The innovation-stopping tyranny of the school bus
“I’ve got to catch my bus” has been the death knell to countless innovations and enrichments for young people at school. Let’s kill it as an excuse, instead.
I had an early start this morning. 6am. I was up to sit in digitally on the pitches of educators at Loxton High School, South Australia, as they came to the close of their day. They pitched prototypes to each other, ideas that will transform their school. But my early start was probably familiar to many of their students, who need to bus in and out each day from rural communities nearby.
Loxton sits close to the border with the neighbouring state of Victoria. It feels far away, and not just because I’m in Scotland. Those rural bus routes to school and home again are familiar to me, too, from growing up in a community where many of my friends would take up to two hours’ roundtrip every day to get into school and home again. I was one of the lucky ones who could have walked to school.
I’ve seen these bus people elsewhere, too. The American School in Japan is not in the centre of Tokyo, where many of its students live. So a fleet of twenty-plus coaches ballet into action at the end of every day to take kids home. During the 2011 earthquake, some of them took eight hours to get there through gridlocked traffic and obstructed streets. And in the age of sprawling metropolises, those international schools with a certain cachet pull students in from a large catchment, so the commute their parents might dread becomes the norm of children from the age of six.
These buses act as a lock on the day. They can stifle opportunity to grow beyond the curriculum, or to do something different.
In 2011–2014, my team ran an employment accelerator for the foundation of fashion brand Burberry. We built Burberry Create, an incredible six-week creative training and employability programme. We engaged scores of staff to develop young people’s creative thinking and problem-solving skills. There was practical work experience, access to incredible technology, business challenges and mentoring. In the three years we ran it, the programme enriched the lives of over 300 young people in London, New York, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Chengdu.
The programme was designed to target long-term unemployed young people, with the goal of breaking that cycle. By the end of the process they had a wealth of stories to bring their job interviews and CVs to life. Where most had been unemployed for more than nine months, we managed to help 93% of them into long-term employment. Some remain friends to this day. It was transformative for our team, as well as the participants.
The biggest barrier in this incredible programme wasn’t the cost, the very short development time, the challenging personal backgrounds of some participants, the relentless cycle of being unemployed for so long that we needed to break.
The biggest challenge was just getting them into central London.
The biggest challenge was the bus. And the London tube.
So the most innovative decision, perhaps, was to buy an Oyster transport card for every participant so they could travel in, on time, and get home. It also removed the excuse for inaction on their part.
In St Andrew’s RC School in Glasgow, or at Calderglen High School in South Lanarkshire, at lunchtime there is a busy flow of mini buses and taxis taking students from school to college or work placements. The budget for learning experiences has to include the barriers at the lowest level, and “the bus” is one of them. Finding, begging, borrowing, stealing and assigning cash from the get-go, just for the lowest common denominator barriers, helps remove those barriers from the discussion. Doing this allows educators to focus on what will offer the greatest value to young people, whenever and wherever that might need to take place. So many young people gain qualifications in school, at college, at work, or at all three. They get an incredible start at life, beyond traditional qualifications and ‘schooling’.
This move towards richer experiences beyond the school walls, that harness partnerships, colleges and places of work, has taken a long time to come. Many still think that “learner pathways” is about providing more options in school, within the constraints of the existing school day. It can’t be. It must be so much more. And the benefits of going the extra mile in partnerships inside school, and getting students out to learn beyond school, are substantial, as our report to the OECD for Education Scotland reveals.
Back in Loxton, in rural South Australia, teachers were closing out their day, sharing their ideas for changes in timetabling of learning. In the Q&A, every time, the inevitable question of “what about the buses?” was raised. And every time, you could see that the team have become design thinkers. The problem wasn’t ignored. It was acknowledged as just another problem found, ready to be solved. But it was not, alone, enough to kill some of the incredible ideas that will offer young people rich experiences.
The challenge you face might not be buses, literally, but it might be a metaphorical bus:
— Hand sanitiser supplies…
— One-way systems…
— Catering company restrictions…
What’s the lower common denominator issue that is getting in the way of people thinking about what really matters? Is there a way to consign it to the ‘dealt with’ pile, so that people can focus on the main thing?
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