It was 22 May - a school in-service day - when Gavin Clark, headteacher of Preston Lodge High School in Prestonpans, was walking back from the local Scotmid supermarket, meal deal in hand, and his phone beeped. It was a message from the local authority, East Lothian Council, that was to have huge ramifications for his staff and school community.
The school’s gym hall was to be closed immediately due to the presence of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC); by the end of the day a third of the school’s classrooms - 23 in total - had also been evacuated and closed.
“We had 20-something teachers who were effectively nomadic,” says Clark. “It was an unusually emotional time because teachers invest a lot in their class spaces, so in one fell swoop everybody lost their own classroom.
“Whole departments moved into other departments but we had no materials because teachers were not allowed to go back as a safety precaution - they effectively had to gather their materials in one visit and then leave.”
However, following the solution that the school put in place in order to cope with this dramatic reduction in accommodation - what Clark describes as “a homeroom model” - it now hopes will transform the first year of secondary for future cohorts, and not just the class of 2023.
RAAC started to hit the headlines in August when English schools were told to close buildings containing the material over safety fears, just as pupils were due to return from the summer break.
In the uproar that followed the issuing of government guidance in England, it transpired that 16 Scottish councils had schools containing RAAC.
One of the worst-hit local authorities is West Lothian Council. It has five schools with RAAC and is facing a repair bill of £69.6 million; it is calling on the Scottish government to step in and help it meet its RAAC costs.
In neighbouring East Lothian, just two schools - Preston Lodge High and Ross High - were found to contain the material and the authority says remedial works are being “covered through the PPP [public-private partnership] contract”.
Homeroom model
At Preston Lodge High, when the scale of the problem was revealed to Clark in May, senior students were out on exam leave allowing the school to muddle through until the summer.
The big question was: what would happen following the summer break when the full complement of students was due to walk through the doors?
The solution the school came up with was a homeroom model for S1. Students due to join the school in August were unable to do so because of the lack of space, so seven homerooms were established for its seven S1 classes.
These homerooms were located in the students’ existing primary schools where spare classrooms were available. The three classes unable to be accommodated in associated primaries were hosted in a local community centre - The Pennypit - where three training rooms were converted into classrooms.
Transition teachers
For each homeroom, a teacher was employed and given the title of “transition teacher”. S1 students spend around two-thirds of their time with their transition teachers based in their host primary school or The Pennypit. Preston Lodge High employed eight transition teachers in total, an equal mix of primary and secondary trained staff.
In their homerooms, S1s do literacy, numeracy and project work.
When not with their homeroom teacher, the S1s spend the rest of their time at Preston Lodge High doing practical subjects like IT, home economics, science, music and craft, design and technology.
Introducing the model has been a huge undertaking.
The S1 curriculum had to be devised in just three days in June before the summer holidays, when as many teachers as possible - Clark estimates 15 to 20 staff - came together to brainstorm. By the close of play on 28 June, the school had a curriculum to run; over the summer it recruited the “transition teachers” needed to deliver it.
Staff’s ‘superb effort’
Clark says the response to the crisis has been “a superb effort” from staff and he is full of optimism about all that has been learned - although quick to point out that you would never choose to introduce a change of this magnitude in such a short space of time, or opt to have a year group spread over multiple venues.
“In many ways, this has given us better solutions to the problem of transition than we would otherwise have had,” he says.
“A significant number are delighted with what is a halfway house - they have by and large remained in their primary class but are getting the experience of secondary. Going forward long term, we are now carefully considering the retention of homerooms, on a reduced scale, as a better way of organising S1 learning.”
In the future, the idea is that S1 students will spend no more than a third of their time in homerooms.
One reason Clark likes the model is that he believes project-based learning improves the depth of learning and helps break down the barriers between subjects.
A move to a homeroom model could also, potentially, go some way to addressing concerns such as “fragmentation” in the early secondary curriculum.
Primary to secondary transition
In February, researchers at the University of Stirling, examining the impact of curriculum policy on young people, found in S1 in particular there was “fragmentation of provision” and that students being taught by 15 or more teachers in a week was “commonplace”.
This, the researchers said, was leading to “incoherent provision with significant gaps in knowledge” instead of schools having a “broad and balanced foundational curriculum”, as envisaged by Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence.
At Preston Lodge High, staff also believe this model could help address another thorny issue: primary to secondary transition.
Katie Montgomery, acting principal teacher of classroom practice at Preston Lodge High, believes this year’s S1 has experienced “a gentler transition”.
She says students are now less anxious and worried because they have been gradually introduced to secondary school life. Homerooms allow them to be “more settled and more looked after in that first part of high school”.
Normal S1 experience
Emma Harvey one of the school’s transition teachers - who is primary trained and a homeroom teacher for the S1 class based at St Gabriel’s Primary - describes it as a “slow release” transition.
The S1 students I speak to are less convinced - they say having a homeroom teacher is too much like primary school. They like the idea of having lots of different teachers so school does not get too “boring”. Besides, they say moving between lessons gives you the chance to “stretch your legs”.
The overriding impression is that - for better or worse - they just want a normal S1 experience.
And already they have taken another step towards that: this week the S1s joined Preston Lodge High full time, following the completion of work in around a dozen classrooms since the October break.
Work in the remaining classrooms is anticipated to be completed by January and the PE facilities at Preston Lodge High are expected to come back into use from 1 March.
Still, Clark and his team do not just want to close the door on their RAAC experience.
Borrowing the strapline used by politicians in the wake of Covid, they say they are determined to “build back better”. And retaining homerooms - albeit a more diluted version - is key to that.
Emma Seith is senior reporter at Tes Scotland
