Future School (10 Parts)

Synopsis

10 programmes following the progress of all aspects of the development of Hadley Learning Community, a new PFI scheme state-of-the-art extended school, from design of the building, to its opening.

Language

English

Country

Great Britain

Subjects

Architecture; Design; Education

Keywords

Private Finance Initiative; school buildings; school management; security measures

Online availability

URI

http://www.teachers.tv/video/3170

Price

free

Delivery

Streamed/Download

Sections

Title

Future School - Creating a School

Synopsis

This programme charts the creation of the Hadley Learning Community, a new PFI scheme state-of-the-art extended school. The school is designed to provide 21st Century learning environments for a deprived area of Telford, in rural Shropshire. The programme follows the school’s principal as she makes crucial design decisions about how the school should be built. The school will include a 1,200 place secondary school, a 420 place primary school and a special school. Community facilities on the site include a nursery, a children?s centre, a theatre and a public swimming pool. An entire staff has been recruited and an innovative cross phase curriculum has been developed for this blueprint for the ‘Building Schools for the Future’ scheme.

Duration

30 mins

Title

Future School - Designed for Learning

Synopsis

In this episode of Future School, Principal Dr Gill Eatough works with architects, builders and designers who are developing the Hadley Learning Community. Gill was recruited 18 months ahead of the school’s opening in order to have a major say in how the learning environment was designed. Here she discusses plans and ideas with members of the Interserve Strategic Projects team, who are building the school for the borough of Telford and Wrekin. She faces a relentless work schedule to meet tight deadlines imposed by the PFI contract that underpins the construction of this extended school facility. Decisions vary from the location of coat hooks to allocating millions of pounds of resources to the configuration of furniture and fittings.

Duration

15 mins

Title

Future School - The Curriculum Challenge

Synopsis

With the spotlight shining brightly on the Hadley Learning Community, a £60 million extended school in Telford, there is pressure on the school’s leadership to deliver improved results. This programme focuses on the progress of the HLC’s leadership team as it devises a teaching and learning programme designed for the 21st century. To complement the modern facilities, there is a need for a cross-phase curriculum which provides new opportunities for the pupils who come from a community hit hard by the decline of traditional industry. Assistant vice principal and head of secondary phase, Paul Topping, consults the staff that compete for curriculum time with their colleagues. Meanwhile, head of primary phase, Erica Aston, engineers a new primary English curriculum.

Duration

15 mins

Title

Future School - Building the Workforce

Synopsis

In this programme Hadley Learning Community principal, Dr Gill Eatough, looks to build a workforce at the newly extended school, overseeing job interviews and placements. Gill wants a workforce committed to the ethos of providing better opportunities for the people of Hadley which the new school serves. She’s set herself the target of personally interviewing every new teacher and seeing them perform in the classroom before they get a job at the HLC. Building the Workforce focuses on the interview process for the post of director of engineering. Four candidates endure a tiring two-day selection process culminating in an interview before a panel of seven.
Meanwhile there’s disappointment for a fifty year-old PE teacher as he fails to secure a new post at the Hadley Learning Community. He reflects on his feelings upon learning that a younger man has got the job he hoped would be his.

Duration

15 mins

Title

Future School - PFI: Friend or Foe?

Synopsis

This programme explores whether the relationships built at the Hadley Learning Community are a marriage made in heaven or a partnership doomed for failure. With PFI projects having a poor reputation in the tabloid press, a showpiece £60 million development like the Hadley Learning Community attracts a lot of attention. Dr Gill Eatough, principal at the learning community, is a key figure in making the PFI process contract work to the advantage of both parties. The best way to spend £5 million pounds on ICT for the school is just one of the major decisions she must make with Interserve plc, the company building the school. Gill discovers that she has quite a lot of influence when it comes to getting a good price from her suppliers. Under the PFI process, a local authority enters into a long term relationship with a construction consortium to build and run a school for 25 years. Getting the relationships wrong could have far reaching consequences.

Duration

15 mins

Title

Future School - Including the Special School

Synopsis

The Hadley Learning Community is an exciting new PFI development that is home to, amongst other things, the relocated Bridge Special School. The Bridge caters for children with severe and profound learning difficulties and is moving out from cramped and inadequate facilities in to the new state-of-the-art HLC extended school. But with government building guidelines rather out of date, headteacher Una van-den-Berg feels she has to fight hard to ensure her pupils get the space and facilities they need. This programme highlights the hardships that staff and pupils face in the old Bridge Special School and shows how Una and her team get involved in designing the Hadley Learning Community.

Duration

15 mins

Title

Future School - Safe and Secure

Synopsis

The Hadley Learning Community, a new state-of-the-art extended school, has been built to incorporate a very modern security system. Scores of CCTV cameras, some of which feature face and number plate recognition systems, scan the interior and exterior of the school buildings. But principal Gill Eatough is keen to ensure that the school maintains a welcoming atmosphere; something she feels is essential for a school with a major community facility on site. This programme also follows the leadership team as they design a behaviour policy for the HLC. Staff and pupils will be supported by a student services department that aims to give unhappy students the time they need to discuss problems they might have. The department will also enable teachers to focus on delivering lessons rather than tending to pupils’ emotional needs.

Duration

15 mins

Title

Future School - Leading the Way

Synopsis

Dr Gill Eatough, principal at the Hadley Learning Community, is soldiering on; helping to design the HLC before her vice principals come on board to lighten the load. In keeping with her belief that a headteacher should no longer carry the burden alone, Eatough has built a system with vice principals and assistant vice principals, each with specific responsibilities for running the school. Meanwhile the assistant vice principals have to run two closing schools for a year before joining the leadership team at the HLC.

Duration

15 mins

Title

Future School - End of an Era

Synopsis

This programme features the bittersweet final term at Orelton Park where an air of celebration meets with the sadness of an era coming to an end. Orelton Park Secondary School opened in 1940 and its closure brings down the curtain on a closely bonded school community. It is one of three schools closing to make way for the HLC, a state-of-the-art PFI school in Telford. Hadley Infant and Junior Schools will also close, but their buildings will be home to the primary phase of the HLC for a term, until their new facilities open in January 2007. The retiring headteacher at Hadley Junior School reflects on the achievements of his 15-year career at the school. For Dr Gill Eatough, principal of the HLC, there’s little room for sentiment as she manages the transfer of pupils and some staff from the closing schools.

Duration

15 mins

Title

Future School - The HLC Opens

Synopsis

This programme showcases the culmination of four years’ planning and two years’ construction as the secondary phase of the Hadley Learning Community finally opens for business. For the principal, Dr Gill Eatough it’s the day of reckoning. All her hard work recruiting a workforce, developing a curriculum and helping to design the building has come to fruition. As the first intake of pupils arrives she must ensure her staff are ready to begin teaching and that the pupils are aware of what she expects of them. Her standards are high. So what happens to the minutely planned curriculum when the computer system goes down on day one? The tension rises as head and deputies join the fray.

Duration

15 mins

Distributor

Name

Teachers’ TV

Email

info@teachers.tv

Web

http://www.teachers.tv/ External site opens in new window

Phone

020 7182 7430

Address

6-18 Berners Street
London
W1T 3LN

Notes

Funded by the Department for Education, Teachers’ TV was a producer and supplier of over 3,600 free videos and lesson resources to support the professional development of anyone working in school, enabling them to widen their skills, develop their practice, and connect with others in the field. Previously broadcast on digital television, the service became exclusively online from 31 August 2010, with programmes being available for free online viewing or download. Thge DfE terminated the contract with Teachers TV and delivery via the website ceased on 29 April 2011, with the programmes being offered to educational distributors free online delivery. Further details from the DfE website Until 29 April 2011 programmes from Teachers Television were streamed on the website and available for download to registered users (free registration). Programmes are aimed at primary and secondary school teachers in all subject areas, as well as headteachers and governors, and include observation of teaching sessions, materials for use in the classroom and discussion of issues relevant to education. Teachers TV was funded by the Department for Education but the contract ended in April 2011 and the programmes are being offered to educational distributors to deliver free at the point of use from their websites. Details of which titles are available in this way are on the DfE website http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/toolsandinitiatives/teacherstv