London as a classroom

A London location can extend a school’s facilities in exciting ways.  Dr Duncan Rollo, deputy head of Centre Academy London, explains

Parents considering at which school to place their child frequently spend considerable time studying the issue of facilities. Today, they expect – rightly – that the school will feature bright classrooms, superb textbooks, the latest smart-boards and a constantly expanding library. But facilities are another thing altogether. Frequently, they involve attributes that distinguish one school from another. Thus, the question of the school’s boathouse may come into play. And what of its art gallery, its music studio, its science labs, its theatre, just to name a few? In essence, parents searching for the right school are increasingly attaching a broader context to school than used to be the case. And they are right to do so.

However, spare a thought for the small school. At Centre Academy, a specialist school for children with ADHD, Dyslexia, Asperger’s Syndrome and other learning difficulties, we must limit our total enrolment to about 60 students. This ensures that our classes remain relatively tiny and that the children receive a tremendous amount of one-to-one instruction. In effect, everything about our school is small. Were this not the case – if, for example, we had 15 students in a class instead of five – we could not do what we do. If we are to help children reclaim their futures by mastering essential coping and related skills, having a plethora of one-to-one rooms is more essential than having a school theatre or art gallery or music complex. But this does not diminish the importance of such facilities.

Against this backdrop, you will understand why parents are sometimes perplexed when I seem to respond in outlandish ways to questions about our facilities. A school theatre? We have 52 of them! Science labs? Dozens! Art exhibitions? We regularly feature Monet and Gainsborough and Whistler – originals, of course! School museum? Hundreds!

By now, you will have discerned the point. Small school we may be, but we are fortunate enough to be located in what is arguably one of the most exciting cities in the world. Accordingly, our classrooms and other facilities are augmented by London itself. In effect, London functions as a classroom for our school. This means that we make frequent use of the capital’s cultural, artistic and historic possibilities, that our students regularly visit sites that others only read about. The Houses of Parliament, the London Eye and the IMAX Cinema are only scant minutes from our campus. Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery only a few more; the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum and London’s glorious Theatre District (with its 52 theatres!) can be reached easily, as can Shakespeare’s Globe and the Tower of London. Our choices are as broad as the imagination, and our facilities are as varied as London itself.

It is important for me to emphasise that I am not talking about London as the site for field trips. Rather, I am talking about a school’s perception of itself. Centre Academy sees London as one of its classrooms. It is that facility where our students regularly go beyond books or videos or computers when they are studying a subject. In our mindset, London is part of our campus, just as familiar to us as our ICT centre or our library. It is not an add-on. London’s facilities feature in all our syllabi and schemes of work. For our students, visiting the Science Museum or the National Portrait Gallery or the Globe Theatre is part and parcel of being members of our school. As one of our students said to a visiting parent: “It’s not a big deal. It’s just something we do.”

But there are big deals out there in our London classroom. Over the years, as we have made increasingly regular use of London, we have been able to forge strong bonds with a number of its facilities—and in so doing, have been most appreciative as these facilities have reached out to our children. For example, one facility regularly provides our children with special programmes that enable them to conduct hands-on scientific experiments on site, and with the most wonderful equipment. Similarly, whenever we are taking a group of our children to see a play at a particular theatre, the management of that theatre sends two actors to the school to conduct a workshop with our children a day or two before the play. The theatre also sponsors a post-mortem, with the actors returning to the school after the production to discuss its merits with the children.

The idea behind Centre Academy’s London Classroom is open to any school that has a reasonable proximity to the city. Setting up the kinds of programmes that have given our school such impressive extra dimensions, however, requires considerable research by management and staff, the realisation that city facilities can play a major role in fostering learning and most of all, the willingness by the school to reach out beyond the regular boundaries of its buildings and campus.

Click here to search for independent schools in London and the South East.
Click here to promote your school or company.
Click here to purchase the guide.