What a pleasure to visit this 100 year old school trying to do things differently with little money, but a lot of enthusiasm and passion for student directed learning!

Set in the countryside, a 50 minutes trip from the centre of Copenhagen, Høsterkøb is a rural school  of 250 learners catering for Year 0-5.

Two of the Year 5 students, Nicholas and Sebastian, members of the student council, took me on a tour of the school environment. In all the classes I visited I was touched by the work the children had put into preparing for my visit, a wonderful opportunity for the Y4 and 5 learners, in particular,  to practice their English!

The school is surrounded by woods and the children make full use of the forest that extends up the hill behind the school. Evidently it is a great place for tobogganing, while dodging fur trees, in the winter months! 

In this area there is a new wooden shelter where a fire pit has been constructed. Classes come up here with their teacher and use ‘fire knives’ to whittle away at sticks while they sit around the open fire and sing. The rules around what is considered ‘safe” are definitely more relaxed here and children are encouraged to take risks, get dirty and play!

There is a very strong emphasis on the school being sustainable & green. For a number of years they have been awarded the prized “Green flag” by the local municipality for their student driven environmentally friendly practices.

The boys explained how the student council often run ‘campaigns’ to raise money for school priorities.

The tower of green balls, very prominent in the stairwell of one of the buildings, equates in $$ in the caretaker’s budget for repair and maintenance of the school. If the children vandalise or break something around the school, balls, representing the amount of money to repair the damage, are removed from the container. If the school goes a month for example without any vandalism, the care taker will credit this money to the children in the form of additional balls. At the end of the year, any balls remaining in the container represent savings made through the children’s efforts to help care for their school and the money is given to the council to decide how it can be spent to further enhance the school.

Every child I met told me about the campaigns and the balls- it was highly motivational and the old school was relatively tidy and cared for by the children because of this. Great entrpreneurship!

Another incentive involved student councillors checking the classes at the end of every day, to check windows had been closed, heaters & lights turned off and rubbish disposed of correctly. Classes who consistently did this well were awarded 200 K (about $5NZ ) to use for new class equipment etc. Classes often ‘banked’ the money till they had enough for a desired purchase!

A strong focus in this school is ensuring that the school vision is embedded in the daily practice. They have a highly visible social skills ‘creed’ and a lot of talking and activities are geared to helping children develop a caring culture in their classes- this is evident in the posters and activities around the class walls in the Y1 room and in the conversations I had with older groups of learners, who took seriously their roles in building an inclusive caring community of learners.

The children stressed the importance the school placed on how they treat each other, adults and children alike. The key ideas they emphasised were (in their words!):

· I need to have it good; you need to have it good

· You need to be honest in a polite way- don't comment on negatives, like if you don't like a person's dress don't say anything- show respect.

· Take the rules seriously

· Respect is important in our school- teachers show us respect by treating us as human beings and not talking down to us (this was really obvious in the way I observed the adults speaking to children)

· Learning is fun- if you need a break you take it but have to be responsible

· All play together- not boys or girls- it is fun to have friendship with a lot of different people

· Big hugs- we like to feel at home at school- I can be happy again at school if I am sad when I get a hug and someone is nice to me.

Despite the single cell environment, many of the teachers are working  in collaborative ways.  2 teachers in Y0-1 share 29 children across two spaces. They meet together as a group of 29 at the start of the day to outline the programme and so children know where they are working and with whom.

As this is the first year of formal school, reading is level based and children are grouped accordingly. However in other subjects, groups are all multi level and mixed across the two classes/teachers depending on the task and what they are wanting children to learn/experience.

There is a strong philosophy that all children need to learn to work with each other ,so children are mixed up regularly in working groups to promote different skills and utilise different children's strengths and learning preferences.

Like other Danish schools, Høsterkøb Skole is introducing the principles of Visible Learning. An across-the-school focus is helping to teach children to ‘be their own boss of their learning’. 

Learning outside has a key place in the Danish curriculum. Once a week the  children go on an experience outside the classroom for the whole day- for the Y1's, today it is a trip to the local plant nursery. When they return to school there will be follow up activities in writing. 

In the Y4 and Y5 classes the teachers have experimented with opening up their spaces and working in more flexible ways. There are 54 children at  year 4 level split into two classes of approximately  27 children with 3 main teachers (one is a pedagogue) and accessing a range of other specialist teachers for technology and music.

Each class starts each day  and after each break, in the ‘message zone’, a three tiered seating space in the classroom where they come together to look at the organisation for the next lesson. There are two classrooms side by side with a joining door which is generally kept open. A small room off one of the classrooms is used by children for quieter work.

The traditional furniture has been removed from the space. They have little money for new furniture so old sofas, a large been bag, Ikea round tables and have been utilised to give the children choice in where they might choose to work. 

The year 5 teachers have been working in fluid ways for a few years now (see  video link above).The doors between the Year 5 classes are opened up and teachers often work alongside each other. Much of the children's work is project based, with a teacher directed outline of what is required process-wise.

At this time of the year the children have selected their own personalised projects- they have the choice of either working alone or in small groups, but needed to come up with a proposal of what the wanted to either teach others, make, or learn themselves.

The children are required to keep a learning log of the process and answer specific questions aimed at generating reflective thinking. Each set of questions were divided into one of 4 quadrants and colour coded so children saw clearly the process they had to work through to complete the project:

· What do I want to make/ teach? learn?

· How will I do it?

· How will I show my process (video, log etc)

· I know I will be finished when … (Success criteria)

· After sharing it with others and getting feedback, my next goal will be……….

When the children have completed their projects, they present to small groups of thier peers and receive feedback so they can plan next steps for improving future projects.

As I left the tranquilityof this country oasis, I took with me a clear memory of student agency and empowerment and the conviction that when there is a will to make changes, money need not be a barrier!