Bedales featured in Telegraph report on innovative education

Bedales and academy partner Bohunt School feature in an article on innovative education published in The Telegraph.

Both schools are featured as examples of the kind of education pioneered by High Tech High in California – the brainchild of educational leader Larry Rosenstock, tech billionaire Irwin Jacobs and a group of San Diego civic heads and teachers.

All the elements of a child’s education – from uniform to hierarchies to the exam system – are configured to reflect the modern world of work, rather than those of the 19th and 20th centuries. Classes are just as likely to be in making skateboards as studying maths, and subject boundaries are fluid. Although 15 percent of pupils have special educational needs and half qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches, 95 percent go on to university. Perhaps unsurprisingly, High Tech High is visited each year by 5,000 educators and influencers from around the world, including Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey.

Bedales and Bohunt are given as examples of UK schools that are similarly innovative, with Magnus Basharaat explaining that deeper learning is very much part of the educational core at Bedales, with many Sixth Form students choosing to manufacture a product or make an artefact in their extended project. The school’s own GCSE-level Bedales Assessed Courses (BACs) involve group work and presentations as well as timed assessments, with a wide curriculum including computer game design and outdoor work, which involves animal husbandry as well as ecology. The school is developing a Sixth Form course in sustainable living, which would see students living off-grid as part of their studies, and is looking into the idea of a 6:3 year, after A levels have been taken, to involve volunteering and internships. 

The full article can be read on the Telegraph website here (subscription may be required).

Telegraph Education | Bedales Difference | Bedales Assessed Courses | High Tech High | Bohunt Education Trust