Off to school

I was very excited to be able to visit the Harris Academy Sutton (HASU) as part of my residency research. As well as having a really illuminating conversation with some of the incredible teaching staff, it was lovely also to meet and chat with several Year 12 students about their ideas and also to have a look around the amazing purpose-built site, which nestles into the edge of the London Cancer Hub ‘campus’,

Early on in the residency I was quite puzzled by how a school could be integrated into the London Cancer Hub, which seems such a specialist endeavour, so this was one area of discussion I was interested to focus on initially. And whilst the school obviously has a remit in relation to providing a broad education for it’s pupils, i was surprised at the number of different ways that the school either is already, or can become, strongly allied to the London Cancer Hub organisations.

HASU has a specialist science focus, so as such is already tuned in to the subject matter and potential for the relationship with the organisations of the London Cancer Hub. Here is a (not exhaustive) list of some of the ways that HASU is connected with the LCH that emerged from my discussion with the staff:

• The relationship with the LCH is a real incentive and attraction to teachers – more than one of the staff I spoke to was really influenced to join HASU because of the LCH.
• HASU is the recipient of equipment from the ICR that is no longer useful to them, but very handy for the school
• There is an aspiration for every year 10 student to have a mentor scientist – ‘their’ scientist.
• There are lots of ideas part way in progress to provide students with mentors from the ICR and RMH (as well as from other industries)
• The curriculum is relevant in some areas. Teachers also particularly talk about how those parts of the curriculum might relate to the work of the LCH – eg when teaching mitosis in biology
• In time they hope to integrate the LCH organisations into careers events,

I was less expecting some other connections. Some pupils have parents working at the LCH. Not at all surprising when you think about it, but I hadnt previously thought about it. Similarly unexpected for me was the question of whether some of the pupils had relatives being treated at the RMH.

In terms of how conscious the students are about the LCH and its role:

• The LCH attracts students to the school as well as teachers, One student who joined in Year 12 said that the science focus and LCH together were a real consideration when she was looking for a school to transfer to.
• There isn’t much opportunity or reason to visit the LCH site (they aren’t allowed in to some areas anyway) it is visually part of their landscape, especially now that the old hospital buildings that blocked the view have been demolished,

From there we got onto a more general conversation about art and science. Several of the students I met were taking art A Level and had thought about the relationship between art and science, to come extent thematically and also from a process point of view. One of their elective courses covers the relationship between art and science in some detail – I am hoping to go back in January as part of that course to talk with the students in some more detail about how art and science can relate in practice….