The first ‘teacher-less’ classroom

I guess a lot of you have seen the news stories about the first ‘teacher-less’ classroom.

Here’s the Sky news article and here’s the actually description of the course.

Some things to note:

* It’s £27,000 a year
* 3 ‘learning coaches’ support groups of 20 students.
* The ‘learning coach’ mentioned was an-ex teacher.
* The students get access to all the other stuff you’d expect at a £27k School
* Their is no mention of the software used
* It’s just for english, maths, sciences, computer science and geography/history.
* Only half the days is AI-based learning, the other half workshops, visits etc.

It’s actually quite like the model that Alex Russell from the Bourne Trust suggested in a panel session at BETT in January, which the teaching supporting being from non-subject specialist, rebranded (my words) as coaches.

This version isn’t really such a radical model, and not ‘teacherless’ in the way the headlines perhaps suggest. There’s a staff-student ratio of 1:3, lots of contact with people, lots of teacher/coach support, and a shift with how mastery of content to pass the exams is delivered.

We probably won’t learn that much on this can scale beyond a £27k a year private education.