Ask not for whom the bell tolls

Just shut the darned thing up. Sabrina Broadbent assesses an experiment in timekeeping and tranquillity
Pupils at Hornsey school for girls
Sabrina Broadbent monitors a peaceful changeover between lessons at Hornsey School for Girls in north London Photograph: Linda Nylind

Deanne asked: "Where am I, Miss?" Geography is taught in our school, but Deanne was in English and should have been in history. Confused? At least Deanne, a year 8 student in the London comprehensive where I teach, was still trying to make sense of the irrational timetable that governs our days. Most students soon figure out that reason is not part of the curriculum, and drift through the day from science to art to French to maths in an indifferent haze, as and when the bell tells them to.

Poor concentration, irritability, low self-esteem, exhaustion and indiscipline: these are some of the side effects of the archaic structure of the school day to which we are still shackled. And that's just the teachers. For students, the symptoms can be even worse. With up to 13 different subjects taught in up to seven different lessons a day, five days a week; with each lesson in a different part of the building, requiring different books and with a different teacher, it is not surprising. It has always baffled me that schools slavishly follow this antiquated model of curriculum delivery. I have always wondered: The bells. What's with the bells? Aggressive, strident and intrusive, surely a school could manage without bells?

In our school it took a new headteacher to suggest the unthinkable. He had some ideas to make the school a calmer place. With 1,400 students trying to move to their next lesson at exactly the same time, he thought getting rid of the bells might be a way of tackling the corridor crush before someone got hurt. A trial period of a few weeks was proposed. The idea kicked up quite a fuss. A school without bells? To some it seemed ludicrous. A few staff warned about the risk of complete anarchy: students would take advantage, discipline and punctuality would deteriorate, we would never get them into the classroom. Many students were indignant: they were being treated as though getting to lessons on time might be their responsibility rather than someone else's.

The trial period began, and complaints came thick and fast. The first time I took morning register without the bell, I completely lost track of time and was still with my tutor group well into Period 1. Students said many staff appeared to be similarly time-challenged; their lessons were over-running and students were being told off for being late to the next one.

Deanne was even more lost than usual. Having arrived at secondary school as an independent individual (thanks to primary school), she had rapidly lost this skill and now needed the bell to tell her to move.

Trickle in

For the first few weeks, unused to their new-found autonomy, students would trickle into my lesson up to 10 minutes after it had begun. It was agreed as departmental policy that latecomers were to be made to return at the end of the day and make up for the minutes they had missed. They were rarely late again. A few students, it turned out, could not read an analogue clock. When I asked them, pointing at the clock, "what time do you call this?", they replied that they didn't know. Now they do.

After a few weeks, we all pulled ourselves together and became more aware of the time. Gradually, having no bells seemed normal, pleasant even, and all our time-keeping improved. Once the trial period was over, a consultation paper was given to staff and we were asked for our comments. Did we want the bells back? The arguments began again.

Eventually, by a very narrow margin, it was decided that we would continue without them, but that we would have a five-minute warning bell before the end of morning registration, break and lunchtime.

Today, most of us have forgotten what all the fuss was about. It seems inconceivable that we ever needed those bells. The corridors are safer, calmer places between lessons; the bell does not rip through the end of a lesson at the most inopportune moment; people don't suffer ear damage if they happen to be standing below it when it rings. All in all, the school feels more like a place of learning and less like a factory or house of correction.

Getting rid of the bells has to be a step in the right direction if we are to make schools places where students want to be. But the bells are only part of the problem.

When Deanne come to secondary school aged 11, her anticipation and excitement were palpable. She couldn't wait to learn.

After a term, two at most, this expectation was ground down by the relentless tedium of timetabled routine. Universities don't work like this and nor do primary schools. In secondary schools, we wonder why truancy, disaffection and bad behaviour are such problems.

So where did our secondary school timetable come from? A timetable for Bayley's school in Coventry in the 1850s shows a nine-to-four day, with nine subjects taught in 15-, 20-, 45- and 60-minute lessons. While the breadth of subjects may have widened and teaching approaches improved, I was taken aback by how little the blueprint has changed; a blueprint necessitated in part by large classes and a shortage of teachers but also, I suspect, by a Victorian habit of mind that had more in common with factory production, social control and punishment than with education.

It took a celebrity chef to affect change in the school canteen. I wonder what kind of a celebrity could do the same for a weekly structure that supports real learning. The Jamie Oliver of civil engineering? An architect perhaps?

We have a timetable that almost guarantees disaffection and inadequate learning. The fact that lessons are short, and occur at random intervals, means that learning is sliced into ineffective sections.

A few weeks ago, my year 10s were working in groups comparing two poems by Carol Ann Duffy, something they will be examined on for their English literature GCSE. No sooner had they begun to get to grips with the far-from-easy skill of literary comparison than it was time to stop. Several days later, it was time to start again. Some of them had forgotten their sheet, and all of them had lost the thread. If you'd given me a morning with them, we could have analysed the poems, done small group work on points of comparison, had whole class feedback to help them sift the insightful from the dull, and finished by modelling how to write a comparative essay.

Turned off

Though most obediently pass their exams, students will tell you that, after five years of secondary education, they are completely turned off. Teenage torpor, I call it. And sometimes we see its flip side - teenage rage. Not entirely the education system's fault, but there is a lot that schools do to make it worse.

"So, Deanne ..." I'm smiling at her, sorting through a small forest of paperwork. "What are your targets in English, French, art, music, geography, history, science, PE, dance, drama, information technology, maths, design and technology and personal, social and emotional development? Deanne?"

"Am I bovvered, though, Miss?"

"Probably not, if you want to stay sane."

Ask Deanne and her friends for their best memory of learning and they will probably tell you it was when they went on a biology field trip, or when the London Philharmonic came to run workshops with them, or the science summer school. The key difference with these events is that the learning took place over a series of hours or days.

Deanne's sister could hardly speak she was so excited by the music summer school she attended last week at Middlesex University. She had composed, performed and recorded music. She had listened to musicians, watched others sing, and seen how theory can turn into practice. But back at school, bound by a timetable that must deliver up to 14 subjects on a weekly basis, there is little time for such continuity, challenge and depth. Surely it might be possible to design a secondary curriculum in which students spend a day, or a week, doing music or maths, rather than 45 minutes every now and again?

By getting rid of the bells, my school has taken a step in the right direction. But bells are just the start of a revolution that needs to be much bigger. If Deanne ever finds her way to French, she might hear Victor Hugo's views on bells: "etourdir de grelots l'esprit qui veut penser" (to daze with bells the spirit that would think). Or, as she put it herself the other day: "I'm glad them bells is gone, Miss. They did my head in."

· Sabrina Broadbent is a teacher and novelist. Her second novel, A Boy's Guide to Track and Field, is published by Chatto & Windus at £11.99