Why hybrid schools are the future of secondary schooling
In 20 years' time 'Hybrid Schooling' will be the norm for secondary schools across the world.
A hybrid school combines online personalised learning and remote whole-class teaching with attendance at a traditional 'bricks-and-mortar' school which has teaching, learning, and social spaces.
There are many reasons why these will become more widespread over the next two decades which we explore below, but first some context:
Thinking the unthinkable
Flying Business: The traditional model for secondary schooling in the UK
The traditional UK model for secondary schooling sees a teacher standing up in front of a class of 20 to 30 students delivering a lesson which typically might be 40 or 60 minutes depending on the school’s timetable structure. Teachers are generally specialists in the subject which they teach, often with at least a bachelor's degree in the relevant subject and have completed a period of professional teacher training either on a university course or by intensive on-the-job training.
Thus, in a given week a Key Stage 3 student (aged 11-14) would typically study 17 to 20 subjects, taught by a teacher who has both expertise and experience of teaching that subject.
This model is increasingly under pressure because it is highly labour-intensive and expensive. It is becoming unsustainable to be delivered at scale. The time has come to explore alternatives to the traditional western model of secondary schooling.
Discussing Schooling from a Business Class perspective.
Seen from a global perspective, the traditional organisation of UK schooling is a premium model of education. Face-to-face teaching taught by a relevantly qualified specialist teacher is the schooling equivalent of flying in Business Class.
One of the challenges when opening up the debate in the UK about how we might educate students is that educationists, politicians and the wider population all approach the issue from the perspective that they have been flying Business all of their lives. Like those accustomed to the luxury and service of sitting up front, they struggle with the concept of the stripped away economy of a budget alternative.
Business class passengers are used to the comfort of wider seats, more legroom, a choice of drinks, canapes on tap, and haute cuisine at 30,000 feet. Only the most experienced and qualified hosts and hostesses work in the business class cabin looking after far fewer customers. Ultimately, those in business class have a very different journey to their destination from those in economy.
The same is true in education. Everyone in the debate has grown up with the idea of a teacher standing up in front of a class, and it is almost unthinkable to consider any other alternatives. But alternatives there are and the time has come to consider them. In these the variables are class size, the quality and qualifications, the experience of the teachers, the range of subject choice and extra-curricular activities that are available, the quality of the facilities, and so on.
“Disruptive innovation in education will not come from the mainstream, but from the margins.”
As Clayton Christensen, the late Harvard Business School professor, in his seminal HBR article argued, “disruptive innovations originate in low-end and new-market footholds” and we are already beginning to see this.
Two examples, if I may:
Schools for students where mainstream doesn’t work. Dukes Education has just announced that it is opening a hybrid school ‘designed for school refusers, those with anxiety or those whose parents feel there are no suitable local schools, and students who want to fit their education around sporting or other extracurricular commitments’ (Guardian 18/01/2024). This is very much a new-market foothold supporting students and parents.
Minority Option Subjects. Independent Schools in the UK have long prided themselves in having an extensive range of GCSE and A-levels on offer. However, as tastes change many schools, looking at their cost base, find themselves carrying subjects which are a financial burden. German, Ancient Greek and Latin A-level are rarely viable in schools. Some are looking to continue offering these through hybrid education where students are taught within the school timetable by remote tutors who not only will teach, but will also write reports and participate in parent-teacher meetings. For an example see: Keystone Tutors. Here we see schools dipping their toe into a hybrid model, which may will increase over time.
As Christensen argues, Smart disrupters improve their products and drive upmarket. It is likely that we will see this over the coming years.
Why Hybrid is likely to take off:
There are many reasons why this model will ultimately take off:
The development of AI-driven personalised learning systems will provide better personalised learning than is possible in a classroom. Contrary to educational lore, class teaching is not the most effective form of education - it is one-to-one tutoring as Bloom’s research indicates - see sidebar.
In ten years’ time there is a realistic prospect of personalised learning systems which will be able to provide better insights into an individual student’s learning progress than is possible for any teacher today.
These learning systems by then will have a ‘face’ - with the learner being able to choose their teacher’s avatar (so the prospect of Taylor Swift giving a one-to-one mathematics tutorial).
Individualised learning of this nature will play an important part in students’ learning journey.Homelearning worked well for those who had good IT resources at school and at home. One of the take-aways of homelearning was that many students enjoyed logging into lessons from home. Homelearning was in many ways very efficient: students didn’t have to get up a couple of hours before the start of school lessons and to travel, in some cases quite long distances, to school.
Schools that had developed learning platforms were able to continue teaching seamlessly: students were able to take notes and complete assignments online; and teachers could give feedback - including being able to record audio notes.
The lessons of homelearning for those of us in well-resourced schools was that most of the academic elements could be covered well remotely. It was the practical, social and pastoral areas that suffered most. That is why I believe that there needs to be an element of in-person, in-school learning as part of a hybrid school. Indeed these are the areas on which school designers should focus their efforts.Hybrid teaching maximises the scarce teaching resource of specialist teachers in shortage subjects. Schools across the UK are struggling to provide specialist teachers for their classes. Physics and Mathematics specialist teachers have been in short supply for over a decade, with the percentage of lessons delivered by teachers who with a relevant degree, or even relevant teacher training reducing annually.
Moving to an online class teaching model means that schools can make the most of the specialist teachers that they have. A UK Academy Trust is already running a pilot so that one teacher can teach three classes of up 30 students at the same time from a central broadcasting classroom, supervised in their classrooms by non-specialists.
In my opinion, this model of in-school remote teaching does not go far enough. It misses one of the major advantages of remote teaching, namely that teachers and students do not have to be in the same physical space.Hybrid schools can respond to the Teacher recruitment crisis and societal changes to working patterns post-Covid. Prolonged periods of lockdown, homelearning and working from home {WFH] in 2020 and 2021 has had a global impact on working patterns. WFH has become the norm for many professionals; indeed, many GenZ professionals know no different. In this context the rigidity and inflexibility of the school week, requiring set hours and on-site attendance five days a week is likely to exacerbate an already challenging teacher recruitment an retention environment.
Realistically, if schools are going to staff lessons, schools need to find models to be able to offer flexible working and WFH. A hybrid school can do this. Hybrid schools can offer teaching contracts which enable staff to work in school, from home or a combination of the two.
Bloom, Benjamin S (June–July 1984). "The 2 Sigma Problem: The Search for Methods of Group Instruction as Effective as One-to-One Tutoring" Educational Researcher. 13 (6): 4–16.
Bloom posed a challenge to educationalists, ‘Can researchers and teachers devise teaching-learning conditions that will enable the majority of students under group instruction to attain levels of achievement that can at present be reached only under good tutoring conditions?’.
Understandably, Bloom chose to focus on ‘mastery learning’, dismissing the tutorial, one-to-one model as ‘too costly for most societies to bear on a large scale’, which was certainly true at the time.
We now live in an age where, through the agency of AI-driven online learning, we are able to deliver the tutorial model at scale.
New Look Schools: Revisiting School Design
Bricks and mortar schools will be different from the current design.
Schools will be places where students come together
to learn practical subjects which require specialist spaces, such as Drama, Art, Design Technology and Sport;
to check in with their tutors
to socialise
to study (particularly individual study online)
School buildings will reflect this purpose and will focus on these areas: personalised study spaces, specialist practical teaching spaces, counselling spaces and social spaces. This idea is not new. In fact, it was foreseen by Nicholas Negroponte, the Director of the MIT Media Lab, in his book, Being Digital published back in 1995.
The interesting thing is that Hybrid schools will not have to have any ‘standard classrooms’ because subjects that are taught in classrooms translate very effectively to online teaching.
Anticipated Objections:
I am quite aware that many educationalists, looking back down the gangway from Business Class, are likely to raise some objections to this model.
“This won’t work for Primary!”
I agree. This is a model designed for secondary schooling. Secondary students are at an age where their online study skills should be at a level where they can access their own learning. This is not the case with younger children.
“What about students who don’t want to learn?”
Students in a hybrid school will need to be monitored. One of the key roles that this new model will develop, is the academic tutor who will have an overview of the student’s progress and will play an important part in motivating the student. There is always the option for sudents who don’t want to learn to be required to study in school.
“Not all students have a home environment where they can study”
This is undoubtedly true. Hybrid schools will need to provide personalised study spaces where individual students can access online learning. This is an essential part of school design. They do not however need to be in classrooms or even formal areas. Students should be given the opportunity to study in whatever environment works for them.
Mark Steed studied ‘Alternative Models for Secondary Schooling’ as the final dissertation for his Executive Masters in Management from Ashridge-Hult Business School.
He has worked with a school designing a hybrid school in the Middle East.