Size matters. A big one could realistically advance your career prospects, while a small one could damage your image and even deflate your ego. Mine is, regrettably, quite small. Forty-six square metres is the minimum allowed in the regulations for a general secondary classroom for 30 pupils. That’s the size of mine - and it’s too small.
Certainly, 30 pupils will fit in it. They sit at 15 double tables, with one spare (for the miscreant). There is room for a teacher’s desk, a bookcase and a cupboard. And that’s it: full. Of course, not so full that we couldn’t fit in a few more standing around the edges, but full in the sense of being able to conduct a lesson comfortably.
My school is only seven years old, and it’s already out of date. Extra classrooms were needed, so 46 square metres is what I was given. It’s not so long ago that schools had loads of extra rooms left over from the days of woodwork and metalwork, and voluminous chemistry labs, but now such rooms cannot be found. They have either been chopped up to provide offices and mentoring rooms or filled with banks of computers, and it’s almost impossible to find one to use as an ordinary classroom.
The Government wants children to be using computers as hands-on resources. But a class and five computers simply will not fit into 46 square metres. Not unless we stack them, which rather defeats the object.
But lack of computer space is not the educational problem it may appear. In fact, the damage caused to children’s education is almost certainly less than the damage not having one may do to your teaching career. Computers are a gesture, a commitment to their use. In fact, not to have one is a statement about your lack of interest in the new learning, and that’s a tag no ambitious teacher wants to be stuck with.
Size matters, because if you’re so constrained by space that you can deliver only traditional lessons, you’re bound to present an image of stagnation in an age of movement and change. Managers will notice and act accordingly. Ask why you can’t have an interactive whiteboard and you might be told: a) they are too expensive; or b) you wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway.
But for the small-room teacher, no such upsetting language is necessary. You are likely to be told sympathetically that plugs and cables cannot be accommodated over such a confined floor space. Health and safety considerations mean it would be safer for you to wait for a wall-mounted product.
Teachers need to move around a classroom to make sure computers are being used effectively. Sharing five machines among a large class of Year 10 pupils is a test of your organisation under any circumstances. In 46 square metres, it is also a test of your resistance to claustrophobia.
I used to think regulation classroom desks were always double to fulfill some educational purpose (working in pairs, perhaps). But try fitting 30 single desks in 46 square metres. It’s not because they are educationally more suitable; it’s because double desks are the only way you can get enough seating space.
The large classroom is psychologically more restful, especially when it’s full of pupils. Active lessons tend to be noisy, and small classrooms compound noise, just as they compound smells and heat. I tried dissipating the noise of interactive lessons by leaving the door and all the windows open. This is okay - though not so good for the young teacher trying to limit the fall-out while teaching a boisterous class doing group work.
To be fair, the Government is revising its minimum floor space recommendations for standard classrooms. But this isn’t something that can be changed easily. The technologically aware teacher will do best to get a classroom that will accommodate all the equipment new learning requires. And I don’t just mean computers (think wires, plugs, attachments). Failure could mean next year’s bid money gets directed to the department next door rather than where it should be - in your classroom.
peter cotterill Peter Cotterill teaches in a South Yorkshire comprehensive school
