Hilary Belden, a former London head teacher, is delighted with the title of the Government's new strategy document for primary schools in the UK. So much so, that she borrowed from it for the title of her Greencoat Forum talk, at the IofC centre in London on 9 December, 2003: Excellence and enjoyment for all: goals for 21st Century Education.
'To see the word "enjoyment" in an official education document really makes me happy.' she said. 'The secret is the combination of striving for excellence and at the same time being able to introduce the creativity that makes learning enjoyable. You can have vision, hope and an element of excitement as well as the driving up of skills. Despite the bad press it sometimes gets, primary education in the UK is a success story.'
Hilary Belden's own background is in secondary education - as English teacher, Department Head, Deputy Head and Head Teacher. She left her last job as Head of Glenthorne High School (a mixed comprehensive school of 1,000 pupils) to take up her current post as Director of the Ealing Excellence in Cities Action Zone. 'Basically the government said it would give us money if we could get teachers from different schools to work creatively in partnership with each other,' she explained. She works with 10 schools - a mix of primary and secondary - with an annual budget of £250,000 over three years.
One of the most important divides for the partnerships to bridge, she said, is that between primary and secondary schools and their teachers. Here the goal is to produce better continuity for pupils who do well in primary school but can easily feel lost (and 'begin to go backwards') on entering the larger and often more impersonal secondary school.
Hilary's enthusiasm for her work and her passion to reach out to disadvantaged pupils came across as she described some of the innovative schemes she had been able to introduce. These included Writing Festivals, events for National Poetry Day, and story telling by professional 'story tellers' for students from Years 4 to 7. She had organised a script-writing competition for Year 10 (15 year-old) pupils and then arranged for professional actors to come and perform some of them - much to the delight of the young authors.
Her vision, she said, is that every child be given hope and expectation, should succeed in literacy and numeracy, should be taught in decent conditions and should have plenty of adult support. Many children come from backgrounds of poverty but research suggests that, by the time they reach 16, the interest that their parents have taken or not taken in their education outweighs all other factors. Other adults can support families too. She said any of those present could help by offering to volunteer reading help (one-to one listening to children read in school) or to be a mentor.
English