Back to school

7:00pm Sunday 17th February 2008

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IT'S 15 minutes into a history lesson - one pupil has already done most of the work set, another claims to be stuck, three are discussing what they did at the weekend and one boy has yet to take off his coat.

In this mixed ability class, newly qualified teacher Simon Downing finds himself teaching several lessons at the same time.

He tries to explain developments in modern medicine, while finding coloured pencils and curtailing classroom gossip.

It is a very difficult job.

As the Daily Echo's education reporter I spent a day at Kings High, a comprehensive school in Bournemouth, finding how things have changed since I left school a decade ago.

Now the register is taken electronically, there is an interactive white board in every classroom, and there will soon to be a plasma screen television showing music channels in the dining room.

But the timetable looked pretty similar.

My first lesson was English. The 32 students were perfectly behaved and dutifully read the newspaper articles they were given.

Teacher Verity Marlow described the class as "the most opinionated bunch of young people I have ever met" but they seemed a little reluctant to discuss the media's representation of young people.

There was, however, condemnation of yobbish behaviour and some radical ideas about long prison terms for teenagers who misbehaved.

Year 10 pupil Hannah Pateman, 15, whose timetable I was following, said she really enjoyed English and was planning to do it for A-level.

She said: "The teacher is really nice and you learn a lot without realising."

Next lesson was maths and the topic angles in polygons.

Some pupils turned up without proper equipment and the teacher Carol Harrison handed out pens, pencils and rulers for students to use.

She visited all the tables working with students who displayed a range of ability and willingness to work.

A few of the girls were more interested in discussing how much they drank at the weekend than completing questions but I got the impression that by the end of the lessons most people had grasped the concepts.

In science, I was surprised by the bad language students got away with and the amount of time wasted by the teacher asking pupils to be quiet but impressed by the students' knowledge of the electromagnetic spectrum.

In history, I learnt as much about how a pupil's friend got arrested and how much another boy spent on his girlfriend as I did about developments in medicine.

However, when you get the pupils on a subject they know about, they are amazingly knowledgeable.

One girl discussed the finer points of transfusions involving different blood types.

My afternoon was spent in leisure and tourism lessons, again a mixed ability class, which was disrupted by a few pupils who refused to listen to instructions.

Teacher Simon Crowe said later: "If we hear swearing in class we try and make the point that it is not acceptable. But if you send a child out of class it makes it harder for them to come back next lesson and they are not learning anything while they are out of lessons."

Head teacher Alyn Fendley echoed this. He said: "If you pick up on every single point some students would make very little progress."

He is worried that the school's appearance near the bottom of league tables leads people to write off the school, the teachers or the area.

Like many schools, Kings High is facing challenges.Many children at the school have special educational needs.

Mr Fendley said: "We have children with perhaps more needs than other schools. Schools cannot expect children to switch off from what is happening at home the moment they get into school."

The school is working to improve Key Stage 4 results and Mr Fendley is confident this is possible because the Key Stage 3 results were on target.

But he is concerned that focus on league tables does not reflect the hard work done in the school.

Mr Crowe said: "People think of teachers as inanimate objects but that is not the case."

Certainly it was not the impression I got at the school. Most of the teachers I met were friendly and open and seemed to have genuine affection for their students.

Drama teacher Jonathan Perkins said: "Every school has their challenges but teaching here is really enjoyable because the students are fantastic."

I met students with ambition to be primary school teachers, hairdressers and journalists.

To fulfil these ambitions they are going to need the support not just of teachers but of their parents too.

Mr Fendley said: "I have never met a parent who does not want their children to do well. The vast majority of parents are really supportive but we find some hard to reach."

He said people had warned him inviting the Echo to school for a day would be "like putting your hand in a viper's nest".

But he said: "I wanted to show there is more to our school than league table results. We are an inclusive school and you have to judge the school on progress made by individuals. If you start from a lower level you might not reach the target but you may have still made a lot of progress.

"You have to provide children with free access to opportunity in life if you are not to store up problems for the future."

The school's thought for the week, which every child had to write out in their diary, was: "If you worry about what other people think of you, it's because you have more confidence in their opinions than you have in your own."

And I think the school is trying to follow its own advice.