Professional Services

from Itchen Valley Forum - Issue 171 March 2021

St Swithuns, Winchester

10,000 hours of purposeful practice or of unstructured dabbling. Which is most likely to make your child successful?

Who will be more successful, the child who dedicates herself to at least 10,000 hours of purposeful practice on, let’s say, the piano from an early age or the child who dabbles with a range of instruments? Which is more likely to become a professional musician?

It turns out that the answer is significantly more nuanced than I would have thought before reading Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein. Books like Bounce by Matthew Syed and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell have popularised the notion that at least 10,000 hours are required to become an elite musician or sportsperson. Epstein agrees that this is true in some fields, those he calls ‘kind’ learning environments. These are ones, such as chess or golf, where patterns repeat, feedback is immediate and clear, and similar challenges occur repeatedly. However, most domains are ‘wicked’. In these environments, feedback can be confusing and patterns are either non-existent or difficult to spot. It turns out that in these domains, varied experience is far more useful than a large amount of practice focused on one area. For many parents, it feels counterintuitive to suggest that it is at best pointless and at worst harmful not to get their children ahead by starting them early on music, sport, Mandarin or whatever is the hobby of the moment. Contrary to popular belief, most top sports players were not ruthlessly channelled into one sport from an early age. Rather, they played a wide range of sports before specialising relatively late.

And yet, most parents, understandably, imagine that concentrating on one activity will bring more success more quickly to their offspring.

In school, we similarly assume that rapid progress is the best sort of progress and that getting lots of the answers right in class indicates successful learning. David Epstein tells us that actually we don’t want our pupils to get things right all the time. We want them to struggle to make connections for themselves rather than mindlessly following patterns. Alarmingly, research has shown that although a significant percentage of questions in class start out as making-connections problems, in some countries well-meaning teachers give so many hints that not one of these questions end up as making-connections problems. The educational culture in countries such as the US, and indeed the UK, is such that pupils don’t expect to struggle in class without the teacher intervening. Teachers whose pupils get questions right in class are highly ranked by their pupils. The pupils feel as though they are making good progress. But when they came to take tests a few weeks or months later, they performed worse than pupils who had struggled more in class on the same topic. Why? Because, amazingly, struggling to generate an answer on your own, even a wrong one, enhances subsequent learning. What can we do as parents? Explain to our children why we are not going to help them with their homework, make them a healthy snack and encourage them to come to find us when they have solved the problem themselves. Will this work? There is a good chance if your child’s school encourages the same approach.

What can we take away from Range, which I thoroughly recommend you read? That we shouldn’t worry whether our child is the first to master a skill, that we should encourage them to try a range of activities, that desirable difficulty is important in the classroom and that we accept that real, sustainable progress may look more like zigzagging than we had ever imagined.

Jane Gandee, Headmistress of St Swithun’s school A leading independent day, weekly and full boarding school for girls aged 11-18

It’s who we are.

Join us at one of our open events:

Saturday 13 March (Online) Saturday 24 April (Strategies for success conference, for parents of Year 5 children) Saturday 12 June (Sixth form)

Please contact us to book your place:

www.stswithuns.com | 01962 835700

A leading independent day school offering outstanding education for girls (4–11) with a co-ed nursery

Making a happy start to school

Insider secrets from the experts at St Swithun’s Prep Thursday 25 March, 7pm

This online mini conference includes:

1. Thriving in preschool and reception 2. Practical tips to practise at home 3. Making the most of the outdoors 4. Promoting a healthy mind and a healthy body 5. Live Q&A session with experts from St Swithun’s preschool and reception Booking essential: vwww.stswithuns.com/happystart | 01962 835750

Godolphin’s Wiltshire Digital Drive 2021

Godolphin School is delighted to announce a new partnership with Wiltshire Digital Drive, a company distributing much-needed refurbished computers to the community. With so many children struggling to access online learning due to lack of resources, the Godolphin community is keen to do all it can to support this initiative.

If you have any unwanted devices - laptops, tablets, desktop computers, Chromebooks etc, Wiltshire Digital Drive will refurbish them and distribute them to those in need. The refurbishment includes a safe and secure wiping of the device, giving you the peace of mind to donate with confidence. Godolphin is now an official drop-off location and will be able to accept your donations at the Main School Reception on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 10.30am and 11.30 am.

Head of Community Engagement at Godolphin, Olivia Sparkhall says “We’re so pleased that the Godolphin community will be able to help those in need of a device receive the equipment they need. Everyone deserves to be able to access the online learning that is now being provided for children. This desire to help lies at the very heart of Godolphin’s community engagement values.”

#donateyourdigital info@wiltshiredigitaldrive.org www.godolphin.org

Winchester Council News

Solar Farms There is a continuing debate on the proposal to locate a Solar Farm, an array of photo-voltaic cells, on 22 hectares (55 acres) of agricultural land at Godsfield, to the north and east of Alresford (see image below). The Three Castles National footpath runs along the northern side of the field. WinAcc have suggested that this will meet 1% of the electricity for the district. WCC has declared a climate emergency and this forms a priority for all our policies. We are aiming for the district to be carbon neutral by 2030. It is very clear that climate change is not a ‘Chinese hoax’, so we have to find sources of renewable energy.

The idea is frequently put forward that the solar farms should go on ‘brownfield’ sites, unfortunately such sites are few in number and small, apart from being in demand for housing. If we are to develop clean energy, we need to set guidelines that give developers of such farms parameters as to what is acceptable, ‘not in my backyard’ is inadequate. The demand for electricity is calculated to double before 2050, as the gas central heating and petrol-powered vehicles are phased out. If the country is to be carbon free by 2050, then more solar farms or wind turbines will be needed. Precious as our landscape is, we need to find ways of accommodating this necessary infrastructure. In planning terms, we are required to assess the gains against what is lost. On this site there would be the loss of a footpath where there is no traffic noise, an increasing rarity, and extensive views of chalk downland; destruction of Bronze Age remains; and the industrialisation of the setting of several heritage assets. What mitigation measures could be offered by developers? A properly managed biodiversity plan, to enhance the ecological value with proper and enforced management, with penalties should it not be implemented? A prohibition on the use of weed killer, which pollutes run off? Any such sites in Winchester need to be an exemplar for well-developed solar farm schemes.

Local Plan WCC are developing a new Local Plan. This is called ‘Your Place, Your Plan’ and this is the philosophy behind its development. There is a widespread consultation on Local Plan Strategic Issues and an Options process that will lead to the Local Plan. The planners gave an excellent introduction to the process at a well-attended presentation to parish council members. Please do go to the website and fill in the questionnaire to give us your views.

If you go to www.localplan.winchester.gov. uk you can take part-either online at one of the four public sessions or on the website. The response deadline is 12th April 2021.

Digital Survey Please help us get a good picture of connectivity in Alresford & the Itchen Valley. This is not an alternative to your Gigabit schemes, which I hope go ahead, but would give us a picture of the current situation for mobile and fixed data communications. We are working on decent data for all, but without understanding the 'not spots', we can't best direct our efforts.

You can get to the survey by going to https:// winchester.citizenspace.com/economyand-arts/digital-winchester/. We think that the on-line pattern of working that has been established during the lockdowns is going to be a trend that carries on even after the pandemic is over, so sorting this issue is going to have long-term dividends.

Councillor - Margot Power Councillor - Russel Gordon-Smith