The Secret Teacher: ‘Real reform is daring and thorough, not a box-ticking exercise’

‘The Advisory Report creates a vision for how a redeveloped senior cycle should contribute to students’ growth and maturity, to their continuing intellectual, social and personal development and their overall health and wellbeing.”

This is an extract from the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment's senior cycle redevelopment report, Looking to the Future (2021). If this vision isn't the holy grail of education success, what is? And if we believe these promises of reform why aren't all teachers behaving as though we have won a long-awaited Eurovision or World Cup or whatever other victory we might be into?

Because we know better, that’s why. We know that our students are not currently denied education on sustainable development (geography, politics and society) and that drama, film and theatre studies already play key roles in our classes (English, transition year programmes). These soon-to-be-new-subjects have been around in other guises for a long time.

I genuinely feel apologetic for my lack of enthusiasm, but my resolve that we can do reform better makes it hard to stay silent. It’s impossible to get excited about what seems more like shuffling around than full-on reform.

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Inspiring lifelong learning means instilling a love of learning so students engage and learn naturally. They learn for its own sake, not as a penance they must suffer in return for grades or points

Young people are experiencing greater stress around learning than ever, and this needs urgent attention in any plans for reform. Everyone has missed out due to Covid-19. Junior cycle reform lowered the bar, so students recognise they are not where they need to be for a Leaving Cert programme. They struggle with screen time, social media pressures and much more too.

They need us to slow things down so that learning becomes more meaningful and less pressurised. Learning takes time, and reform needs to take shape around that. Instead we bring some final exams forward by one year and schedule others during Easter holiday time. Is this what it said on the tin?

Imagine learning in an environment which actively avoids inciting premature stress in youngsters. One which equips them with the skills they will need when stress makes its inevitable appearance later on. Inspiring lifelong learning means instilling a love of learning so students engage and learn naturally. They learn for its own sake, not as a penance they must suffer in return for grades or points.

I too have a dream, and it goes like this: school starts at 10am and a class spends a two-hour block working on one subject. Students sit in groups and the teacher presents for 10 minutes and takes questions for five to 10 minutes, then the pupils have 30 minutes in which they must complete the assigned task.

Whether the students consult each other or not is their choice as long as any interactions are mutually agreed and on-task. Noise during the interactions is kept to a minimum to respect those who have chosen to work quietly. This room is quite large and the acoustics are excellent, because absence of noise interference was a priority in its design. Next comes a 10-minute break. Then the completed task is peer-assessed during a presentation from the teacher which focuses on the co-created criteria for success previously agreed by the group.

Students must justify every mark not awarded to their peer so that the classmate later benefits from knowing precisely what was missing, ie they gain full insight into what they lacked. If the student assessing the work cannot actually fill the gap they may consult just one other classmate. Once the time for peer assessment is over, students volunteer questions based only on information which is still lacking, ie anything which the original student left blank or answered incorrectly and which neither of the peer assessors could fill in – three students struggling with the exact same aspect shows it needs to be thrown to the wider class community. If it isn’t solved there quickly further teacher input is clearly still needed.

At this point the teacher introduces new material, which must be short and complex, and build on the learning of the first hour. The students then start an assignment which constitutes their homework but which should be under way by the time the lesson finishes. Students must be absolutely clear on the requirements of the task and confident they can complete it, so any questions are resolved before leaving. This task is usually extended work which could take up to two hours but which will fully consolidate skills and learning and prove a rewarding experience for the student. Although it is challenging work, fully engaging with it will be entirely possible for those who are present because they have availed of the required groundwork and scaffolding. After an hour for lunch there is a second two-hour learning block in a different subject.

The day ends with two 30-minute assessments for subjects which take place on another day – opportunities for the teachers of those subjects to check in with their learners and guide their preparation for forthcoming lessons. A day which started at 10am ends at 4pm having consisted of two longer learning blocks, two shorter assessment blocks, two short breaks and one lunch break. Everyone leaves feeling they have truly achieved a lot. There is a sense of calm about learning as we are not all dashing about every 35 or 40 minutes.

A schedule such as this permits and promotes a healthier approach to learning. Students are more likely to have their materials with them and their work completed. Most importantly they will have truly absorbed knowledge and developed skills. The required allocation of hours per subject remains, but time is distributed differently so as also to deliver a far more effective wellbeing programme.

Is this flawed? It’s also courageous and innovative, which is what discussions about real reform require. And the reform is real because it starts precisely where the action happens – in the classroom. Such thinking takes us from inside the box to somewhere there isn’t even a box to think outside of. After all real reform is daring and thorough, not a box-ticking exercise.