Room 13

Page 10

When I discussed the School Council with Lynne she told me that she thought it was less effective this year, and she herself had to push the children to take things forward. It reminded me of a question I had asked Rob in an email after my first visit, "Does a lot happen without being discussed in the management group?" Rob's reply was, ". . . This varies from year to year. Two years ago Fiona would run everything past a management meeting. Danielle ran it almost as a dictatorship and Rosie and Ami sit comfortably between the extremes." The striking thing about this reply is that Rob completely missed the implication of my question, which was that adults might sometimes make decisions without consulting the children. He obviously found any such an idea inconceivable.

The influence of Room 13 spreads throughout the school. At the time of my first visit Lochyside, the Roman Catholic primary school in Fort William, had just begun to develop its Room 13 under the guidance of the Caol management team. Clare Gibb, the artist in residence, had already worked in Caol. The novelty of it made the differences more conspicuous. I met Connor Gillies, the Lochyside Room 13 Chairman, who told me of some of the changes: people had started to look forward to coming to school, because they knew Room 13 was there; his own work had improved; the teachers, although not really involved, had come to think more highly of their pupils, and to allow more choice; there was, he said, less "Do this, do that."

When I met Danielle Souness, who had already moved on to the High School, I asked her whether it would be possible to have a whole School 13, where the atmosphere was the same throughout the school. "That's what it is a bit at Caol," she said. "Most of the top floor, because we've got Room 13, Science and Technology, the TV room and Miss Smith's classroom. Every room's different but they've still got creative ways."

Science and Technology is the room where classes are brought to use computers, and the TV room has a big screen which can be used, among other things, for PlayStation games in break times.

Lynne Smith's classroom is for Primary 7; that is where the children can walk out of a lesson and go to Room 13 whenever they like, as long as their work is up to date. This expression seems to be very broadly interpreted. This is what Rosie and Ami told me about it in a recorded conversation in the studio:

Rosie: You can just come in here to read, or you can sit and talk, or like if you're not feeling well you can just come in and do things like relax even though it's probably quieter in the classroom, it doesn't really matter.

DG: I've seen you here the whole of yesterday, I think, and all today so far. So do you even know what's happening in the classroom at the moment?

Rosie: No. You just go in there after school. You go in for five minutes or something and you catch up with your work in five or ten minutes.

DG: Are you in Room 13 often for as much of the time as this?

Ami: Yes. We're usually in quite a lot.

DG: Nearly all day?

Ami: Yes. While we were making the film we didn't go to any class at all. We just went after school to get our work.

DG: Did you feel you were missing anything?

Ami: No, no. Well, there was maths and that, that I think I didn't really understand, and I think we had pie-graphs which I had never done before, but the teacher sat with us for about five minutes to show us and that was OK.

Yet what goes on in Lynne Smith's classroom is unusually interesting. This is the voice of Anne Cameron:

"She makes it more fun to get taught because she makes things more interesting. She doesn't like doing work that's just boring. She doesn't like doing just the same things so she tries and makes us do articles and that, research on the news and that, and we've been watching about all the different stuff on the news."

James Robb said:

"If you respect Miss Smith she'll respect you and respect gives you freedom. Before Primary 7 you would be told what to do and then you'd have to snap, do it really quickly, or the teacher would shout at you, but in Primary 7 the difference is you get extra time if you forgot to do your homework, so you get your time to do that and then time to do your language and maths and then you'll get a computer time as well."

Another pupil told me:

"Miss Smith doesn't want us to waste time on things we already know. She makes everything interesting."