A lesson in engagement

Richard Butt
4/ 7/2008

FOR some reason, most people believe they had it harder at school than youngsters these days. Standards have dropped and children aren’t being taught anything, they say.

I’ve never really believed that was true. But I do know that things are different.

Last week, I visited schools where things had changed for the better. At Parrs Wood High School in Didsbury I met Rita Hesketh.

She won a distinction in the North West Teaching Awards for her work in PE.

Her approach was about getting all pupils involved in lessons.

I was not very good at sport. In fact, I was rubbish. Kick a football towards me and I’ll just fall over. I’m tall, so I was always made to go in the scrum and line-out in rugby. Why the teacher blew a whistle and made us go into a scrum and why the ball was sometimes kicked in rugby was – and remains – a mystery to me, in spite of five years of it at school.

My dad suggested that the best way to catch a cricket ball was to put your face in its way. I might not have caught many, but I did stop some.

Naturally, games were a matter of ritual humiliation for me every week as the two sportiest boys in the class got to choose the teams. If I wasn’t last to be picked, the big fat chap who couldn’t see very well was.

The only time I ever picked a team, I chose the most rubbish members of the class, just to make a point. The sports teachers never asked me to pick again.

They say that sport is good for social skills and team-building. Not for me, it wasn’t. And, because sport at school was generally team-based and I was alienated by the whole thing, I was totally unfit for the whole of my school life.

In short, school sports didn’t do me much good.

So I was intrigued to hear that these days things are different. Under the new curriculum, teachers try to include everyone – including children who shared my abilities – in sport. Rita Hesketh has expanded the curriculum to other sports, such as cycling.

As a result of her work, fewer children bring in sick notes. Now Rita is teaching other schools the lessons she’s spearheaded at Parrs Wood.

These days, I go out riding on my mountain bike, run a lot and go to the gym. Nothing I learned from school made me want to do any of that, although I suppose the potential for me to enjoy getting fit must have been there all along. However, I did get engaged by more academic stuff. Other children didn’t.

Sophie Murfin, another award-winner in the North West Teaching Awards, showed me how she’d grabbed the attention of her pupils at St Wilfrid’s Junior and Infant School, Newton Heath, by basing lessons on a fairground.

Rather than dull old maths lessons in front of a blackboard, they’ve been doing spreadsheets, working out the economics of a fair.

They went into a haunted house area and read their books by torchlight.

The children were certainly having fun. But they were learning at the same time. Sophie is going to make it bigger and better next term.

The only thing in her classroom that made me perplexed were two lists on the whiteboard. One was headed "Good". The other was "Not Good".

It had echoes of Newspeak in George Orwell’s 1984. But I suppose to be told you’re bad as a pupil is worse than being told you’re not good.

And that underlines the modern philosophy. Emphasise the positive.

The teachers say that produces better results all round – and happier children.

Richard Butt edits Channel M’s early evening news – every weeknight from 5pm