David James has been a teacher for over 20 years.

His most recent book, co-written with Jane Lunnon, is Schools of Thought: Lessons to Learn from Schools Doing Things Differently.  We all that certain schools have things that make them unique or part of a set of schools that have focused priorities and/or values.  But how much do we really know about those priorities and how they shape the teaching and learning in a setting?  David and Jane found themselves discussing this and then went about investigating!

We invited David to share a little bit about how this book came about and what it strives to offer readers…

How it all started…

The idea for writing ‘Schools of Thought’: Lessons to learn from schools doing things differently came to us when we were discussing how, although most schools were inclusive places which did not prioritise any one set of ideas over another, there were some schools which did define themselves through one, unifying, idea.  And the more we talked about it the more fascinating it became. Why put one idea above all others? And why do parents so strongly connect with that idea that they are willing to choose the schools that do this over others which may have better academic results, or facilities, or sports teams? Furthermore, these ideas were complex: single sex schools are in the tiny minority, but for those parents who send their sons and daughters to such schools it is a big statement that can put them outside the prevailing orthodoxies of society. We began writing down some of the big ideas that schools organise themselves around, and we settled on this list of seven chapters:

1: Faith schools

2: Single-sex schooling

3: Traditional and progressive approaches to education

4: Schools with a focus on creativity

5: Developing curricula and assessment

6: Use of technology in schools

7: Wellbeing in schools

And this led on to another issue: namely, how well do we know these schools? We may have strong opinions on, say, single-sex schools, or faith schools, or schools which organise their curriculum around play, or gaming, but how well do we actually know them, what they do, what their typical day looks like.

Most people will attend a couple of schools themselves and, if they’re not teachers, will only encounter them again when they are parents.  Even if they are teachers they will only work in a handful of schools in their careers.  There are obvious exceptions to this: if you’re a school inspector you will visit other schools, but you won’t be seeing the school as it runs day-to-day, and proportionally it is a vanishingly small fraction of the schools in society.  The same will go for policy makers and politicians: very few will spend any extended time in the schools whose future they will determine, and every visit, just like an inspector, will be an experience shaped around who they are, rather than what the school is like.

Getting started…

So, we wanted to talk to school leaders who led schools with an identity that was distinctive, that had been thought through.  We wanted to capture their authentic voices, because so often they are not consulted, and even when they are they are frequently misrepresented by those who have their own agendas about these complex, divisive subjects. We also wanted consistency: we decided early on that we would ask each of the school leaders in each chapter the same set of questions.  In doing so we would avoid any possibility of allowing our own preconceptions to influence our writing, and we would be better able to draw out conclusions from across our interviews.

The final organising idea we had was that we wanted an alternative voice to give a different perspective, and so each chapter has an essay entitled Another View which has an expert in these subjects give an opposing angle from those we have just read (for example, at the end of the chapter on faith schools we have Andrew Copson, President of Humanist International, arguing that such schools have no place in a school system today). We leave it up to the reader to evaluate the arguments for and against how these schools approach the issue under discussion.

So, what will you find inside?

Each chapter offers readers a unique insight into how very distinctive schools run, and we think that’s a privileged view.  Because the irony is that although schools are themselves welcoming places they are also (understandably) quite literally very difficult organisations to penetrate.  Security is tight, cameras are everywhere; if you’re a visitor you have to be accompanied everywhere you go with an adult. Even getting an email response from some schools is a challenge because the people that run them are very busy during term time, and when it isn’t term time, well, there’s no-one there to get back to you!

We were also determined that we wanted to gather a range of different experiences: many of the schools are in the UK, but there are schools represented from (among other places) the US, Australia, Bali, Denmark and China. We wanted to talk to fee-paying schools, state schools, primary, secondary, specialist, international, multi-academy trusts…and other models.  The reality is, of course, that no matter how many schools we talked to there would always be far more left out than included. But we hope when you finish the book you know more about not only the issues being explored, but also the schools that (often very bravely) engage with them so fully.

We’re pleased with how Schools of Thought turned out.  We started writing it just before Covid-19 shut all schools around the world, and that not only slowed down the writing of the book, but it also shaped the experiences of those we talked to. If anything the pandemic has shown us how vitally important the work of schools is: that sounds self-evident, but it did take something on that scale to remind us that what teachers achieve every day is often nothing short of miraculous.  We hope that Schools of Thought opens the door a little on some very unique schools, each with remarkable stories to tell.

Take a look

If you would like to know more about David & Jane’s latest book please have a read below.

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