This Bolton school was failing – until it gave each pupil an iPod

On the way into Essa Academy, in a multi-ethnic suburb on the edge of Bolton, it is easy to believe that the school is a world leader in education technology. Its new slate-grey buildings are topped with an illuminated logo whose design resembles pixels on a screen. Signs attached to what look like giant glow sticks greet you in dozens of languages as you reach a calm and colourful reception area that could belong to an internet start-up.

Five years ago Essa Academy was a failing school. It became the first in Britain to buy touchscreen devices for all its students. Now it has turned its fortunes around, is judged to be ‘good’ by Ofsted and advises schools from Afghanistan to Australia on how to teach with technology.

But in the classroom I visit I do not find a neat row of students tapping screens. Almost 60 are scattered around, many noisily drawing pictures of the female reproductive system on the walls.

It takes confidence to show a visitor a scene like this, but confounding expectations and coping with a little chaos are part of the plan. ‘We’re based on the premise that the future is not what it used to be; that the one thing we know is that the world our students are going to move into is something unknown,’ Andy Peet, the deputy principal, says. ‘There will be jobs that we don’t know about, there will be ways of living lives that we don’t know about. We know, with a great deal of certainty, that we will get things wrong. The intention is to try and get it wrong as little as possible.’

Year sevens study in double-sized classes (about 60 children), in a system intended to encourage independent learning by iPad-equipped students. With two teachers supervising, there is enough flexibility to give focused support to those in need of extra help or more challenging work. These teachers spend 18 hours a week with their students, helping the transition from primary school, where children are used to knowing their teachers well.

The curriculum is customised, making use of the freedom the school gained when it became an academy in 2009. Today’s subject is science and ethics, with students learning how fertilisation takes place in the womb, turning their drawings into stop-motion videos using the cameras on their tablets and recording voice-overs to explain the science. The walls are designed to be written and drawn on. ‘It looks quite chaotic, but they’re all doing what they’re supposed to be doing,’ Jemma Greenwood, a teacher, says.

^{A maths lesson taught by Jane Taylor. PHOTO: Polly Braden}

Jeff Ellis, the principal, and his staff are eager to convince visitors that the school is not defined by science-fiction-style technology. ‘The thing that tends to draw people in is the technology,’ Ellis says. ‘But the thing they leave with is the impression of the culture of the place and how well students learn, rather than this tool we’ve chosen.’

Since Essa first offered every student a free iPod Touch in 2009, schools around the world have followed suit with various mobile devices. The results have ranged from inspirational to catastrophic. In the worst example, a failed $1.3 billion plan to buy an iPad for every student in Los Angeles came under investigation by the FBI last month.

But Essa remains extraordinary: while other schools have tried issuing mobile devices, it has done so for the longest, and in difficult circumstances. Before it became an academy (it was formerly Hayward School), its reputation was dire, with only a quarter of students getting five good GCSEs including English and maths. The idea of giving expensive electronics to its mostly poor, ethnic-minority students was derided when the plans were announced in the local press. ‘People saw it as a gimmick. It’s like a bribe to the kids to come to the school – that’s how it was seen,’ says Abdul Chohan, the inspiration behind the programme and a director of the academy, a title equivalent to assistant head.

The gamble has paid off. Four out of five students come from deprived areas, but last year 54 per cent achieved five GCSEs including English and maths at grades A* to C, just above the national average. The neighbouring 500-year-old private school, Bolton School, took advice from its state-sector counterpart and began its own iPad programme.

It is one thing to believe that technology can make life more efficient or provide a richer experience for children who have already learnt the basics, but it is another to believe that putting computers in the hands of all students can turn around a failing school. For this Essa Academy is a test case: have iPads really transformed students’ chances?

^{PHOTO: Polly Braden}

The history of computers in schools has been one of grand visions and disappointing realities. Frustration at these limitations prompted Chohan to take a chance on touchscreen devices. ‘Seven years ago we didn’t have Wi-Fi here, no email. Every room had a blocky computer on a trolley. On a hot day, we would use it to keep the door open.’ His eureka moment came after he overheard parents discussing how easily their preschool children swiped and tapped mobile phones. For the price of replacing 150 laptops, he bought 900 iPod Touches.

At any school this might raise eyebrows, but this was a failing school marred by racial conflicts, fights and drugs, where one teacher, who has since left, was notorious for lessons that consisted entirely of screening episodes of Mr Bean.

‘I remember the principal at the time saying, “Abdul, if this doesn’t work, you’re going to lose your job, I’m going to lose mine, this whole thing is going to look really bad,” ’ Chohan says. ‘What was really interesting was that some of the comments in the Bolton news at the time implied that our kids in this part of town shouldn’t have these devices. It was OK for the kids in the more affluent part of town, but our kids would sell them on eBay.’

But when parents flooded to the school to find out what was going on, it proved an unexpected benefit. ‘It ensured that every parent has been into the academy on at least one occasion. We couldn’t say that before,’ Ellis says. ‘It has actually involved them in the learning. You’ll know, in middle-class families, children get home and parents say, “What did you do at school today?” Now we have given parents a reason to ask that question, when it probably wasn’t being asked before.’

Far from selling their iPads, which gradually replaced the smaller iPod Touches by 2011, students seem to treasure them. They can take them home, and only one or two per cent are lost, damaged or stolen. Even so, the devices are protected by cases built to US Department of Defense specifications, tested for extremes of temperature and humidity and even ballistic shocks. If they can survive a mine blast while in an armoured car, a school day in Bolton should pose few problems.

^{The walls at Essa Academy are designed to be written and drawn on. PHOTO: Polly Braden}

‘There’s like a sense of belonging that you have your own device, that the school trusts you and you don’t have to share with anyone,’ Aadil Pariejwala, 15, says. ‘You have access to everything at the touch of your hand, literally.’

The sense of trust runs deeper than just putting iPads into the care of young people. The school wanted students to have greater access to their teachers and constructed its new buildings around this idea. Classrooms are open-plan, the few offices have walls of transparent glass and there is no staffroom as such, just a work area for teachers that students are free to enter.The school has added to this accessibility by giving teachers’ email addresses to students, who can use them to ask for help and advice. ‘Quite often when you talk about technology, people say you’re going to have less of the human touch from the teachers,’ Chohan says. ‘But we find they get more contact. Students who won’t necessarily speak up otherwise can get help direct from the teacher.’ Others can follow up on their ideas and questions whenever they think of them outside school.

But perhaps the biggest change is the spirit of cooperation fostered between students and staff. As Aiman Mahmood, 14, puts it, ‘You have these relationships with teachers, and that’s not what you find in many schools. Who would be prepared to stay after school and devote their time to the students? That’s really helpful for us.’

As a result there is less of a sense of ‘them and us’, which motivates better behaviour. ‘It helps to show that students and teachers are not all that different,’ Sana Ismail, the head girl, says. Breaking down these kinds of barriers, which many teachers may see as protective, can create bugs as well as having positive effects. Jenny Muter, the assistant head of the English department, says, ‘I got absolutely spammed the first year I was here because they needed so much help. But we say that if you need the help, we will give you the help.’

^{Jeff Ellis, Essa Academy’s principal, and Andy Peet, the deputy principal. PHOTO: Polly Braden}

With the school no longer in crisis, the pressure to be always on call has eased, though it has not disappeared. ‘Now I don’t always check my email – if you email after 10pm, you’re not going to get a reply,’ Muter says.

Doubts about the use of technology often centre on the potential for abuse. Essa Academy applies some obvious restrictions on games and social networking, but locking down the devices would miss the point since they are meant to offer stu-dents greater autonomy, so ‘self-regulation’ is the school’s buzzword. Managing student behaviour where technology is concerned is less about what is forbidden or allowed and more about teaching children to judge what is appropriate to the situation. For example, students are not given rules about emailing staff but are expected to learn sensible ways to use the technology.

Sometimes technology is used to promote better work habits, such as giving feedback on students’ work in voice messages rather than on the page. ‘Feedback is generally a nicely written comment. But the first thing they look at is the grade, and they may or may not read the rest,’ Andy Peet says. ‘In a voice message you can hold the grade back until the last minute.’

^{Abdul Chohan, a director at the school, who spearheaded the touchscreen-device programme. PHOTO: Polly Braden}

All the material for classes is provided on the iPads through Apple’s iTunes U app, a tool for schools and universities to publish and manage courses, keeping books, videos, handouts, tests and discussions in one place, where teachers can update them instantly. Since last year students have been able to design their own courses, which they upload to iTunes U to show what they have learnt and help other students. There has been another advantage, too. ‘I think we developed an understanding with the teachers, especially making the iTunes U courses,’ Huzaifa Moosa, the head boy, who has published a guide to the characters in To Kill a Mockingbird, says. ‘We understand how much effort they go to to provide good lessons for us.’

‘They love doing that,’ Muter says. ‘It’s like, “Wow, I get it, I’m a mini-teacher.”  ’

All the student-devised courses published on iTunes U are available worldwide. ‘To be able to walk into an interview and say, “I’ve produced a public course and have 2,000 people who subscribe to my content and they’re using it” – that’s really powerful for a 16-year-old student,’ Chohan says.

For teachers it helps answer the question students often have about the relevance of their learning: publishing work that others will read, use and may comment on feels like making an impact in the real world. More than 600 visitors a year come to learn about Essa Academy, and they often find themselves the audience for mini-presentations by students. Teachers say that although many of the children have never left Bolton, since the school is an educational celebrity, the world comes to them.

^{PHOTO: Polly Braden}

‘Getting them through exams is a key part of what we do, but developing social capital is more important,’ Ellis says. ‘It’s kind of the cement that enables us to create what we have here, that enables the conditions for learning.’

In some ways the conventional exam regime is holding Essa back. Preparing for exam conditions requires that students still use pen and paper instead of doing all their writing and editing on-screen, while in maths exams they have to use mental arithmetic and calculators that seem old-fashioned in comparison with the iPad.

But if the school’s message is that teaching matters more than technology, could it have improved education for the students without iPads?

‘I can only tell you what I feel, and I feel we couldn’t,’ Ellis says. ‘It’s hard to disaggregate the parts of what we’ve built, to say which element has had which impact. What we do know is that they have all combined to produce good results.’

^{PHOTO: Polly Braden}

Just before I leave, Chohan wants to show me one more thing: the holodeck, named after Star Trek’s virtual-reality machine, as if to admit that staff are not immune to the appeal of sci-fi gadgetry. Based in the school’s drama studio, it uses a Perspex screen and digital projectors to update an old special effect that theatres used to create with gauze and lighting. The projector casts an image of a spectral ballerina on to the transparent screen, while Chohan stands behind it on stage, beaming back from the gloom. With the stage lights on, the digital image looks like a hologram, almost as real as the teacher.

Something similar is true of the school: there is no way to draw a clear line between a teacher’s human touch and the technology that extends her reach. Perhaps there is no need for one. ‘There is a geeky, techy side to me, but I like to see things that make technology look like magic,’ Chohan says. ‘Teachers just want things to work.’