Eric Mazur. It is exactly the same message as the ethos of this school. I quote from a pamphlet handed out to new teachers at the school:

We are about learning. We are unusual in that. So much time and energy in schools is spent on pursuing teaching standards, exam grades, league table positions etc. that, in reality, little time is left for learning.

Here is a further quotation from this document:

Our My World lessons are a reponse to a dissatisfaction with the traditional subject orientated curriculum and its increasing meaninglessness for young people. It is also an attempt to put into practice what we know about learning: collaboration, activity, learner involvement, reduction of teacher intervention, reflection.The learner is presented with challenges and stimuli.
The learner must organise themselves, identify resources and meet the challenge e.g. get an egg into the air, bring it back in one piece and prove how high it has been. This is not integrated subjects, it is not teacher led. This is not a pleasant project lesson which requires the printing off of incomprehensible notes; it is challenging and stimulating. We want to make the learning as real as possible. You should go and observe a My World lesson (years seven and eight) in order to really grasp what we are about.

It is perhaps not surprising that we have had to wait for a school with such a learning ethos to take up Breakthrough to Learning, which will give the pupils the linguistic tools they need to pursue real independent learning. Best of all, it restores the joy in learning which the bureaucratisation of education has tried to kill.