Peter Hyman: We need a new schools model for the 21st century

What comes next for London’s schools? After more than a decade of improvement, London schools are now doing better than the rest of the country. Backed by initiatives such as the London Challenge, most of the “failing schools” have turned round. Very few London schools deserve the tag, commonplace 20 years ago, of being a “sink school”. The number of children leaving with five good GCSEs is at its highest-ever level.

There is a strong case for more of the same. Yet when last year I set up School 21 — a new school in Stratford for children aged four to 18 — with Ed Fidoe and Oli de Botton, I couldn’t help feeling that it was not enough to follow the current formula: a relentless focus on the basics, a tough approach to behaviour management and massive intervention in Years 10 and 11 to convert every D grade into a C grade. Something more was needed.

The world’s greatest city does not just need its schools to play “catch up”. We need to leapfrog the best in the world. London’s schools have to become centres of innovation, places where children are genuinely prepared for the challenges of the 21st century. Schools where students are taught to be agile and adaptable, provided with the tools to become eloquent, work in teams, develop deep understanding and knowledge of science, maths and technology. We need to harness the extraordinary resources of London — cultural, financial, academic, creative — to ensure students get a rich, varied and stimulating curriculum.

This requires big change. We can learn from what the powerful leader of New York City’s schools, Joel Klein, decided to do. New York schools were some of the fastest-improving in the United States. Yet he said emphatically that this wasn’t good enough. We are getting better at delivering an old model of education that has barely changed for 100 years, he said. But we are not offering a 21st-century education. The result was the creation of the I-Zone, an innovation zone where schools could bid for money and partnerships that would allow them to explore new approaches to the curriculum, timetabling, teacher collaboration, project-based learning and the integration of digital technologies.

London needs to become an education-innovation zone in which schools are not just relentlessly driving up standards in the existing model but actively creating the next model. This is the moment to make it happen.

Already there are exciting signs of what is possible. The Education Endowment Foundation run by Kevan Collins is funding innovation and building up an evidence base of what works. The Innovation Unit, a not-for-profit organisation, is supporting schools to develop project-based learning. The London Curriculum led by the Mayor’s office has the potential to unlock the extraordinary cultural resources of London for the benefit of schools. At the same time social entrepreneurs are taking advantage of free schools, university technology colleges and studio schools to ensure a growing diversity of provision. Many existing headteachers are innovating with the curriculum and a range of different teaching styles. London’s world-class universities have more of an appetite to work with schools and in the case of UCL are even setting up their own new schools.

School 21 is a teacher-led school whose design principles we believe will give students a great chance of thriving in the 21st century.

We believe that schools should be small, so that no child falls through the cracks and everyone has an education tailored to their needs. We have coaching groups of just 12 or 13, small “families” where children can be mentored and supported for several hours a week.

We believe that the divide between primary and secondary schools is bad for children and bad for teachers. An all-through school allows for exciting new forms of teacher collaboration across phases.

It’s not enough to teach subjects; we need to teach character. School 21 puts the wellbeing of every child at its heart, teaching students, many of whom face real challenges in their lives, how to be resilient, bounce back from setbacks, deal with emotional upheaval.