It's 2006 and I've started primary school. Probably on my first day, I'm given a colouring-in task, which I take as insulting to my intelligence. I'm waiting to be asked what I want to learn. I want to learn about computers and programming. I'm not asked what I want to do.
To make the colouring-in a challenge, I do it perfectly, not going over the lines. I rotate the page to make it easier for me to colour perfectly. The teacher shouts that I don't need to rotate the page. I tell her I can do what I want. But I didn't do what I wanted with my childhood.
A few times in my school life, I thought that something was wrong with school. I never spoke out.
Then, once school was done with me, and I had suffered in sleep deprivation, I thought that there was something wrong with me, and that I had done wrong.
After years of thinking, using my brain damaged by school, I got back to what little I knew: school sucks.
It's not me who did wrong. It's the government that did wrong.
I became indoctrinated, and in secondary school, I looked down on the kids who misbehaved and truanted, even though I would have misbehaved in primary school had I thought I could attain freedom by doing so. I had forgotten that I didn't even like school.
I consider myself lucky not to have any of these apply to me: dead, in prison, thinking there's something wrong with me, in a hospital, in a mental hospital.
At the “good” school I attended for the first three quarters of my secondary school years, I knew of two self-harming children. One of them was a truant whose basketball skill was incomparable to anyone else’s at the school. He once had broken knuckles due to punching a wall.
Unlike me, he rarely attended school, wore punk clothing, smoked, and had a girlfriend.
Like me, he had an impressive talent.
In my last two years of school, I deprived myself of sleep so badly — due to compulsively engaging with basically whatever I could quickly get my hands on, which was mostly YouTube and gaming on my phone — that I have experienced each of these: vibrating eyes, chest pain, hallucination. It wouldn't have happened if I were free.
I wasn't unhappy. I wasn't doing what I really wanted to, of course. I knew that to escape my addiction and function as expected, I would have to change my underlying way of functioning. I feared that.
To summarise:
School discriminates based on age instead of ability, doesn't prioritise teaching what's important to everyone, doesn't care what children want to do, and is detached from the wider reality of productivity, home life and adult life, treating children like they're a different species.
In England, under the "Labour" party, schools have art, drama and music classes, but not building, driving or street cleansing ones.
The preamble to the “Liberal Democrat” constitution:
“The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.”
— yet they believe in the same education system as the "Conservatives”.
Albert Einstein thought in 1931 that “individuality” is “destroyed” by the treatment of the child as a “dead tool”, "bee" or "ant", and that ”a community of standardised individuals without personal originality and personal aims would be a poor community without possibilities for development”.
He wrote, "To me the worst thing seems to be for a school principally to work with methods of fear, force, and artificial authority. Such treatment destroys the sound sentiments, the sincerity, and the self confidence of the pupil. It produces the submissive subject. It is not so hard to keep the school free from the worst of all evils. Give into the power of the teacher the fewest possible coercive measures, so that the only source of the pupil’s respect for the teacher is the human and intellectual qualities of the latter."
“It takes a village to raise a child” (African proverb), yet schools function comparably to prisons.
From the Netflix documentary Inside the Mind of a Cat:
"Not every cat can do special tricks. You must observe the cat to understand what she is capable of, and teach them things based on their strengths."
"When animals are born, they're born with a temperament. That temperament is the initial building blocks for that personality that's going to develop over their lifetime."
"All of our cats have different personalities and you need to adjust to them, so, you cannot make them adjust to you — it's kind of not their job, it's yours. So, you need to pick what works for them better."
"It's like with humans. Some are great at computers. Some can be great ballerinas. You wouldn't teach computers to a ballerina."
"The Savitskys don't force their performers to do these amazing stunts. Like a sculptor who finds the sculpture within the rock, they let each cat's potential reveal itself."
If this approach works with cats, it'll work with humans.
Someone messaged me:
"I would overhaul the entire system to be more like a video game research tree.
They would complete an exam in say, Numeracy 4, and this would unlock Numeracy 5 and possibly other exams if they have all the prerequisites.
Students wouldn't be required to attend lessons at all if they can complete the exams without.
I personally taught myself everything very quickly and classroom lessons were a waste of my time.
All I needed was to read the textbook to understand.
Whereas there are also other students who struggle and likely won't get as far as other students.
The current system holds back a large number of students while simultaneously expecting too much of another group.
All because it insists on age discrimination and cannot differentiate based on talent or ability.
I also think that some courses can be designed by corporations as an onboarding process, students who want a career with them can complete their training system and be guaranteed a job if they succeed.
Rather than the insane system of students being trained by people who don't know anything, have no connection to any employers, and have no idea what the job market is like because they never entered it.
Comparable to a fisherman training their kids to become a chef.”
The "Green" party’s 2024 general election manifesto says “Education should be about inspiring a love of learning and ensuring that every young person can reach their potential. Yet too many children are struggling to achieve in an education system that operates like a production line rather than valuing children’s unique individual qualities.”
Here's how it operates like a production line:
• The year system — children move from one year to the next, as though they are being assembled not as individuals but as nearly identical items.
• The standard timetable system — you could argue this is the year system (and the entire education system) zoomed in, but anyway: children move through a sequence of activities, entirely controlled and predictably, without agency, comparable to items on a production line moving through a sequence of things that happen to them.
The Green party's proposals don't include making school not like a production line.
Politicians have made relatively trivial changes — ending physical punishment and rearranging some desks such that children face towards each other — while leaving the system itself essentially unchanged.
Education isn't a “right” if it's compulsory. Compulsory education is not “accessed” by children; it is imposed on them.
Where's the "diversity, equity and inclusion" in the education system?
Where is the "liberal democracy" in making children obey unquestioningly for like their entire childhood?
It's only natural that someone's parents would teach their children based on who they are and their own circumstances. In teaching an individual, obviously their character, intentions, interests and abilities are relevant. In teaching a group, individuality is not directly relevant. Where there is educational overlap, there is efficiency in grouping individuals and teaching them together.
Some or many parents are likely to heavily involve themselves in their children's and others' education, as well as in school activities.
It could save the taxpayer money — or free up money for specialists or other assets — if parents with nothing to do are converted into de facto school staff.
When a child is conceived, they are considered a “responsible” of a school — with data on the new life counting toward regulation, and with the school therefore interacting with the mother. This protects the unborn and takes the weight of affordability off of new mothers.
With that said, schools avoid finding themselves burdening the taxpayer with costs for raising children that nobody — not even the offspring themselves when they are adults — is willing to cover.
Therefore, reasonable responsibility is put on parents, with responsibility increasing for each additional child.
It could be a problem if a school's money, wherever it comes from, is increasingly spent on basic needs, with less and less to spend on quality of life and learning. So, it matters who is contributing more and who is receiving more.
The typical school experience, from the perspective of the child, involves:
Signing up for and attending classes and activities
Receiving communications and advice from the management
Sitting exams in accordance with their ability and interest
Experiencing random visits from regulator employees (inspectors and data collectors) who quiz them on the functions of the school and seek to build their profiles (like CVs) by recording evidence of their abilities, knowledge and health status
Being prompted weekly to give feedback on their school via an app
Using independent study areas
Considering their life path and discussing it with the management, so that they can be best supported and understood
Reviewing their schools’ strategies and making suggestions
Using software to indicate approval and disapproval of strategies, suggested strategies and short-term suggestions
Using software to indicate intention to join in on proposed group activities, making them reality when approved by the management
Regardless of their attendance, everybody has a school that is their "responsible school", which is judged on data regarding them, and has to provide them with services and access.
While a school has "responsibles", who are the people it, by default, needs to provide services and access to, and are the people whose data is collected for regulation, it can provide services and access to anyone — in accordance with its strategies, of course. This means that a school might, in practice, appear to serve the whole community, even though its "responsibles" are not the whole community. Someone can have more than one responsible school, as needed. For example, in the case that they live at two addresses.
A children’s school that has adult responsibles has a manager who focuses on the children of the school.
In accordance with demand and efficacy, schools are built for specific demographics, e.g. a school for boys, a school for the elderly, a school for a certain age range, a school for deep specialisation.
Schools are open 24/7, so children's potential studying/sporting/etc time is not limited, and so they always have a place to go. Of course, not every part of a school needs to be always open — there are diminishing returns — but it's not as though school facilities are only useful for a portion of the 24-hour day. There are beds for children who find it convenient or preferable to sleep at school. Schools host community dinners, and have parts for independent study, for tutoring, and for learning in groups of everything from a few to a few hundred. A booking system is used and applied to activities as suited, so, for example, if a child wants a seat in an independent study computer room, they need authorisation. Or, if they want to attend a class, they may need to take a test, so the management is sure they're suitable for it. Children and parents can message and book meetings (if not randomly show up) to talk with the management. The booking system is available for staff, children and parents as an app and website. Children, parents and staff can propose bookings to the management. For example, a group of children might see that the sports hall is not booked for a certain time, and propose a group booking to use it for a certain activity. The system shows what is planned so that people can join in. Each school has an official Discord server (for everyone involved, including parents) — Discord being a versatile and broadly used communication platform.
Schools cooperate to provide a wider range of facilities and opportunities, sharing resources.
Examples:
• Specialists that work across multiple schools
• School A has a science lab and school B has a garden. People from school A use the garden and people from school B use the science lab
• Multiple schools provide a single event
The community sharing aspect of school results in less waste and greater access to resources for those who need them.
So, for example, instead of many households having wound care products that expire having been barely used, most households do not have these products, and those who need them use their school's products.
Instead of seeking clothing donations by delivering bags through letterboxes, charities work with schools. Schools raise awareness using notice boards and/or messages and receive donations for collection.
Bookings can be:
• Confirmed
• Proposed
• Awaiting participants (confirmed once a set number of people have opted in)
The fundamental unit of a booking is an "event", which is a period of time between certain times (e.g., 15:00–16:00, 1 hour).
A singular booking can be for more than one event, because a booking can be for a:
• Single event
• Repeating event (every Tuesday 17:00–18:00) (e.g. sports hall booking by the management, expecting sign-ups, which can themselves be automatic, for regulars)
• Course (a course being any pre-planned arrangement of events, with an end)
• Subscription (an open-ended, indefinite programme)
A subscription has a description and may or may not have any events attached to it. Someone might subscribe to receive certain types of messages, or subscribe to an activity type arranged by someone who hasn't made booking system events for it, and might not ever.
Not all bookings are necessarily publicly visible. For example, if someone subscribes to an activity group led by someone, the leader might make booking events for outdoor activities, and these events are only visible to subscribers.
A booking isn't necessarily attached to a room, seat or area of the school, because bookings can be for events that are:
• In digital spaces
• Not on school property
Example booking scenario:
Someone has reserved a specific seat in an independent study room from 12:00–21:00, Mon–Fri. When they are not going to use their reservation, they cancel accordingly, e.g. they are going abroad for two weeks and cancel for those two weeks.
They only cancel for when they aren't going to use a full day's booking at all or if they aren't going to use it for the rest of the day and there are 4+ hours left on the day, in which case they cancel the 4+ hours.
Regarding this booking, they use 60% of their reserved time for its intended purpose: independent study. The other 40%, they are either away from the room, doing something such as eating or leisure, or they are at the seat but doing something other than the agreed-upon activity.
There is software, an app, and a website that provide an interactive floor plan of one's school — for everyone involved.
It is connected to the booking system and to strategies.
Management uses it to assign a description to each room, detailing its contents and purpose.
Rooms and areas can be colour-coded and titled, and objects can be added.
Schools seek to fund things through donations, which could both limit the need for taxation and extend what they can offer.
All school staff (including management) provide, for the management and regulator’s use, 30+ words of written or spoken (as speech can be converted to text) recollection for each hour worked. Recollections are made and sent no less than daily. An eight-hour shift would require at least 240 words, ideally covering every hour of employment.
Headteachers are on a social network where they can communicate their ideas and experiences with other headteachers as well as the regulator.
There are at least three people that the regulator knows are the management, one of them being the headteacher.
The management generally does not work from home, but is physically present in their school.
Many small contributions will come from the school community itself, but occasional big contributions can come from farther away, for example, from rich areas to poor areas. It's much nicer to donate to something specific that you like than it is to pay tax for many things that you do like as well as many things that you don't. The farther away people are, the less they're relevant to a school, unless, of course, they're offering something rare. So, a channel needs to be open for outsider contribution.
Each school keeps an inventory of its property, in which individual products and items, and their condition and location, are recorded and updated.
The management provides 360-degree photography for themselves, their staff, and the regulator, showing how they want each part of the school to look. The VR photography does not include personal belongings or people, with an exception for personal belongings that are meant to generally be there. If the management has photographed property that does not legally belong to the public, they use software to draw outlines around it and label it with the owner's name and contact information. When someone uses software to view the school's VR photography, they can toggle on an overlay for personal property outlines, and tap/click on them to see their labels.
Profiles: school and regulator
Every responsible has a school profile and a regulator profile. A profile is just information about them, their skills and knowledge. Every claim in their regulator profile is based on solid evidence gathered not by school staff, but by regulator staff. Their regulator profile is what employers can look at. Their school profile is made by school staff, and claims don't need to be backed up. A school profile is mainly for internal school use by staff and, in the case of a child, is viewable by both the child and their parents. The editing of school profiles, by school staff, is overseen by school management. The regulator can use things from someone's school profile for their regulator profile, such as videos taken by school staff. Any evidence in a regulator profile taken from a school profile is marked as such.
Everyone involved with — and expected to be involved with — a school has a profile written about them.
The management assigns different staff members or departments to build different parts of people's profiles.
Profiles are about habits, interests, things that they've done, including, of course, education.
If allowed by the regulator, the management can decide areas to gather information on, taking different angles — writing titles and descriptions.
For example, one headteacher might have a part called "Sports" with description "Their sporting interests and habits", while another has "Athleticism" with description "Rate their athleticism on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being that they are not athletic at all, 10 being that they spend easily 4+ hours daily highly active. If you have heart rate/activity tracking data, insert here. Also, provide a 10-100-word description of their physical activity. Add videos if you take any."
Metrics to collect include the reported happiness and successes of former responsibles, and the dental health and memorisation abilities of current responsibles, to name a few.
A school, and its strategies, is judged on feedback and metrics from responsibles, and also from former responsibles and people who have been in the school or in contact with its staff.
Feedback from the parents/guardians of children, regarding their children's experience, is equally used.
Metrics and feedback are used to judge the effectiveness of someone’s current and historical school experience. Feedback is therefore sought specifically regarding their previous experiences. It is possible that someone gives positive feedback on something as they are experiencing it, and, years later, gives negative feedback on it.
The only thing that’s compulsory for the responsible is a yearly welfare check from the regulator, taking place in their responsible school. The welfare check should be the start of a yearly data collection process by the regulator. They are asked to participate in health checks and a demonstration of their knowledge and skills: they choose from a list of available tests to take, and can also demonstrate their abilities open-endedly. Yes, this includes adults.
With that said, seeking data from each responsible more often than yearly may be worth more than it costs, or spreading out the data collection might be more effective than proposing all the testing at once. Data collected from the regulator can be turned straight into data available for employers and other educational opportunities.
The responsible can choose to make their profile discoverable by employers, and can edit what is visible to employers. Assuming full data collection uptake, their profile will contain a lot of information not included in CVs, including allergies and intolerances, Human Benchmark scores, VO₂ max, grip strength, and videos of them doing things.
The main purpose of the welfare check is to have everyone attend their schools at least once per year, ensuring that they are aware of what their schools offer, feel free to benefit from them and understand their value. As part of the check, it’s compulsory that someone who has spent less than five hours in their school in the past year, spends the minimum five hours.
Data collection uptake is a metric by which schools and strategies are judged. They aren’t judged harshly if responsibles decline to go through loads of testing beyond the basics.
The regulator, with video evidence, gets to know each child in terms of their educational and non-educational desires and interests.
Data collectors show up to schools unannounced and wearing headcams which are livestreaming to regulator offices. Their full interactions with schools are recorded for maximum evidence. The regulator interacts with responsibles, seeking to build their profiles.
Frequent and unpredictable data collection is important, because then you know people aren't just cramming and forgetting.
While a school's staff may remain the same for many years, a school should not have a consistent set of inspectors and data collectors, thereby limiting the potential for fraud.
School staff can certainly collect data for the regulator, but it would be second to unexpected data collection.
Surveillance cameras would be useful for inspection and data collection in certain areas. For example, a powerful camera in the gym hall records someone's amazing basketball performance, and the regulator puts a clip in their profile.
The regulator can be invited to certain areas for data collection, such as a home or swimming pool.
One type of data collection is for kids to be able to log in to a website, using their face as ID, and start answering questions and doing tasks.
Screen recording is another data collection method, which can be used in conjunction with face-ID to confirm that someone is using a computer and performing their activities.
An inspector would livestream themselves checking for hazards, checking that things are functioning, and looking around so that the actual condition of the school can be compared to its strategies, and checking that planned activities are taking place as expected.
Individual data is turned into individual scores out of ten for categories and subcategories. "Subcategories" includes subcategories nested within subcategories. Example categories: geography, mathematics, health, fitness, English. Example subcategories: geomorphology, calculus, vision, SAQ (Speed, Agility & Quickness), speaking.
The school gets two scores ("complete" and "measured") for each category and subcategory, and two overall scores. Remember that schools want good feedback scores as well as good metrics scores. Anyway, this explains the difference between a complete score and a measured score:
For simplicity, imagine a school has three responsibles, and the regulator has calculus data on two of them. The scores of these two are 8 and 10.
The school's measured calculus score is the average of 8 and 10, which is 9.
The school's complete calculus score is the average of 8, 10 and 0, which is 6.
The difficulty, and therefore the rarity, of achieving a score of 10 in a category is adjusted such that no more than 1% of schools have a complete score of 10 for it.
A category or subcategory score is the average of its directly nested scores.
Each category has a "basic" subcategory. So, there's basic English, basic mathematics, basic fitness, etc.
A school score has two decimal places, whereas an individual score is a whole number.
School scores can be filtered by age range.
Schools and strategies aren't the same thing. You can’t just assume that because a school has good data, it means it has good strategies. Good data could be because of individual staff or environmental factors.
The data collection and inspection activity that a school experiences are variables to strategise with.
The regulator keeps an eye on schools' purchases and intended purchases to see if it can offer to bulk-buy things to distribute to schools, saving them all money, though spending their budget. It might be awkward if you had, for example, one school bulk-buying something to distribute to itself and fifty other schools, and having those fifty schools pay the one school.
The government makes and maintains a publicly available website full of learning and activity materials and recommendations designed for all audiences. The three audiences are schools, individuals and non-school teachers (such as parents). Therefore, it has lesson and activity plans, and recommendations for schools, for example, library book recommendations. Individuals can access the website to consume the learning material, guidance and activity ideas at their leisure. Parents can access resources to help them raise and educate their children.
Feedback collection (regulator)
There is a feedback app and website as follows:
Someone can log in and give feedback (in the form of scores out of ten and comments) regarding a school they have interacted with. Parents can give feedback on any schools their children have interacted with. When someone interacts with a school, it gets added to the list of schools they can give feedback on. The regulator, every Sunday, prompts everybody (in the form of an app notification or an email) to give feedback on their responsible school. The parents of children are also prompted to give feedback on their children’s responsible schools. Feedback may be given anytime. One can give feedback on the school as a whole and also on individual staff members, including management. Feedback is timeframe-based, meaning that you can give an all-time review or feedback that applies to the past year, month, week or day. One can give a score with or without a comment. You can, for example, send feedback which is about a particular staff member, about the past week, including a score, including a comment, and check a box to indicate that your comment includes a suggestion. You are able to indicate who you want to be able to see your feedback — for example, only the regulator, or everyone, including the general public, or somewhere in between. Once someone has experienced a school or otherwise interacted with the activities of its staff, they are forever able to provide feedback on their experience, and are periodically prompted (e.g. every five years, if they are of middle age and feedback is being sought regarding their childhood experience) to do so. The feedback service uses facial recognition checks to reduce the potential for non-genuine feedback.
The user can provide scores with up to one decimal place, e.g. 7.6
Scores are shown on the interface with up to two decimal places.
I see core education as "dangers, places, communication". Basic numeracy falls under "communication". What a shop is, and what a court is, and how they work, and where things tend to be, and the very basics of the solar system, and the places on the Earth, fall under "places". Water currents, pathogens, electrical risk, first aid, etc., fall under "dangers".
As a baseline educational data collection scheme, every seven-year-old and every fourteen-year-old should be given an age-appropriate Dangers exam, Places exam and Communication exam.
Of course, exams aren’t enough. The full spectrum of testing, including exams, is enough — though exams are not essential.
Schools should be sure to teach what's actually important or extremely useful to teach all children. Algebra is important, sure, and English literature can be interesting and educational, but it's more important that all children know how roads and intersections work before they start cycling, which is another generally more important skill than advanced maths or artistry or playing the flute. Knowing about health issues and risks, and what the symbols on product packaging mean, is more important than knowing about knights and castles.
Children may be offered payment to participate in data collection.
If a school implements a new idea which is found to lead to better data (feedback and metrics) across schools, then the pioneers could be financially rewarded, including the staff who first enacted the policy.
On the one hand, financially incentivising staff and management to get good data could be very powerful, and on the other hand, everything is relative, which means that rewarding positive data could backfire by encouraging keeping strategies secret that lead to better data. "Positive" data is really just "better" data, and it's easy to see that someone might try to remain "better" than others for the money. It shouldn't be that keeping an effective strategy secret is more financially appealing than properly documenting it.
Pay may be influenced by feedback, for example:
A staff member with an average rating of 10 (since their last payday) earns twice as much as one with an average rating of 5. Whole-school ratings primarily influence the management's pay, and only somewhat influence staff pay.
The education system needs both innovation and stability. Freedom (of policy) is needed for innovation, and restriction is needed for stability. The restriction is needed in order to lock in successful policies once they have been discovered through experimentation.
Strategies encompass every identifiable and, first and foremost, replicable aspect of a school.
They are to be acknowledged and then written as strategies, in the format below, if not first written and then enacted.
This includes physical things and also the behaviours of the school staff and management.
It is the school management’s job to identify and write existing and emergent strategies of their school. The management may read other schools’ strategies and is mandated by the regulator to enact certain strategies. The management doesn’t implement or remove strategies without the regulator’s approval.
Strategies are hierarchical. A deeper layer goes into detail about the layer above it. A layer is deeper based on its number, not its vertical position.
Some example strategies (each line is a strategy):
1. furniture for casual use
2. sofas, bean bags and sofa chairs, with accompanying low tables
3. at least one room on all floors for this purpose, and a corner of the lunch hall
1. auditorium
2. in the middle of the main building
2. blue cushioned lift-up seats, black curtains, overhead lighting and speakers on the stage
2. [number of seats, room dimensions, stage dimensions, etc.]
1. teach cycling
2. road rules, safety tips, cycling itself, bicycle maintenance
3. use videos, school-owned bikes and equipment, books, meet mechanics
4. videos: 5 Essential Skills Every Cyclist Should Learn, 12 Tips for Safe Cycling, Top Ways You Might Crash Your Road Bike | Tips For Riding Safely and Staying Upright playlists: GCN Tech Maintenance, Park Tool Repair Help, GMBN's Tech Playlist
4. books: GCN's Essential Road Bike Maintenance, Bike Book: Complete Bicycle Maintenance
5. several copies of each in the library
2. assign to sports department
In the above examples of origin “teach cycling”, the content of the level 4 books strategy could be in the same strategy as the video links; however, the separation is good practice.
To go into detail on the videos, a level 5 layer would be placed under the level 4 videos strategy and above the level 4 books strategy.
Software is used that allows the user to choose which levels they want to see, select a strategy to view its deeper levels, and view strategies in flowchart format. The management uses this software to manage and view their strategies. Staff, responsibles and parents can use a website/app to view the strategies and interact with them: liking/disliking, commenting, offering contribution, making suggestions for existing strategies, suggesting new strategies.
Strategies are for the long term, so “monthly cinema visits” with a paragraph of detail could be a strategy, but to watch a certain movie—one-off—is not a strategy.
While each strategy has a number for its place in a hierarchy, the numbering doesn’t need to be visible in the software.
If, for example, the “teach cycling” origin strategy was moved to fit under an origin strategy called “practical skills”, the number for “teach cycling” would become “2” and the numbering for everything that descends from it would also increment.
Ultimately, the only origin strategies should be “internal practices”, “external practices”, “fixed things” and “movable things”.
“Internal practices” means practices that, by default, do not involve the responsibles of the school, like the management's hiring practices, routine meetings, how staff and management interact, staff roles.
“External practices” means practices that are, at the origin, about what the responsibles experience, like farm visits, handwriting lessons, messaging, what parts of the school are for what and how each part of the school is managed in terms of their rules and purpose.
Examples of “fixed things”: carpeting, building layout and material, tennis court.
“Movable things” are things that one or two people can simply carry or push to another part of a school. For example: indoor plants, books, tables, screens.
“Movable” and “fixed” are strategies purely describing things and their placement. Maintenance, use, etc. go under “internal” and “external”. Practices can involve objects.
Things can have a “practices” origin strategy. For example, “computers” can descend from “STEM”, which descends from “external practices” — in addition to “computers” descending from “movables” — with the computers descending from “STEM” serving STEM-related purposes.
Rooms, staff and objects can be of strategies, without them being specifically named. For example, instead of “Bob cleans the toilets”, Bob is assigned to a cleaning strategy that says “toilets”, and a descendant strategy of it says “the most experienced cleaner does this”, and descending from that is “Bob”.
A strategy is a confirmed intention or aspect of a school. A proposed strategy is not considered a “strategy” of a school, though it can be seen in the software. A proposed strategy loses its “proposed” tag, becoming an actual strategy, if approved by the regulator.
Strategies regarding an individual would be under their name as a strategy, like so:
1. Ethan
2. Automatic message every day at 18:00 when he's on campus to remind him about his jacket
2. Automatic sign-up to all available chess events for his level
It may be better if lower-level (meaning closer to the origin) strategies are very broad, for example, "sport", "STEM" or “the arts”; however, this isn’t necessary — meaning that, for example, “team dodgeball” could be a level 2 strategy right under “external practices”.
The levels under "sport" would be, for example, “competitive” and “non-competitive”, then “group” and “individual” for each.
The regulator keeps a history of all strategies and their related data. It does this by keeping, along with each responsible’s profile, a history of all the strategies they have experienced. Data from that person is considered related to the strategies they experienced.
A responsible might, for example, use the strategies tool to suggest adding calculators to a room type in the school (e.g. all the STEM computer rooms) by finding the STEM computer rooms strategy and proposing a descendant strategy. Their proposed strategy has a like button, is seen by others, and gets a bunch of likes.
The things to view and interact with in the strategies software:
• Strategies
• Proposed strategies
• Comments and discussion
The different types of interaction:
• Liking and disliking
• Offering contribution (financial or practical)
• Commenting
• Proposing strategies and edits to strategies
Offering contribution applies only to strategies and proposed strategies (including proposed edits), whereas commenting and liking/disliking also apply to comments and discussion.
In the same way that liking and disliking works, contribution is offered via toggle buttons. So, there’s a financial contribution toggle button and a practical contribution toggle button.
Liking/disliking and contribution offer can be applied to highlighted text within a strategy/proposed strategy/message.
The software allows for viewing specifically interactions to strategies, which includes proposals, and viewing recent discussion, etc.
A proposed edit to a strategy is essentially a proposed strategy. Each strategy and proposed strategy has a comments section and a chatroom. Any significant discussion in the comments section is turned into a chatroom (and you can click a button to view it), as that is a more suitable format, and it keeps the comments section functioning as a comments section.
Anonymity and visibility options are available for interactions, with the most limited visibility setting being that only the regulator sees an interaction.
As well as the strategies tool, there’s a one-off suggestions tool which is in chatroom format, with new suggestions pushing up older ones. Each suggestion has a comments section, which, as above, can have chatrooms in it. The contribution options apply, as does the aforementioned liking/disliking. Viewing filters can be applied so that, for example, instead of just seeing the latest suggestion at the bottom, the most-liked recent suggestions are shown first, along with their highly liked comments.
The design of a school's Discord server is a strategy that details categories and channels.
The kinds of personal information that a school intends to collect into profiles is a strategy.
Some strategies will be more strategic and less obvious than others. While it is obvious that a school should have computers and teach certain things, the specifics aren't obvious.
A particularly strategic strategy starts as something that may be considered very experimental or uncertain.
A significant strategy for each school is its strategy regarding the flow of people in and out of (and within) its building(s)/premises, in terms of how controlled and monitored it should be. An app, using location services, can help to keep track of who is where, but the main solution, replacing manual logging by employees, is to use facial recognition cameras for this. Because of different strategies, one school might have staff act as receptionists and ask people where they're going when they enter, while another school uses AI to watch who enters and keep a list of who is on site.
The regulator may have some schools update their strategies quickly, according to what appears to be the latest great innovation, while having other schools play the long game, waiting for more long-term data, ensuring that strategies are adequately explored.
One new school might have an experimental design based on suggestions and ideals, while another might just be built to replicate existing success. Schools are generally built according to connections found between existing schools' fixed physical things and their data (feedback and metrics). For example, it might be found that yellow paint is better for maths classrooms — but only if other conditions are met. Countless correlations can be found, and different successful strategies may emerge, allowing for different types of schools, much like how evolution results in different adaptations depending on the environment. A school may require different strategies if generally successful strategies aren’t successful as expected for that school.
Another variable is what a school’s strategies are optimising for. Certainly, more than one metric must be optimised for, but whether to value one metric more than another is up for debate.
Tags
Each strategy has an implementation aspect, which is one of the following:
currently implemented
work in progress
within a week
within a month
within a year
within five years
dreams
A work-in-progress strategy is one that is partially implemented in a way that actually adds to the school. That means that, for example, a fixed physical thing being built is only tagged “work in progress” if it already provides value despite not being complete.
Each currently implemented strategy is one of these:
A strategy that the management identifies can remain "identified" as opposed to becoming "planned".
Each strategy (including proposed) has a visibility setting:
everyone
staff, responsibles and parents
staff and relevant individuals
relevant staff and relevant individuals
only staff
only relevant staff
"Parents" includes legal guardians and carers.
"Parents" applies to the parents of children who are responsibles of the school.
Each strategy (including proposed) is tagged with how replicable it is deemed to be:
very high replicability
high replicability
medium replicability
low replicability
very low replicability
This is useful for people wanting to replicate strategies and not waste time looking at aspects that they can’t or have no reason to replicate.
A strategy can have a donation/payment tag:
donation desired
donation required
"Donation desired" means the management would like donations toward it, but may implement it without donations.
"Donation required" means the management will only implement it if donations, to a satisfactory degree, are received for it.
"Payment required" means that the management provides it as a paid service.
A strategy can have a practical contribution tag:
"Practical contribution desired" means the management would like practical contribution toward it, but may implement it without.
“Practical contribution required” means the management will only implement it if practical contribution, to a satisfactory degree, is received for it.
“Practical contributors only” means everyone has a part to play in providing themselves with the experience. For example, in the case of a breakfast club, each participating individual is expected to do something for the running of the breakfast club, even if it’s just sometimes pouring milk or discussing foods.
When a strategy is assigning a location (e.g. room, seat or area of school property) or set of locations to its parent strategy, is it tagged as a “location assignment” strategy.
Location assignments are about fixed physical things and location IDs — and not their uses. “Canteen” and “kitchen” can be location assignments because these are locations defined by their fixed things.
“Play rooms” couldn’t be a location assignment unless they were purpose-built as play rooms and couldn’t easily be converted to another purpose.
Like “location assignment”, “staff assignment” and “non-staff assignment” tags are used.
Example staff assignment strategies:
• medical
• Sarah Atkins
• Josh Philips, Sandy Larch, Oliver Duncroft
All non-staff assignment strategies are names.
“Practices” strategies can be tagged “fixed” and “movable”.
Strategies regarding individuals are tagged 'very low replicability' and are set to the ‘staff and relevant individuals’ visibility setting by default — meaning that all staff can see them, and the individual in question, and, if applicable, their parent(s)/carer(s) can see them.
Examples
Example “internal practices” strategies, including implementation and object tags:
1. take steps to achieve better air quality
2. optimal window ventilation + open door airflow <work in progress>
2. portable air purifiers in key areas <within a year> <movable>
2. upgrade HVAC <within five years> <fixed>
Example strategies:
• limit kids' access to leisure if they haven't tried to learn the basics expected for their age
• group jogs and races
• library
• kitchen
• canteen
• water top-up tap accessible from each part of the school
• hiking
• daily 2-minute one-to-one checkups
• computer science
• sanitation and hygiene
• social support
• safety
• food
• employers
• woodworking, metalworking, construction and manufacturing
• music, drama, art and creative crafts
Example strategy areas:
• Routinely announcing things over the PA system (e.g. the time hourly)
• Temperature: target temperature for the average room, some rooms designated for lower temperatures, some for higher temperatures
• Staff clothing, general dress code
• Rules regarding consuming food and drink in rooms
• Timing and chaining activities
• Setting out timetables
• Desk arrangements
• Default room items
Example strategies:
1. safety utilities
2. fire extinguishers/blankets, first aid kits, defibrillator, carbon monoxide and smoke detectors, surge protectors and UPS, anti-choking suction device
1. health utilities
2. sanitary products, top-up taps, hand sanitising stations at bathrooms, weather warning displays (e.g. UV, wind, rain)
1. at people's homes
2. social support department
2. health and safety inspections
2. minor technical tasks
2. personal assistance
2. cleaning
2. teaching
"Social support department" under "at people's homes" means that everything under "at people's homes" is assigned to the social support department. The ‘staff assignment’ tag would be used.
*not necessarily for immediate implementation
Everybody can get an advanced, ultrathin and soft (and therefore very sports-friendly) smartwatch (alternatively, an armband) which connects to the school's booking system, alerts the user about their upcoming bookings, can tell the user about the booking status of rooms, can be spoken with to discuss upcoming events, make suggestions and opt-in to activities, and can be set to suggest opting-in to potential activities.
The management can instantly, or with delay, communicate with the user through the watch. For example, the management leaves a message for the user, and the user puts on the watch after waking up, if they aren't already wearing it, and then receives the message as text, a voice recording, or text-to-speech.
If management wants to "go" to a part of the school, instead of walking there, they can activate a drone sitting in a dock closest to where they want to go, and, optionally wearing VR goggles, see through its camera as it travels to the desired location, as selected on the interactive floor plan. The management can speak through the drone's speaker, hear through its microphone, and control it using a gamepad or commands.
For this to work, all the school's doors have self-opening capability, and either the drone has a light for dark areas, or the school lights are remotely operable.
The regulator can do inspections using those drones, and they can be set to automatically check every part of the school several times per day — not entirely predictably.
