In a typical English High Street a hundred years ago, you would have seen a wide range of small specialist shops, selling everything from cooking apples to curtain hooks. Grocers, ironmongers and haberdashers would each ply their trade on their own premises, offering a personal, expert service.
These days, though, most of things these shops used to sell are provided by large supermarkets on the edge of town. History has shown us that - given the choice - most of us opt to buy our goods from supermarkets, even though we may grumble about their faceless uniformity. The twin issues of cost and convenience outweigh any nostalgia people had for small family shopkeepers. People demand a one-stop shop.
Read this case study, which should again be familiar to most teachers.
Terry's Morning - Part 2
Terry has 20 minutes before his OFSTED meeting and decides to use his time productively. He has plenty of time to go back to the faculty office, and phone the anxious parent. Then, he thinks, he can pop across to the reprographics room, get a copy exam paper and put it in his colleague's pigeonhole. Then he can call in at the school office and get a Risk Assessment form on the way, and maybe collect his laptop from the IT Office. Of course, this doesn't happen. In the faculty office, Terry's phone call takes longer than he expected. He gets half way to the reprographics room before a student intercepts him with questions about exam arrangements. Terry is late for the OFSTED meeting.
Terry's morning travels are similar in principle to an early 20th Century high-street, visiting specialist outlets which provide a personal service: photocopying, IT services, stationery, or telephones. This is, unfortunately, true of many English schools. In older schools, the layout demands quite extended journey times between office locations, and this time adds up very quickly. The ideal situation - the equivalent to a supermarket for office services - rarely exists. However, with careful planning a teacher can ensure that most of their non-teaching work is done in batches, in a relaxed well equipped environment.
You need to make sure that you understand the layout of your own school well - ideally take some rough measurements about how long it takes to go to and fro. If you don't do this, you risk - like Terry - spending a considerable portion of your scarce 'free periods' wandering from A to B around the schoo..