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The Signature/NISPLAN Project. Learning Intention. to support the Signature/NISPLAN project by sharing my school’s practice with others. A Quality Education For All. St Paul’s – “Perpetual Motion”. Using The Power of SIMS A ll the stored information is “joined up”.
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Learning Intention • to support the Signature/NISPLAN project by sharing my school’s practice with others.
Using The Power of SIMS • All the stored information is “joined up”. • For example, when you select a student, as well as being able to see all their personal and contact details, you can link to a range of other information about them – attendance, assessment and exam data, SEN, timetable and curriculum. • Assessment Manager links with the timetable and allows you to input and organise data by teaching groups and other school groups, such as by special educational need, as well as registration and national curriculum (NC) year groups. • It is possible to make interpretations about different cohorts and use this to inform practices and interventions to improve all aspects of school.
For us,data is about increasing our understanding of students to improve students’ attainment.
Data Supporting Effective Target Setting A measure of students’ prior attainment on entry to the school/ or any subsequent transition An understanding of students’ potential A system for predicting students’ subsequent attainment A system for monitoring students’ progress throughout a key stage A system for mentoring students who appear not to be reaching their potential
Which students are working at their ability level? Which students are “overachieving”? (working at a level above their ability level) Which students are underachieving? (working at a level below their ability level) Identifying Areas for Improvement
Using Data within Assessment Manager Effectively • Enables identification of underperforming students and • Targeting of intervention support appropriate to promote accelerated progress towards age-related expectations
We have found that effective intervention, targeted on the right students at the right time can make a real difference to progress and help narrow attainment gaps and improve the progress of disadvantaged and vulnerable students.
Key Stage 3 Intervention Strategies For Target Pupils, 2012-2013 • LS: Literacy Support - 2 2:1 sessions x 40 minutes • Target Class: 08…; LS –ATC: Literacy Support Across The Curriculum • English • Irish • IT • Maths • Technology • Science • RP: Reading Partnership - 3 individual sessions x 20 minutes
EAL: English as an Additional Language 2 individual sessions + 1 group – 40 minutes • EAL RP: English as an Additional Language Reading Partnership 3 individual sessions – 20 minutes • WAT: Write Away Together 1 2:1 session – 40 minutes 1 4:1 session – 40 minutes 1 whole class session - 40 minutes
Target Pupils – EAL: English as an Additional LanguageReading Partnership
Proactive • We use the data to raise questions about strategies to reverse underachievement. • We use the data to provides evidence to support decisions as to where to focus resources and teaching.
“Homemade is better than the tin…” Our Literacy Support is always evolving and reactive as we plan and identify further action to overcome barriers to attainment and progress, year on year: • Building capacity; • Anchoring interventions/new interventions - Feedback/Feedforward; • Securing “best value”.
Teacher 5 Teacher 4 Teacher 3 Teacher 1 Teacher 2 Setting Targets at Whole School Level Targets included in School Development Plan Standards V.P. collates Results Analysis, Departmental Targets and GCSE Predictions for current Year 12 cohort HOD meets with Senior Leadership Team in September to review departmental performance and discuss target setting for the academic year
A Word Of Caution In 1985 the STAR project in Tennessee showed, as demonstrated by a randomized controlled trial, that students in the experiment’s smaller classes performed better at K-3 grade levels than did students in the larger classes.
It also showed that minority and inner-city children gained two or three times as much from reduced class sizes as did their white and non-urban peers. • Ten years later the state of California had problems with its early school grades, finding itself at the bottom of the 39 states in the 1994 National Assessment of Education Progress.
Reducing class sizes fitted with popular opinion, with common sense and the Tennessee RCT gave crucial evidence that it worked. In hindsight, of course, it worked “there” but NOT in California.
California spent $1 billion, rising to $1.6 billion, on establishing half-size classes throughout the state within a year. However the positive results expected did not follow. Rigorous evaluation by 2002 found: - no conclusive link between reducing class size and the achievement of students. - no improvement for disadvantaged children.
Why? • The Californian policymakers had not done an effective horizontal search. In Tennessee, only schools that had available space to increase the number of classes were involved. • In California, with so many schools involved, there was often insufficient spare space and so it was taken from other school activities – special needs, music and arts, athletics and child care programmes.
In Tennessee there was no shortage of qualified teachers to staff the reduced size classes, but in California an additional 12,000 teachers were hired quickly and many of these were unqualified. • Moreover by limiting other school activities the policy had some negative effects on the school population.
“What Works…?” “What works” is an over-simplification. There are no silver bullets. The important question to ask is: “How did … work in your school setting?” Then we have to reflect and ask ourselves: “Would … work in my school setting?” There are proven interventions but they have to be tailored to our individual and ever changing contexts.
Key Questions • Where are we now? • Where do we want to be? • How do we get there? • What do we need to do?
“Frame The Challenge” It is all too easy to establish a need and then start implementation of an intervention strategy without really considering the full scope and impact. DECIDE on: • the scope; • the scale and • the success criteria.
Managing Change Vision Consensus Skills Incentives Resources Action Plan
KNOW Your Studentsto “CONNECT” • Their prior attainment and experiences? • What motivates and discourages them? • Their preferred learning style? Visual Auditory Kinaesthetic
Five Levels of Literacy- The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): 1. People with very poor skills. 2. People who can deal only with simple material. 3. Roughly the skill level required for successful secondary school completion and college entry. 4 & 5. People who demonstrate command of "higher-order information processing skills".
Of the 16 – 65 population in N.I, on average: 24% perform at Level 1 ( the lowest ability range ) 30% at Level 2 31% at Level 3 15% at Level 4/5 ( the highest ability range)
Our highest levels of unemployment are among people with the poorest modern literacy skills – those unable to understand dosage instructions on a packet of medicine. The OECD has found that people here are less able to work out sales bargains, follow a recipe or use loan interest charts than those in most other countries surveyed.
The OECD defines functional literacy not as the ability to read and write but as: "whether a person is able to understand and employ printed information in daily life, at home, at work and in the community".
2020 PfG Targets 70% of students gaining 5+ GCSEs A*-C, including English and Maths 65% of FSME students gaining 5+ GCSEs, including English and Maths 95% of students gaining GCSE A* - G in English and Maths
More Importantly - Beyond The Classroom… • One fifth of school-leavers are so illiterate and innumerate they struggle to cope with challenges of everyday life. • Greg Brookes, Professor of Education at Sheffield stated these school-leavers lacked the skills "to deal confidently with many of the mathematical challenges of contemporary life" and had a lower standard of literacy than is "needed to partake fully in employment, family life, citizenship and to enjoy reading for its own sake". • ‘The Guardian’, May 2010
“If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the beginning.” Mahatma Gandhi
Sinéad McKenna, Head of English and Literacy; smckenna844@stpauls.bessbrook.ni.sch.uk
