Co-education and the importance of belonging

Co-education and the importance of belonging
By Lucy Moonen, Assistant Director of Teaching & Learning, and Graham Gardner, Research Lead

“There are few things so grounding and reassuring to a child as feeling you truly belong to your school community…When pupils feel at home at school…they are at their most naturally confident and this is when the best learning is done.”

- Clarissa Farr, former High Mistress, St Paul’s Girls’ school

Imagine a classroom where every pupil feels seen, heard, and valued – a culture which encourages and celebrates individuality while fostering a strong sense of community. This is the essence of belonging, a powerful affinity that not only supports positive mental health, but also underpins motivation and consequent academic success.

Belonging does not arise accidentally or without effort; rather, schools in which belonging flourishes have intentionally cultivated it within the ordinary structures of a pupil’s school life. When discussing belonging in her memoir The Making of Us, Farr emphasises her own role in “creating the conditions” for belonging to thrive, starting from before a child’s first day: tutor groups, team building, peer relationships and Farr’s “welcome tea party” are all pertinent.

Abingdon School’s move towards co-education has provided an ideal opportunity to consider ways in which we already cultivate belonging, and how we might augment, enhance or modify what we do. Our school has educated boys for more than 750 years; today it is an oversubscribed academically-selective school with a broad co-curricular programme and a mix of day pupils and boarders. Some A Level academic subjects, such as Drama, Economics and Psychology, have long been delivered in co-educational format, with female pupils attending from neighbouring St Helen and St Katharine school. At Abingdon, we recognise that male single-sex education arose in an era when attitudes towards gender, and consequently the education of women, were vastly different to our values today. Our shift towards co-education is a natural development and recognises that young people learn about the world in relation to their peers. Co-education will enrich and deepen the experience of all our pupils. All of our pupils, present and future, will benefit from the greatest possible sense of belonging as the school embarks on a sustained period of change.

In any school, belonging is centred in the classroom, as it is here that thoughts and ideas take shape, and it is where pupils spend the majority of their time. Cultivating belonging, so that our learners simultaneously feel individually recognised and part of the whole, therefore requires us to reflect on our Teaching and Learning practice.

If we want to make Teaching and Learning (T&L) decisions that support belonging while also facilitating rigour in learning, then the concept of “ratio” is useful. Ratio is a principle that was conceived to help teachers determine how much thinking is taking place in their classroom. Inspired by Professor Rob Coe’s observation that “learning happens when people have to think hard”, ratio consists of the proportion of pupils actively participating in learning, indexed with the depth of their thought. Where ratio is high, many pupils are thinking hard.

Ratio provides a lens that helps us focus on our pedagogical choices, guiding and encouraging us to optimise meaningful pupil participation. This, in turn, not only helps to optimise learning, but also means that pupils are likely to feel seen and heard by their teachers and peers, enhancing their sense of belonging. By viewing our teaching practice through the lens of ratio, we will gravitate towards, and actively seek out, techniques and strategies that maximise inclusivity and equity.

Designing tasks that regularly invite pupil verbalisation while maximising breadth of participation enables us to achieve a high ratio. How we phrase a particular question, to whom we direct questions and how we design a retrieval task are all examples of classroom decisions that can be shaped by the concept of ratio. Abingdon’s most recent T&L-focused INSET centred on Cold Calling, whereby a teacher directly invites a pupil to speak, rather than relying on volunteers. This questioning technique, which Tom Sherrington refers to as “the #1 strategy for inclusive classrooms”, immediately increases involvement from more reluctant participants (both female and male). When conducted in a collaborative and warm manner, Cold Calling is also likely to raise confidence and voluntary participation over time. Techniques such as Cold Calling are thus hugely important for managing mixed-gender classrooms in ways that help to ensure that all pupils feel recognised and valued.

The transition to co-education at Abingdon represents a unique opportunity to review, build on and – where necessary – adapt the Teaching and Learning practices that are at the heart of our success as a school. These practices will enable all students to truly belong.