Like many of the more remote and rural areas of Scotland, the town of Dunoon on the Cowal peninsula has long-suffered from a “brain drain”, with young people forced to pack up and leave to seek out opportunity.
Local secondary school Dunoon Grammar has, however, been working to stop that exodus - or, at least, slow it down.
Its goal is to make its 750 students feel that they are an integral part of the community by allowing them to learn by doing in the town’s businesses, community organisations and industries - not just to learn through “textbook stuff”, as headteacher David Mitchell puts it.
This has resulted in the school facilitating more than 50 skill-based courses to empower students to work in professions vital to the local economy.
Now the school’s work has been recognised: it has been named as one of five winners of the World’s Best School Prize - founded this year by T4 Education in collaboration with Accenture and American Express.
Dunoon Grammar picked up the World’s Best School Prize for community collaboration.
At the same time, Curie Metropolitan High School in the US won the World’s Best School Prize for supporting healthy lives. Escuela Emilia Lascar in Chile won the World’s Best School Prize for innovation. Project Shelter Wakadogo in Uganda won the World’s Best School Prize for overcoming adversity. And Bonuan Buquig National High School in the Philippines won the World’s Best School Prize for environmental action.
The World’s Best School Prize: ‘Sharing best’ practice around the world
A prize of $250,000 will be shared equally among the winners of the five prizes, with each receiving an award of $50,000.
Reacting to the school’s win, Mitchell says he was, for once, speechless.
“It’s not often I’m lost for words but I was absolutely speechless,” he tells Tes Scotland. “I’m very proud of the school and the young people and the staff and the community. This is not just our current staff and pupils - this has been a journey for the past 10 years.”
Mr Mitchell is himself a former Dunoon Grammar student and head boy - his father also taught at the school.
Mr Mitchell returned to lead Dunoon Grammar in 2013, describing it as “the dream job”. When he arrived, he says, it was “like coming home”: there were still 11 teachers who had taught him working at the school, which his own children now attend.
Being a known face in the community has helped him to forge partnerships, he says. But he adds that the collaboration that has been built up over the past decade has been a team effort, which has resulted in the community helping the school to “develop and deliver the curriculum in early secondary”.
And that is important, Mr Mitchwell explains, because “young people learn better by doing things for real”.
One of the key projects the school is involved with is the Dunoon Project, the town’s plan to build a massive mountainside tourist attraction with a gondola, mountain bike tracks, alpine rollercoaster and zipwire experiences, creating jobs for Dunoon’s young people
Dame Emma Thompson congratulated the school on its win, describing it as “the most extraordinary achievement” and saying it made her cry when she heard about it. The actress owns a house in the area and her actor husband, Greg Wise, sits on the advisory board for the Dunoon Project.
The school’s students act as advisers to the developers as they take the £50 million project forward with the goal of completing it by 2030.
In the future, Mr Mitchell’s vision is that the students and teachers will also use the project to deliver units of work - students in geography will learn about the peatland at the top of the Kilbride Hill, while design and technology staff will use the project to teach their students about engineering.
Mr Mitchell says: “You need to look at your local community and see what schools and the local community can do in partnership.
“We have got a great opportunity here in Scotland, with the ongoing reform, to build a curriculum that is going to focus in on skills, not just knowledge. Skills then develop knowledge.
“If young people are doing something that is real and relevant and they are actually part of it, that is developing their knowledge. The skills and knowledge intertwine.”
Mr Mitchell’s one regret is that these rich learning experiences - due to “time constraints and coursework” - often fizzle out when pupils hit upper secondary and start working towards national qualifications and exams.
He says: “We have to look at the senior phase and talk about, ‘What should that look like?’ We want young people still to be having real and relevant learning experiences in the senior phase but that would mean a shake-up of the qualifications structure and the course content. That has got to be a number one priority.”
With the “national discussion” about Scottish education underway - as well as an independent review of assessment and qualifications - Mitchell is optimistic that positive change is in the pipeline.
A more immediate issue for him and the school, however, is how to spend its $50,000 prize money. The first priority is to get a minibus so that students can get out and about even more - and also bring the community to them for events like school shows.
Mr Mitchell also wants to create an esports arena in the school - bringing together gaming and coding - and his “dream” is to have a community room. There would be a timetable with different events scheduled: the school’s Spanish students, for instance, would run a Spanish class for an hour a week on a Wednesday afternoon.
That, though, is for the future. Much has been achieved but there is a lot left to do, Mr Mitchell concludes.
The World’s Best School Prizes were founded by T4 Education - which aims to bring together teachers and school leaders to improve learning - in collaboration with Accenture, American Express, Yayasan Hasanah, Templeton World Charity Foundation and the Lemann Foundation.
The goal is to share the best practice of schools that are transforming the lives of their students and making a real difference to their communities.
Congratulating Dunoon Grammar, Vikas Pota, founder of T4 Education and the World’s Best School Prizes, says it is time for world leaders to sit up and listen to institutions like “this outstanding UK school”.
He adds: “Far too many children will continue to be left behind in the wake of Covid unless governments take urgent action to tackle the education crisis.
“As a first step, they must turn to the knowledge and experience contained within our schools because those on the frontlines of education know better than anyone else the change we need to see.”
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