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READY, SET... TYPE! Leah Hamblett, deputy headmistress of Brighton College, extols the benefits of learning to touch type at school LEAH HAMBLETT
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his summer we introduced the teaching of a classroom skill that was long overdue. Touch typing. Whereas once upon a time in the last century, this incredibly useful ability was the preserve of the typing pool and office PAs, the march of progress and advent of the internet has transformed it into a crucial, time-saving skill that is seen as an essential asset in the jobs market. In order to do their schoolwork, every child at Brighton College uses at least one device a day, be it a smartphone, a tablet, a laptop or a PC or Mac. So why not help them do this more efficiently, both to help them now in their studies at school and in their future professional lives? The head decided to prioritise this. After all, would we teach children how to write without ever showing them how to hold a pen? Time and again, studies have shown that learning to touch type can save enormous amounts of time (some say three months’ worth in every year) – time that could be
“If you were an employer, wouldn’t you choose the candidate who meets all your criteria?” spent concentrating on the task at hand and being productive rather than hunting for keys. Research by Pitman shows that people who type with two fingers manage between 27 and 37 words a minute while someone trained to touch type can reach between 50 and 70 words a minute. Only a few years ago the TUC campaigned for touch typing to be taught at all schools; currently, schools across England can offer touch typing as a club activity but there is no government mandate to teach it.
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Considering our own scheme, we quickly realised the approaches for getting children to learn how to type without looking down had moved on dramatically since I was at school. Where then, I remember friends complaining after typing classes about the seemingly endless, dull lessons they had to sit through, now much research has been done on how best to learn to type at the speed of thought. We hired New Zealand expert June Perry to teach our year nines her unique method, which helps children learn the basics in hours. Ms Perry is well known in New Zealand for the thousands of proficient typists she has trained, using a visualisation technique which sees her students being able to look straight ahead as they type within hours of first meeting her. The feedback I have had from parents so far has been incredibly positive – they are thrilled that their children are learning such a practical skill. After all, in a world The essential skill of typing has come to Brighton College
where the productivity of a business depends on how fast things are done, if you were an employer looking to hire, wouldn’t you choose the candidate who meets all your criteria and can work on a computer at double the average speed of a non-trained typist? Like every other teacher, I am always pressed for time and always seem to be juggling a dozen administrative tasks with my classroom duties. It makes me very happy to think that a small adjustment we made to the year nine curriculum will have such a huge impact on those pupils’ working lives.
LEAH HAMBLETT Deputy headmistress Brighton College AUTUMN • WINTER 2017 | A B S O LU T E LY E D U C AT I O N | 97
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