Maurice de Hond: The Primary School of the Future

Each one comes in with a firm thinking about what is that type of school that all the children are all the time only with the iPad?

Do they have any social contact? Do they still write? And so on. Do they do sport or so? When they come into our school, in ten minutes they understand. In ten minutes they understand what makes it so different and then comes the shock that then they understand, if this happens here and the children are happy and are well organized and well disciplined and work all the time with a lot of energy, how bad is basically what we are doing for children? Because this is almost ... everybody says this is the way to go. This is I saw the future.

Now with the help of technology you can with the same number of teachers, you can treat children in an individual way. So in our school the starting point is each child has a teacher as his coach, personal coach, and each teacher has about 25 children, and every six weeks there is a meeting between the coach, the child and the parent about an individual development plan. That's an individual development plan based on the talents and possibilities of the child but also of course the goals of the government or the school what you should do. But it's not that you have to do it now, maybe you take another moment or you put it in another context. So the starting point is that individual development plan. But when you go to the school and you're still sitting in a classroom, what can you do with your individual development plan? That's impossible. So in our school you start with the group, a base group together with your coach, the 25 children, so you have a starting point with the same children. But after half an hour then the school is completely different to a normal school. Each classroom is dedicated to a specific topic, each teacher in that elementary schoolis only doing one of those topics and not going every day all through the different topics. And there is a programme per classroom where those teachers are, where children can select of based on their individual development plan, together with the parents. Okay, at 10 o'clock I follow the teacher because that's multiplication. Then at 10.30 I go to the silcence square. We have a silence square where with the iPad, they have 24/7 an iPad available, they can work on training math or language in a completely interactive, adaptive way. So each child is doing what he can do, and the app, the computer reacts with new assignments based on his level. And maybe half an hour later you go to another classroom but not together with your whole group. So the advantage is that children are much more engaged if they can work with an iPad which gives immediate feedback than sitting and writing things on paper, give it to the teacher and get it back the next day. But also because 1/3 or 1/4 of the children are in that silence square the teachers have less children and the children who are coming are on the same level. Because if you know it already why should you go? And then we see that each child in on his own level and also that the children are much more engaged, much more happy. If people come into our school they say: It's so quiet. Yes it's almost like an office because all the children are engaged all the time. And also that means that you have much less problems with discipline. So teachers are not runnin around all the time to keep the children in order. Also teachers don't have to at home check or test everything what the children did and give it back the next day. Because that time they can spend much more time in an individual way, work with the children. And the consequence is first of all a completely logical thing, but secondly also the children are more, let's say, flexible, more individual, more responsible because they are the owner of their path. They don't do things because somebody tells them. They do things because they like to do it or because they understand that they need to do it. And that is a great paradigm shift, and it works.

Now they say two big advantes or even three. First of all, I can treat each child as an individual child and I don't treat them anymore as a group. That's One. Secondly, I'm not doing a lot of time spending in administrative tasks, not the whole two hours every evening to check if they made a mistake with calculation or anything. That I don't have to do anymore because the computer takes care of it. And last but not least I see much more happy children. I have less problems with attention disorder deficit. Dyslectic children start to read books because they can work at their own speed. I get less bullying because in the other school all the children are sitting at the same place the whole year together with maybe a guy who ... if you sit next to him maybe three months maybe you hate him and start ... In our school it's not happening because you can sit wherever you want, and every half hour you go to another place with other children. So they say in all ways you brought back why I came into education in the first place. Because I came into education to help children. And not to work for a system.