This blog is about the research and subsequent efforts I and my colleagues continue to conduct to ensure that ‘why, how and what we do’ works.

Circa 30 years ago, the Mast Organisation based in Taplow introduced me to 2 amazing study skills tutors, Joan Dennis and Linda Greetham. Joan was a current parent at the time, Robert and Simon with me at Senior Boys, with Simon going on to win Rowing Gold at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, and even more importantly open the sports hall at Juniors 6 years later. Whilst fads can come and go, at Senior School we have continued to concentrate on the explicit teaching of study skills, and this last week has seen Linda back in school, working with the new ‘troops’. I asked Linda to carry out a value-added analysis specifically on the teaching effect of her work, and the consequences when willing volunteers choose to stick with her mentoring are stellar, performing way above the predicted outcomes from their assessed native abilities1. By the way, we don’t just rely on Linda, and the whole faculty from 5 to 18 is skills focused these days. But for the few, that different voice yet supportive and relentless support for a few days makes a difference no parent could make in a lifetime.

Back in 2012, Google invited me and school colleague Paul Robson, then ICT specialist teacher and Head of Outdoor Education to their Teacher Academy (GTA) here in the UK, since when we have retained our Certified Teacher/Innovator status. Being a graduate of GTA is a big thing, but only if you use what you’ve been given selflessly and give those skills to others. We’d all had to submit videos, participant hopes and CVs, and of course be recommended by the industry with which we had already engaged. Paul and I took CC to the cloud, implemented what we now know as Google Workspace, continued to collaborate with C-Learning along the way, who sourced Chromebooks from Samsung and the rest as they say is History. We influenced over 300 other schools, state and independent to go Google then, and we continue to evangelise for the right tools to use in schools for children and young people. Oh, and we’ve never been monetised for that work. Not even a pair of glasses.

7 years ago, I first made contact with Professors Megan Sumeracki and Yana Weinstein, who had just founded the Learning Scientists – this link takes you to their first-anniversary story. 2 young but amazing Professors who chose to tear up the 1001 rules books on how people (don’t learn) and start afresh. From 2010 to 2017, we’d all had to cope with an Education ‘giant’, Michael Gove, who’d torn up the latest set of GCSE and A level syllabi and sent us all back to the dark ages. Rote learning was required to return, authors younger than the Victorian era consigned to the ‘too trendy’ dustbin, and the EBacc applied to school performance measures (2010), which slowly and steadily drove artistic, creative and physical skill subjects out of the core curriculum. What the work of the Learning Scientists permitted me to do was sweep away the ‘Gove/Ofsted’ noise, here’s their email to me giving permission. Making this choice enabled our Deputh Heads Academic to lead proactively, make choices, design the appropriate curriculum, asking the right questions and leaving the students to design the best answers.

From 1960 to the present day, 3 October 2024, Claires Court has stood for hands-on learning.Year 6 have been away studying on a residential this week, the Year 9s go off on Rugby tour to Bath and the CCF are away in Tangier Woods over the weekend too. Whatever the activity, children need to be together, making mistakes, winning, losing, and building resilience along the way. Just check out our fixture list for the term here or of course our multi-verse of social media channels for Rowing and Sailing, and I think our purpose is made very clear. This week was MasterChef week for Year 10 boys and girls, with the incredibly impressive Chef Wesley Smalley (from Seasonality, Queen Street) helping my brother, others and myself select the school ‘winning chef’ to pass through to the next round. I was part of the team for period 4 on Tuesday, and I learned this from Wesley along the way: “You can teach presentation skills to anyone, but you can’t teach taste!”

Claires Court sets out to provide a child-centred, modern and relevant education for the future we find ourselves in. The latest research arising from #lockdown highlights just how damaging it has been for children (of any age) to navigate their childhood without other children present. I completely understand that children can be mean to each other, yet the reality of the tales from Literature across the centuries is that growing up is a collaborative effort, not one left to children on their own (Lord of the Flies) but one in which children together can figure it out, with or without the help of the grown-ups (Harry Potter and all).

So what do I know then – let’s assume the worst, that I know nothing despite 49 years as a teacher. Here’s a young maths Teacher, Dan Meyer, 14 years ago telling you the same story then as you’ll hear now: if you build teacher dependency in your students, they’ll eagerly do nothing and await the answers you give them. The challenge for teachers, for schools and communities is to be brave, not stupid, to be values-driven not cause change for the sake of it, but whenever and wherever, look for the good things arising – still in 2024, opportunities are everywhere, but keep your eyes open. The future lies ahead, and we make it!

#CCMakingHistory.