Gold Coast education: Brisbane Catholic Education dumping desks for flexible classrooms

Forget the blackboard, rows of desks and hard backed seats, these Gold Coast schools are catering to modern learning in a new way.

FORGET the blackboard, rows of desks and hard backed seats, these Gold Coast schools are catering to modern learning in a new way.

As part of a major policy shift by Brisbane Catholic Education, Gold Coast’s catholic schools are doing away with the traditional classrooms and opting for more flexible, subject specific spaces in order to enhance learning.

In what may seem to be a ‘new aged’ twist on the classroom Aquinas College Ashmore is one of the many schools to have transformed its business class into boardrooms, maths rooms into beanbag filled learning centres and IT departments into genius bars (just like Apple).

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Gone are the days of the desk, these kids are living in a hot desk world. Roma Tuivasa 15 and Ivana Loleiso 15 working on their laptops at Aquinas College with teacher Craig Heufel. Picture Glenn Hampson

Teacher and STEM Curriculum Leader Craig Heufel said it was important classrooms adapted to the way children learnt, not the other way around.

“No classroom is best for one child, a flexible classroom allows for us to accommodate to the lesson and the facilitation of learning.”

“In a room like the STEM lab we can use break out sessions for design, create a darker space for other work, or use the beanbags if we are collaborating.”

“It is very Google,” he said.

“It is our role to prepare students for the next stop, their careers, and that should be through self directed learning, which is what these spaces encourage.”

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Gold Coast Schools are modernising their classrooms as part of a major overhaul from Brisbane catholic education. Picture Glenn Hampson

All BCE schools have received a portion of the $4.5 million Revitalisation of Learning spaces Grant provided in late 2018.

According to a BCE spokespersons the initative also helps to reduce anxiety and boredom.

“Learning spaces have evolved considerably beyond the lecture-style, rigid formats of the past,” the spokesman said.

“The program also sought to provide schools with spaces which promote collaborative inquiry, improved engagement in learning and active participation. Student, teacher and parent or community member engagement in daily school routines is evolving.”