Pershore High School is an academy in South Worcestershire for approximately 1100 students, aged 12 to 18. Before the school introduced the Learning Ambassadors programme (a joint initiative with Schools of Tomorrow (www.schoolsoftomorrow.org), student views were always valued as part of what was then known as the Leading on Learning strategy. Their opinions were gathered regularly through surveys that included questions based upon Local Authority and OFSTED guidelines. Groups of young people also met regularly with senior staff and governors to discuss issues and share their views.
A week before the end of the summer term of 2013 and in a sweltering thirty degrees of heat, the school underwent a scheduled Section 8 inspection. The outcome was positive (good with outstanding features), but the action points in the report gave further impetus to an existing desire to more fully involve students in their own learning. OFSTED’s key suggestions for improvement were:
Increase the proportion of outstanding teaching, so that all students make rapid progress, by making sure that:
- all teachers carefully check students’ understanding during lessons so that they are moved on to new tasks at the right time;
- students are given enough opportunities to discuss their learning during lessons
- teachers’ marking and feedback are of consistently high quality so that students understand exactly what they need to do to improve.
With this renewed impetus, we strongly believed that much more could be achieved by improving the quality of student feedback, particularly in relation to teaching and learning. The school recognised that by carefully involving students in formally assessing teaching and giving immediate and direct feedback to their teachers, higher standards and on-going improvement would be more likely.
With this in mind, the Learning Ambassador programme was introduced in November 2013. Under the leadership of co-ordinator, Dean Merrick, girls and boys from all year groups were recruited to become Learning Ambassadors (LAs). The initial number of pupils involved was 14, 8 girls and 6 boys. Teachers volunteered to have them observe, conduct interviews and give feedback about their lessons. We were aware that Learning Ambassadors had to be given expert training on the protocols and practices of lesson observations and effective feedback. In order that they were skilled in effectively relaying their own observations and the opinions of other students, we engaged the services of Ian and Hilary Wigston of Brightfield Consultancy (https://www.brightfield-consulting.com/). The aim was that Learning Ambassadors would be valuable sources of immediate, direct and confidential insight for teachers following an observed lesson. LA Kacper explains: ‘Students sum up all the aspects of the lesson and feedback to the teacher constructive criticism. The teacher takes this away and it allows them to improve their lessons in future. I find it really interesting to see what the teacher makes of our observations, as we are seeing it from a different perspective.’
It was decided that during a lesson, students would work in pairs to observe various aspects of the learning. This included the subject area, timeframe of the lesson, transitions, variety of activity, the layout of the classroom, and which students answered questions most frequently. Observers would look to see if there was a correlation between seating and involvement, and between engagement and learning. In the early part of the programme this was based upon a combination of Ferre Laevers’ emotional well-being and involvement scales (https://www.earlylearninghq.org.uk/earlylearninghq-blog/the-leuven-well-being-and-involvement-scales/) and the SSAT Engagement Profile and Scale (http://complexld.ssatrust.org.uk/project-resources/engagement-profile-scale.html). In addition, Learning Ambassadors looked at how far students understood what was expected of them and what was done by teachers to ensure this, before establishing the quality of feedback given to students. The observation days were termed Research Days and the students used a proforma entitled, ‘Student Researcher Information Collection’. LAs were asked to sketch the layout of the classroom and indicate student positioning using B/G to indicate gender. Every time a student made a verbal contribution to the lesson, observers marked responses onto a tally chart.