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Speaker 1: Now, I've been thinking overnight about the news yesterday that

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Speaker 1: a second christ Church school has decided to put the

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Speaker 1: walls back up in their classrooms and abandon those modern

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Speaker 1: learning barn style spaces that we were doing, you know,

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Speaker 1: in favor of going back to the traditional single class.

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Speaker 2: The school is Shirley Boys High. They're the ones who

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Speaker 2: had just done it. And then last year rang Yielder

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Speaker 2: High School did the same thing. Something that Rangyelder High

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Speaker 2: School's principal said struck me. He said, the results have

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Speaker 2: been a huge shift in engagement, in attendance, in achievement.

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Speaker 2: It is not what I was expecting. I was expecting

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Speaker 2: a small shift, but it has gone through the roof.

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Speaker 2: It's made a massive difference in everything in the school.

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Speaker 2: And that reminded me a lot of what the principles

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Speaker 2: and the teachers said after we banned the phones in schools.

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Speaker 2: Remember that we banned the phones and suddenly they were saying, wow,

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Speaker 2: the difference is huge. But all we've done in both

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Speaker 2: cases is the obvious thing, isn't it. I mean, obviously,

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Speaker 2: if you take the phones away from kids, they're going

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Speaker 2: to be less distracted, they're going to learn better, they're

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Speaker 2: going to talk to each other more, They're going to

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Speaker 2: play outside more. And obviously, if you put thirty kids

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Speaker 2: in a room and by themselves, there will be less

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Speaker 2: noise than if you have one hundred and twenty kids

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Speaker 2: in a big space together. Why is it so hard

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Speaker 2: for us to do the obvious thing? Why did the

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Speaker 2: Ministry of Education? Why was it so hell bent on

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Speaker 2: doing the wrong thing? Because if you listen to educators

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Speaker 2: or everybody else who's involved in this, they will tell

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Speaker 2: you it was virtually impossible to get a school upgrade

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Speaker 2: unless you agreed to take all the walls down and

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Speaker 2: go buy in style. And yet obviously it was a

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Speaker 2: really big mistake. It feels a little bit like the

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Speaker 2: Ministry of Education went through a weird experimental phase that

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Speaker 2: has cost our kids with everything from classroom styles to

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Speaker 2: weird ways to teach English when they didn't have to

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Speaker 2: do it, and when common sense would tell you that

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Speaker 2: it wasn't going to work. Why is it so hard

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Speaker 2: when it comes to schooling for us to do the

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Speaker 2: obvious thing? For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive, listen

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Speaker 2: live to news talks it'd be from four pm weekdays,

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Speaker 2: or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio,