Flexible learning showing promise preparing high school students for post-COVID, hybrid working world
We hear a lot about a four-day work week -- but what about a four-day school week? One high school in the New South Wales Southern Highlands is trialling a single day of remote learning each week.
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00:00Sheridan Connolly's Monday school day looks a little different to most students.
00:07Instead of travelling an hour and a half each way to classes, she spends her Mondays learning
00:11from home.
00:12Because I can spend that either studying or catching up on sleep or, yeah, just spending
00:19it in a way that works for me.
00:22She's one of more than 100 senior students involved in the trial at Chevalier College
00:26in the New South Wales Southern Highlands.
00:29It's a four day week, it's not a four day week, like the Monday you still get allocated
00:33work that you have to do, there's still set work.
00:35When the trial was announced last year, some parents were concerned about the impact it
00:39could have on their children's education.
00:41But Sheridan's mother, Laura, supports the experiment.
00:44Isn't it great to have kids leaving school that can already hit the ground running, so
00:50to speak, and can actually embrace hybrid working or hybrid studying?
00:57The school is one of a number across the country adopting flexible learning as a way
01:01to set kids up for life after school.
01:04Schools like ours often have quite a big drop out rate once kids get to university because
01:09they have been spoon fed, using that old terminology, and they haven't had to be self directed.
01:16The research evidence is very clear that the instruction time, in other words, how long
01:22children spend in school, how long their school days or school years are, has very
01:27little to do with the actual quality of the learning outcomes.
01:31And it's not just students who are seeing the benefits.
01:33I've been able to, on my Mondays, co-plan with colleagues, I've been able to have time
01:39to myself to actually do core business.
01:42The feedback from students, teachers and parents has been mostly positive.
01:46Chevalier College believes other schools would benefit from flexible learning, which it claims
01:52is the future of education.
01:54It's exciting to be part of a possible solution to that, to actually see that there are potential
02:00ways for us to use our time in a better way.
02:03The school will decide whether to adopt flexible learning permanently at the end of the year,
02:08turning the page on a new chapter for students, parents and teachers.