Title: The Way to School
Author: Rosemary McCarney and Plan International UK
Publisher: New Internationalist

Teacher and pupil review

The rhetorical question, “Can you cover my class on Friday afternoon?” from your head of learning requires no thought.

“Of course - I would be delighted,” is the only possible reply.

So armed with The Way to School and a brave smile, I went off to Year 2: a class of 30 tired six and seven year olds who had just returned from an exciting off-site experience at Forest Schools. My plan to share the book, have a quick discussion and an extra-long playtime before Worship was to go completely awry.

I had already read through The Way to School myself, attracted by the appealing front cover - and found my teenage daughter reading it too, before announcing her plans for a “lengthy gap year” in response to the amazing photographs.

The book is neither fiction nor non-fiction in the traditional sense. The simple yet questioning text, accompanied by stunning photographs, presents the lengths some children have to go through daily to get to school: worlds apart from the children in my school, who predominantly arrive by car.

Alfie said: “I am quite interested in the front cover. Some countries are quite poor, so I want to find out how they might get to school.”

Stunned silence

The first page was met by stunned silence. This was followed by a heated discussion answering the first question in the text: “You probably enjoy going to school?” I realised I might be in the classroom for some time.

The thought that some children can’t go to school, even if they want to, was just too big a concept for some. “Why can’t we just give them some of our money? We have enough,” said Arianna benevolently.

As I read the book, the class listened attentively, looking intently at the photographs of children crossing rivers. “What about if there are crocodiles in the water?” asked Tom.

“What if it is too deep for children?” said Arianna.

A few more pages in and the zipwire got a huge cheer from the majority of the class. Then until Hollie pointed out: “I wouldn’t want to go to school on a zipwire because it looks very high up - you might let go if you needed to scratch!”

“You do have these things to clip you on,” George reassured her. 

As we continued through the book, Abi said: “What does the little writing say?”

I explained it told us where the photograph had been taken, and Phoebe said: “Where is that country?” I made the mental note to re-read this book with a large world map to hand next week. 

No English pictures

When we talked about which countries the different photographs had been taken in, another discussion began. Taya told us that her granny lives in Africa and that it is really hot there.  George explained about the tsunami in Japan, where his grandparents live, and Taylor-Mai said her cousins in Canada don’t use a husky and sledge to get to school, although it does snow there sometimes.

“None of the pictures are in England,” said Alfie.

“Why are so many from China?” Arianna asked.

Forty-five minutes later, we had finished reading the book. “I liked the book,” said Isabella, “because it told us the other ways children around the world get to school.”

‘Made me feel grateful’

“I think it was good, because it gave you different ideas, so if you couldn’t get to school you could use those ideas,” said Ollie.

“I thought it was adventurous,” Heidi said.

Owen was more guarded. “I didn’t like the cover but I liked the book. The bus photo would have been better I think.”

And Olivia said: “So, I liked the book, as it made me feel grateful that I can just get to school in my car.”

Then there was a knock at the classroom door, and we were told that we were five minutes late for Worship.

Much later, I am still pondering whether the teachers had to take the same routes as the students. Would I enjoy going to school if I had to use a zip wire? Probably not.

Curriculum links

This book offers lots of links to geography, in addition to a wealth of speaking and listening stimuli. Its content was something that the children could easily relate to, as travelling to school is part of their own daily experience. The photographs in the book could easily be used as the focus of a Philosophy for Children (P4C) session, and are a great introduction to other cultures.

Jane Flood is Reception teacher at Copythorne CE Infant School, in Southampton.

If you or your class would like to write a review for TES, please contact Adi Bloom on adi.bloom@tesglobal.com

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