Why Size Matters

Outrospection in Small Schools

‘Outrospection’, which refers to looking outside and beyond ourselves to discover ‘who we are and what it is that we want to do with our lives’, is a term I had never heard used before until I read it in philosopher Roman Krznaric’s book ‘Empathy – Why it Matters, and How to Get It’. Krznaric believes that the less we look inwards (in the manner of outrospection’s navel-gazing twin) the more likely we are to engage with and be engaged by both local and global communities and to empathise with what drives and concerns them.

Schools and outrospection are very distant relations; happy to look outwards to find packaged solutions to pedagogical problems (the Accelerated Reader is a good example) but otherwise, like Sartre’s famous gaze, for them, the act of seeing and the act of being seen is focused intensely inward. And if transparency is a concept with which teachers are completely familiar, the reality is they grow the future – the values of learners and the cast of the adults they become – quite privately, ruling freely in the classroom with a freedom (in planning and delivery of lessons, reporting and target setting) not seen in many other professions. Deeply engaged with every moment in pupils’ journey to mastery, everything done in classrooms is done for the benefit of learners, and those who teach, teach for every reason that has nothing to do with the global exchange or the ten principles of economics. No ‘incentives’ make us try harder to embed a love of learning in our pupils and no market principle will ever replace sheer passion for our subjects, but the values of society and how it regards the mission of schools has changed and the values of parents have changed along with it.  No longer able to look inwards, to succeed, parents want schools to think of everything – someone to teach meta-effective awareness to the Year 4s, plans in the event of a no-deal Brexit and a scheme to expand the brand overseas.

Adjusting budgets to address this shift in thinking, the big-hitters in education have created an entirely new strata of jobs: Bid Writing and Sub-Contracting Officer, Marketing, Design and Communications Co-Ordinator and Director of Overseas Schools; in the large school environment these ‘support’ roles now outnumber that of teacher; but what about education’s ‘tiny house’ equivalent, the village primary or the small rural prep school?  How have we entered the conversation?  Well, we have long embraced the concept of Outrospection, and what we lack in size (and opportunities for recruitment) is more than compensated for by the benefits of our shared community experience and the speed with which we can respond to circumstance.

Small schools, like the artisan workshop of medieval times, take their hand-crafted or bespoke service directly to the user; much as in the 10^th century, medieval illuminators began to go freelance, travelling to the work, actively seeking commissions and loosening the monopoly of the scriptorium to lay their incredible talents before royal patrons. Small schools are similarly dynamic. Believing in the flexibility of our new (out of Common Entrance) curriculum to accommodate the requirements of children being educated at home, we took our thinking to the market, offering our teaching expertise, the opportunity to attend sessions in our enrichment programme and a buy-in to the Extras already on offer to our own pupils – riding, music tuition, ballet and drama. The result was a confident collaboration to produce the Home Education initiative.

Anticipating what is needed before anyone thinks to ask for it means bold steps and a great deal of shouting, and inviting the community to shout with us. We cried, ‘goodbye outdated testing regimes and hello Knighton House’s very own curriculum’ – a curriculum to develop our pupils’ ‘human’ talents.  Subjects of which you might never have heard now appear on our timetable; thus S-Maths (as named by pupils), that important gutter space where Science and Maths overlap, was an opportunity for learning which anticipated the education 4.0 skills which are a must in the workplaces of the future.  Fantasy Friday (as named by teachers) brings together all the best bits of our curriculum in an intellectual mash-up. A sustainable arts enterprise married up DT, Science, Geography, Art and Outdoor Ed, and what we will call ‘History fusion’ brought together Art History (‘Pilgrims in Art’) and Archaeology (an enjoyable session of ‘What’ Does Poo Tell us About the Past?’).