Schools within Schools: Human Scale Education in Practice

by Wendy Wallace

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, working with the charity Human Scale Education, has funded 39 secondary schools in England to develop along human scale lines. This book is an account of the aspirations and process in some of those schools, including Brislington Enterprise College in south Bristol and Lister Community School in London's East End. It includes a photo essay on Stantonbury Campus, Milton Keynes. England has 25 contemporary 'monster schools' - of more than 2,000 students, four times as many as a decade ago. There are 263 English secondaries of 1,500 to 2,000 students. Large schools are cost effective and can offer wide curricula, but they do not have to mean an impersonal experience for children. Brislington Enterprise College is one of a number of schools taking advantage of the Government's Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme to reconstruct themselves physically as schools within schools - and forge a practice to match. Other schools are changing their structures and practice within existing school buildings. Education still fails many children. Nationally, fewer than half achieve the five good GCSEs including English and maths that the Government has set as a benchmark; many leave with no qualifications. While primary schools often succeed in containing and nurturing children with emotional problems, secondary schools tend to lose them. The basic human scale values - stress on positive student/teacher relationships in smaller learning communities, on enquiry-based learning - are now finding resonance politically and culturally.

111 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

I grew up in Kent, in England, and later graduated in Media Studies from what was then Central London Polytechnic. I worked first as a photographer, then for many years as a feature writer, before turning to fiction.

I’ve written for the Times, the Times Educational Supplement, the Guardian, the Telegraph and many other magazines and newspapers.

My journalism, on Sudan and later on schools, led to my two non-fiction books - Daughter of Dust (Simon & Schuster 2009) and Oranges and Lemons (Routledge 2005). In 2001, I was Education Journalist of the Year.

I have now turned to writing fiction, which had always been my dream. The Painted Bridge, the story of a woman tricked into a Victorian asylum in the year 1859, is my first novel. I’m working on a second, titled Magic for the Living.

I’ve been greatly helped and encouraged in my writing by my family, my agent and my writing friends. My two grown up sons are sources of inspiration.

I have lived all my adult life in London. As well as enjoying company and solitude, reading and writing, I am an enthusiastic and sometimes year-round swimmer in the women’s pond on Hampstead Heath.

To receive updates on The Painted Bridge, as well as news about the book I'm writing now, you can 'like' my Facebook author page.

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