Jamie pays attention to Education

So, yes, it is all artificial and unreal and, yes, there would be few other schools with resources like this and the capacity to bring in top people in their profession, but there is something about this programme that means it is authentic. This week David Starkey’s genuine and successful attempt, to find better ways of engaging with young people and the dramatic impact on a young person, of being told that they have an A plus, not least because they know it is deserved.



I watch the programme from two angles. One, as a former leader of a Second Chance School (2CS) in Leeds I am intrigued to see the parallels between that experience and what is taking place in the Dream School. Already the claims that the staffing levels at the 2CS were too large for the young people we were dealing with, is starting to look suspect. They, as does this group, needed that level of support to try and unpick what had happened to them previously in schools, so that they are enabled to start to learn again. The desire to learn and achieve that is apparent in the students at the Dream School, despite all their disruptive behaviour, was also apparent in the young people in the 2CS.


I am also interested in the use that Jamie is making of technology - or not. Symbolically Jamie’s first action in his class is to collect all the mobile phones, because of the way that the mobile was seen to be disrupting learning across the school. Computers although always seemingly available are not being used in the learning. This is, with the exception this week of the photography class, where technology was partly used, to deliver the most powerful lesson so far, in which the group demonstrated brilliant skills in producing self images.


It is a fascinating ‘experiment’ and now has me glued although I do not have to wait until next week for what comes next, because there is a blog, website, Facebook page to look at. Where shall I start?