Leadership

Beyond Gadgets: Edtech To Help Close The Opportunity Gap

Education technology can help transform outcomes for disadvantaged pupils but is being neglected, according to this report from the public services think-tank, Reform. The paper highlights the different areas where EdTech could support disadvantaged pupils and the mechanisms for enabling schools to embrace the opportunities offered by technology.

Reform analysis shows how using video tutoring apps instead of one-to-one tutoring could allow 300,000 additional pupils to make ‘significant progress’ at school. With the right input from schools and DfE, technology has the potential to narrow the opportunity gap.

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      string(5777) "n CONTENTSEvery Child UPDATE nwww.teachingtimes.com DocumentHighlights‹‹ PREVIOUS PAGE n  NEXT PAGE ››This research by the Nuffield Foundation investigates how participation in out-of-school activities varies for childrenfrom different backgrounds and how this relates to outcomes at age 11.The study includes analysis of the Millennium Cohort Study as well as case studies in primary schools to explore the relationshipbetween engagement in out-of-school activities and attainment. It highlights the importance of afterschool clubs for increasingdisadvantaged children’s access to activities and explores what it is about how these clubs are structured and delivered that helps toengage less affluent families.The aim of the project was to ascertain whether out-of-school activities have particular benefits for disadvantaged children. Oneaspect of this is the extent to which disadvantaged children access activities of this kind – findings show that they are less likely thanother children to access many out-of-school activities including sports clubs, extra tuition and music lessons. Afterschool clubs arethe exception to this, with MCS analysis showing that by age 11, there is no difference in take-up between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged children. This finding suggests that schools have had some success in overcoming the barriers to participation thatThe value ofafterschoolclubs fordisadvantagedchildrenhttp://www.teachingtimes.comn CONTENTSEvery Child UPDATE nwww.teachingtimes.com DocumentHighlights‹‹ PREVIOUS PAGE n  NEXT PAGE ››prevent disadvantaged children taking up other out-of-schoolactivities.Teachers, parents and children identified a range of positiveoutcomes from participation in afterschool clubs, includingincreases in confidence, self-esteem and fitness, as well asproviding opportunities for new experiences, socialising andenjoyment. It is hoped that this analysis will shed further lighton the role out-of-school activities may have in narrowingthe attainment gap, and provide some indication of whetherschools should consider investing in afterschool clubs toimprove academic outcomes for disadvantaged children.Key findings n By age 11, participation in afterschool clubs did not vary byeconomic disadvantage; 31 per cent of both disadvantagedand more affluent children attended afterschool clubs at least weekly. n In comparison, disadvantaged children were less likely to participate in other activities outside school – sports activities (61 per centto 78 per cent among more affluent children) extra tuition (18 per cent to 24 per cent) and music lessons (7 per cent compared to 29per cent). n Facilitators to take-up of afterschool clubs included low cost, ease of access, flexibility, familiarity with the environment, choice andvariety of activities, and positive relationships with club staff. n Barriers to take-up included limited availability, provision that did not meet the needs of children with SEN and a perception thatsome parents’ own negative experiences of school may discourage them from engaging with afterschool clubs or perceiving thereto be any value in participating. n Taking part in afterschool clubs was thought to have a range of positive benefits. These included providing access to enrichingnew experiences, providing opportunities for children to succeed, fostering self-esteem and confidence, supporting the academiccurriculum, improving fitness, providing opportunities to socialise, as well as opportunities for relaxation and enjoyment.More information › Read the full report: ‘The value of afterschool clubs for disadvantaged children’.http://www.teachingtimes.comhttp://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/sites/default/files/files/resbr3-final.pdfPlease return to: Subscriptions, Imaginative Minds,309 Scott House, Gibb Street, Digbeth, BirminghamB9 4DTVat Reg No: 781 6719 94NameJob TitleDelivery addressPost codeTel. no.Email address(Mandatory for emailed bulletins)■ Official Order No.I enclose:■ Cheque £                 payable to Imaginative Minds.■ Credit Card  (Please give card address if different to deliveryaddress)Card nameCard addressCard No.Start date                                            Expiry dateIsuue No                                             Security NoSignaturePrint nameFor Libraries, Universities & Trade orders, pleasetelephone 0121 224 7599 as different prices apply.Call the Subscriptions Orderline0121 224 7599Fax back this form 0121 224 7598School prices include whole school site licence Every Child Journal & Every Child Update Service(12 months online access)Every Child Journal is a publication that uniquely providessolutions to help professionals across the education, healthand care sectors improve the life chances of vulnerablechildren.Plus, Every Child Update is an emailed newsletterfor practitioners to help keep up-to-date with issuessurrounding vulnerable children. 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Special Needs

Document highlights: The value of afterschool clubs for disadvantaged children

15 Jun 2016

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      string(268) "Vulnerable children, including those in care and those with SEND are particularly likely to underperform at school. This DfE report recognises the extra help these children need and pledges a review of the ‘children in need’ system.
Leadership Briefing 12.05 (137)"
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      string(268) "Vulnerable children, including those in care and those with SEND are particularly likely to underperform at school. This DfE report recognises the extra help these children need and pledges a review of the ‘children in need’ system.
Leadership Briefing 12.05 (137)"
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      string(5437) "The social mobility strategy provides a focus on closing the education gap between rich and poor children. However, it will be a challenge for the Government to deliver a step change in social mobility in the face of on-going cuts to benefits and public services, and the projected dramatic rise in child poverty over the next five years. To be effective, this strategy must form part of a wider cross-Government commitment to a country that works for all children. Main Points:Identify and spread evidence-based home learning environment programmes that support early language development. Form a partnership with Public Health England to enable health visitors and early years practitioners to identify and support children’s early speech, language and communication needs. Provide £50 million funding to create more high-quality school-based nursery provision for disadvantaged children. Identify communities with low take-up of early education – particularly for disadvantaged children – and provide bespoke support to improve this. Develop and deliver a comprehensive offer of support to improve early language and literacy – especially for disadvantaged pupils. Spread best practice to where it is needed, including from high performing local authorities to underperforming areas. Improve the outcome goals in reception, with a particular focus on reducing burdens and strengthening literacy and numeracy in the early years. Identify and share best practice on what should be taught in reception year. Ensure the accountability regime gives full credit to what teachers and leaders achieve in challenging schools. Ensure that the consequences of accountability are about securing the right support at the right time, rather than simply imposing punitive sanctions or structural change. Introduce smarter incentives to train, attract and retain the best teachers in challenging areas. Provide £30 million in tailored support to schools with disadvantaged intakes that are facing significant recruitment and retention challenges. Provide an enhanced offer of early career support by strengthening qualified teacher status (QTS), and support clearer career pathways and improved professional development for all teachers. Transform the quality of professional development available in challenging areas, by investing over £115 million in evidence-based approaches. Prioritise the growth and coverage of high quality MATs and Teaching Schools in challenging areas. Provide £300 million of targeted, evidence-based school improvement support for underperforming schools across the country. Increase access to the most effective curriculum support in more challenging areas and schools.Extending the reach of the free school programme to benefit more areas of educational underperformance. Make sure our system can benefit from the full range of expertise from across the education sector. Prioritise work to understand the needs of the most vulnerable children and how best to improve their outcomes. Transform the quality of Alternative Provision (AP) and special provision. Ensure that disadvantaged pupils can access the core academic subjects that unlock opportunity. Spread evidence-based approaches to supporting disadvantaged pupils. Young people who currently choose a technical route face a fragmented and confusing system.Young people who have fallen behind their peers by age 16 then find it harder to catch up and have options shut off. Young people from less advantaged backgrounds are less likely to enter high quality higher education. Actions:Introduce the first T levels from 2020.Review higher technical education at level 4 and 5. Incentivise more employers to provide quality apprenticeships through the apprenticeship levy. Develop and increase the take-up of degree apprenticeships.Develop a further education improvement support structure. Invest in further education college leaders to raise standards. Establish new Institutes of Technology. Invest the resources and capacity needed to make further education colleges centres of excellence for maths and English. Introduce a new transition year, with English and maths as a key component, for 16-year-olds who are not ready for more advanced academic or technical study or employment. Ensure higher education providers spend their access and participation funding effectively, targeting low participation areas. Improve transparency of widening participation practices to encourage applications to the most selective higher education institutions. Ensure every young person has at least seven encounters with employers during their education. Improve the quality of careers advice in school.Improve the advice available outside of education to young people and adults, including those who need the most support. Provide an Essential Life Skills programme in targeted areas, alongside a national mentoring programme. Introduce a National Retraining Scheme.  Improve adult basic skill provision. Provide more flexible provision to develop advanced skills. WEB LINK Unlocking Talent, Fulfilling Potential KeywordsSocial mobility, talent, potential, SEND, vulnerable children, underperform, children in need, child poverty, best practice"
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Leadership

Unlocking Talent, Fulfilling Potential

3 Jan 2018

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      string(5724) "Between 2015/16 and 2016/17, the number of permanent exclusions dramatically increased across state-funded primary, secondary, and special schools by c.15% to 7,720 – around 40 permanent exclusions per day.Two years on, in 2018/19 the number of permanent exclusions remains just as high, with the number of fixed term exclusions increasing even further from 410,800 to 438,300 – an increase of 27,500.The most common reason for exclusions tends to be persistent disruptive behaviour, with speculation factors like improving league table performance or schools being ill equipped to deal with the most difficult students also playing a part. The impact of any form of exclusion, managed move or off rolling on a child’s education is profound, lowering attainment at 11 and 16, limiting life choices and chances (Education Data Lab, 2019)While the reasons for this jump in numbers are far from clear, COVID-19 has made tackling this issue critical as schools plan to return in September. This is especially true given reports (NFER, 2020) indicate that only one third of disadvantaged students have meaningfully participated in learning during partial school closures.We should not despair though. An Achievement for All (AfA) partner school, Lyng Hall School in Coventry, shows what can be done with the right support. 100 % of the 700+ children attending the 11-18 school have remained fully engaged during COVID-19. All the more remarkable given that the school population includes 47 first languages, withover 50% of pupils being eligible for Free School Meals. The staff, parents, and pupils are an inspiration.Too often, taking advantage of external support and expertise is too often the exception, rather than the rule, when it comes to our education system.Four pillars of the projectThe school’s response is based on the four pillars – improved family engagement; levelling up opportunity by closing the disadvantage attainment gap; building emotional strength and resilience in children; and improving digital literacy so online learning is more accessible and meaningful.These pillars not only acknowledge an anxious or angry mind simply will not learn, but they also recognise that a school cannot be an island. Engaging parents and bringing in external help from AfA’s expert coaches has been at the heart of navigating the toughest period in education for a generation. Indeed, improving digital skills elements has become especially important to allow as many pupils as possible to take advantage of the DfE-backed Oak National Academy.In practical terms, the AfA model is a partnership with schools, early years, and post-16 settings that brings together expert coaches, school leaders and teachers, parents and carers, children and young people, and other agencies when needed, to improve literacy, numeracy, attendance and behaviour for vulnerable and disadvantaged pupils. In this partnership, AfA brings an external perspective and decades of experience to make sure staff and school leaders feel both supported but also challenged to improve their school. Importantly, AfA ensures parents and carers feel valued and part of the process, with our expertise ensuring pupils feel that they belong, they can learn, and they can achieve their potential. The evidence for the impact is inspiring as it is profound.A proven modelThe AfA model doesn’t just work as a reaction to the pandemic, however. In 2018, the number children who had been the subject of a fixed-term exclusion decreased by 70% in just one year in the schools that were supported by AfA. We also do all we can to keep the cost per pupil for the programme as low as physically possible. On average, this is just £50 per student per term, while the savings of at least £15,000 per year per pupil putting this into stark contrast.If rolled out across England, this translates as a potential saving of at least £116 million pounds per year at the current rate of permanent exclusions. This of course doesn’t consider the immense social and educational benefits of fewer exclusions, especially in left behind areas across the country.Our belief therefore is that every child, irrespective of their background, challenge or need, deserves the right not to be anxious, to achieve their potential, and lead a fulfilling and happy life. The challenge remains, schools need more external support than ever, and parents and carers need to be better included in their child’s education.There are solutions, of which AfA is just one, but if these solutions are to reach as many pupils as possible, the government must include charities in plans for getting schools open in September.Case StudyI am Ashmal, I have never been excluded from Lyng Hall SchoolHi, I am Ashmal, I am 14 years old, attending Lyng Hall Academy in Coventry. My headteacher tells me that the school is a truly comprehensive academy. Teachers have also said that my friends and I are a delight to teach! I know that I am very grateful to all of them.I joined the school in Year 7. During my first year the schoolteachers supported me, but I struggled with my attitude and behaviour. By the end of the year I had 389 negative codes (behaviour technique that begins with a positive). I was really bad, but my teachers decided to keep me in the school with an action plan, that has worked!What happened during the next four years has been amazing. My teachers, headteacher and, my family have saved me from fixed term or permanent exclusion. I was difficult, hard to understand. I wanted to do well but was angry and didn’t know"
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Blogs

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11 Aug 2020

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      string(5860) "way to bring about learning: which teaching techniques such as lecturing, explaining, modelling, exploring and which resources such as textbook, worksheets, internet, technology and games will bring about the desired learning. The teacher’s expertise in questioning underpins all of this. The central premise remains the teacher’s skills in being familiar with a range of pedagogical tools and knowing when and how to apply each one. This leads to the issue of teacher training.Our most effective programmes in the GEC are showing that for teacher training to work, it has to be ongoing and in the classroom, alongside the teacher. Projects found that coaching a teacher, observing and providing constructive feedback on how they engage meaningfully with students to promote learning, leads to much more impactful teacher development. Projects that encouraged teachers to reflect, on their own and with their peers, on practices that emphasised the inclusion of girls and girls with disability in lessons were more successful in improving learning outcomes. This, combined with a focus on AfL with the emphasis on checking girls’ understanding, led to better learning (GEC forthcoming paper). The projects that were the most successful were explicit in developing teachers’ subject specific pedagogy in literacy and numeracy. A strong feature of the best projects was the involvement of government officials in being part of the training and monitoring system, developing ownership of the process. Another aspect of AfL which projects are finding works in improving learning outcomes is catch up classes, where outside of their normal lessons, girls can either catch up on missed work or consolidate their understanding of work covered in class. These, often girls-only settings, enable them to work at their own pace, to ask questions to deepen understanding and to support each other in their learning. Furthermore, these classes and clubs provide an opportunity for girls to actively shape their school experience, developing leadership skills through articulating their needs, exerting their rights and being part of the decision-making process. Some projects applied the AfL lens to their own training programmes, seeking teachers’ feedback and using it to develop their programmes further. However, the link between the precise gaps in students’ learning and teacher training to address these particular gaps was not always explicit enough.ConclusionInitial findings from the first phase of the GEC shows that features of effective teaching and teacher development are similar in developing and developed country contexts. To improve learning, teachers’ ability to teach the subject needs to be developed, not just generic teaching approaches. Developing teachers’ skills is a human-centred endeavour with the greatest payoff achieved from working alongside teachers in their classrooms and facilitating them to learn from each other. AfL plays a strong role in improving learning outcomes, and while data is being used in creative ways there is a need to do more in order to adapt teaching to the gaps that students’ exhibit in their learning. In the second phase of the GEC, we are evaluating the quality of teaching in addition to the quality of learning. This will provide information on where learning has improved and which particular teaching practices led to this improvement and where gaps remain. This in turn should help us to find more effective ways of helping students to learn effectively and fulfill their potential. This is a goal common to educators across the world, despite the barriers students face, and sometimes because of the barriers they face.Asyia Kazmi is the Programme Director for the Girls’ Education Challenge in PwC. References        Black, P. & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning: Principles, policy & practice. Assessment in Education 5(1): 7-74.        Black, P. & Wiliam, D. (2001). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. s.l.:Bera.        Black, P. (2015). Formative assessment – an optimistic but incomplete vision. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice 22(1): 161-177.        Coffey. (2017). Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/676532/GEC-EM-SCW-Endline-Evaluation-Report-final.pdf        Coleman, M. & Earley, P. (2005). Leadership and management in education: Cultures, change and context. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.         DFID (2013). Education position paper: Improving learning, expanding opportunities, London: DFID.        Nag, S., Chiat, S., Torgerson, C. & Snowling, M. J. (2014) Literacy, Foundation Learning and Assessment in Developing Countries. London: Department for International Development.        Pritchett, L. & Banerji, R. (2013). Schooling is not eEducation: Using assessment to change the politics of non-learning. Washington DC: Centre for Global Development.        Pritchett, L. & Beatty, A. (2012). The negative aspect of over ambitious curricula in developing countries. Washington DC: Centre for Global Development.         Singh, R. & Sarkar, S. (2012). Teaching quality counts: How student outcomes relate to quality of teaching in private and public schools in India. London: Young Lives.        Watkins, K. (2012). Holding out for the super voucher: Kevin Watkins responds to Justin Sandefur on private versus public education. Available at:"
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Special Needs

Meaningful Assessment at the Margins

10 Sep 2018