Leadership

Why Closing the Word Gap Matters: Oxford Language Report

This Oxford University Press report reveals evidence of a significant word gap which is adversely affecting children’s learning. Teachers surveyed also believe the issue is becoming an increasingly disruptive trend.

The Oxford Language Report reveals that the word gap remains stubbornly high throughout primary and secondary schools. This is significant because whilst language development is a key focus in early years education, relatively little research has been conducted into language deficit as children progress through secondary education. Additionally, whilst this issue may historically have been considered to primarily affect specific student groups, such as those receiving free school meal (FSM) funding or those with English as an additional language(EAL), the teachers who took part in this survey were most likely to say that vocabulary deficit is a general problem and is not specific to any one group of pupils.

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      string(3863) "Pupil Premium attainment gap at Sea View was entirely welcome, it was not unexpected – rather, it simply suggests that the L2L programme at Sea View achieved what it set out to achieve.The findings presented here provide a persuasive case for extending this approach to other schools. In the last year, three of the original learning skills teachers from Sea View have set up a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to helping develop these practices in schools more widely. This is not an off-the-shelf approach – each school is different – and so we approach each school differently. If you would like to find out more about the learning skills approach visit:https://rethinking-ed.org/about/ James Mannion is an associate at the London Centre for Leadership in Learning, UCL Institute of Education, and Director of Praxis Education CIC.References Notes1. 	Aynsley, S., Brown, C. and Sebba, J., 2012. RSA Opening Minds: an evaluative review. London: RSA..2.	Dignath, C., Buettner, G., & Langfeldt, H.-P. (2008). How can primary school students learn self-regulated learning strategies most effectively? A meta-analysis of self-regulation training programmes. Educational Research Review, 3, 101–129.3.	Downey, C., Byrne, J. & Souza, A. (2013). Leading and managing the competence-based curriculum: conscripts, volunteers and champions at work within the departmentalised environment of the secondary school’ The Curriculum Journal, 23(4), pp. 369-388.4. 	Flavell, J.H. (1976) Metacognitive aspects of problem-solving. In Resnick LB (Ed.), The Nature of Intelligence, Hillsdale NJ, Erlbaum.5.	Hattie, J., Biggs, J., & Purdie, N. (1996). Effects of Learning Skills Interventions on Student Learning: A Meta-Analysis. Review of Educational Research, Vol. 66, No. 2, pp. 99-136.6.	Higgins, S., Wall, K., Baumfield, V., Hall, E., Leat, D., Moseley, D., et al. (2007). Learning to Learn in Schools Phase 3 Evaluation: Final Report. London: Campaign for Learning.7.	James, M., Black, P., McCormick, R., Pedder, D. and Wiliam, D. (2006) Learning How to Learn, in Classrooms, Schools and Networks: aims, design and analysis. Research Papers in Education, 21, 2, 101-118.8.	Mannion J, & Mercer N (2016) Learning to learn: improving attainment, closing the gap at Key Stage 3. The Curriculum Journal, 27, pp.246-271.9.	Moseley, D., Baumfield, V., Elliott, J., Gregson, M., Higgins, S., Miller, J., and Newton, D.P. (2005) Frameworks for Thinking: a handbook for teaching and learning, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.10. Nisbet J & Shucksmith J (1984) The Seventh Sense: reflections on learning to learn. Edinburgh, Scottish Council for Research in Education.11. Sutton Trust-EEF (2015). Toolkit of Strategies to Improve Learning: Summary for Schools Spending the Pupil Premium. Accessed 7.7.15 at https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/toolkit/toolkit-a-z/.12.Wall, K., Hall, E., Baumfield, V., Higgins, S., Rafferty, V., Remedios, R., Thomas, U., Tiplady, L., Towler, C. and Woolner, P. (2010) Learning to Learn in Schools Phase 4 and Learning to Learn in Further Education Projects: Annual Report, London: Campaign for Learning13.Watkins, C. (2001) Learning about Learning enhances Performance. London, Institute of Education National School Improvement Network (Research Matters series No 13). 14.Watkins, C. (2010) Learning, Performance and Improvement. London: INSI-IoE. 15.Whitebread, D. (2013) Self-regulation in young children: its characteristics and the role of communication and language in its early development. Self-regulation and dialogue in primary classrooms. BJEP Monograph Series, 11, 10 , 25–44.16.Willingham, D. (2007). Critical thinking: Why is it so hard to teach? American Educator, 31(2), 8–19."
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Leadership

Rediscover Learning to Learn

20 Jun 2017

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      string(5672) "the whole child: where we value and promote development of emotional and social competencies, mental health and wellbeing alongside academic attainment.The UK education system is one of increasingly high stakes, low trust accountability for schools combined with funding decreasing in real terms.6 Cuts are forcing decisions on what schools can deliver for their young people and creating a high-pressure environment for pupils, teachers and leaders. Critically, given accountability incentives, the first thing to go is perceived ‘nice to haves’; those things not being focused on in measurement and data. Often these are activities which develop social and emotional skills and wellbeing, such as extra-curricular activities, pastoral care or beyond-curriculum learning. Head teachers have spoken to the FEA about the ‘need to be “brave” in order to continue to deliver what is best for young people, in spite of the system’. Added to this, cuts to early years and community services outside of schools are placing increasing pressure for schools to ‘fill the gap’ in extra-curricular and social and emotional development for young people.The Fair Education Alliance argues that this is resulting in a systemic gap in the development of essential social and emotional skills in young people, particularly impacting the most disadvantaged pupils.This is not an either/or between academic attainment and wellbeing. Social and emotional competencies are needed to be an effective learner and are essential as protective factors for good mental health. These skills are critical for young people to be happy, healthy, economically productive members of society. It is essential that they are valued alongside attainment. Moreover, these ‘soft skills’ are being recognised by industry as increasingly important for the future workforce as our business members attest. David Soanes, UK Country Head for UBS, writes in our Report Card that ‘In a society where what is needed for the world of work is undergoing rapid and dramatic change, businesses must contribute a great deal to the thinking and practice of personal and skills development for students. For all these reasons the work of the FEA remains more relevant than ever.’We continue to support the Skills Builder Framework, a shared language for skills development in schools, and are committed to highlighting, sharing and disseminating best practice in providing ‘rounded education’ across school networks and practitioners, so leaders can learn from each other and increase adoption of this type of approach to education. We will be working with the Every Child Included in Education campaign on this alongside their priorities to promote kindness and wellbeing and increase recognition of parents, carers and wider communities.Third, we need joined up support for all post-16 destination routes: to give every child a choice about their future. All young people should have the knowledge, skills and awareness to make the right decisions about their next step after completing compulsory education and have fair access to the many different routes, including further education, employment-based training or higher education. Currently the landscape around careers advice and guidance is complex. Circa £800m investment is made in widening participation and access to higher education and there are a wide range of different employability initiatives to help young people learn about the world of work. However, this advice is fragmented and comes from multiple different sources. It is also not consistently getting to every child in every school; there is a ‘lottery’ effect of whether employers/universities happen to be working with schools in that area. Importantly, advice on non-HE routes (e.g. further education, technical education or apprenticeship routes) have been significantly less prominent.In this last year, we welcomed government policy for a dedicated careers leader in every school. However, there has been concern about the practicality of this, given the complexity described above, coupled with stretched capacity in schools. Schools and careers advisors are being asked to navigate and provide support to students on an ever-changing world of work and the endless education/career pathways available to young people, on top of an already significant workload. In this context, young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, are not being equipped with the awareness of opportunities available to them beyond school or the tools to help them reach those destinations – with the result that those from disadvantaged backgrounds are still six times as likely to be recorded as not in education, training or employment after age 16.We want to see more collaboration between employers and post-16 education providers in the way they provide information to schools about the range of options available and how they are interconnected. Best practice in this area has been set out by the eight Gatsby benchmarks,7 and we are committed enabling schools and leaders to implement this and learn from each other. 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Inclusion

Imagining the Closing of the Gap

4 Dec 2018

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      string(4373) "Mastery since 2013, a Year 4 class were busy using pictograms to solve problems.  Children worked in mixed pairs throughout the lesson.  It was not evident from their purposeful work and interactions which children had SEND.  A pupil with significant hearing loss was seen to be supported by the carefully structured talk with her partner, who provided a good model of language. All pupils argued, justified and explained their conjectures using sophisticated language.Concrete resourcesBecause children are expected to use multiple representations to deepen their understanding of number, pupils with SEND are able to select resources they feel comfortable with.  They are able to show visually what might previously have been an abstract representation of number, use jottings or pictures to draw it, as well as write out the corresponding equation. This helps to make connections.  When working with a child recently in Year 3, who was having difficulty using a number line to count on in multiples of 50, a bead string was used to support learning. Each single bead was given a value of 10, and because the child could quickly and easily move the beads into groups of five tens, she was  able to apply this knowledge to the more abstract number line. Of course, we would also argue that concrete resources are for all children, not just those with SEND, but the availability of concrete resources for SEND pupils in particular, increases their confidence levels.Developing mathematical thinkingMathematics Mastery works with teachers to develop not only their mathematical subject knowledge, but also to change their mindset about what pupils can achieve.  Teachers who previously had been sceptical of the capability of children with SEND often tell us that the carefully structured tasks, with an emphasis on reasoning and explanation, develop mathematical thinking in children who they would previously not have considered able to explain their answers in this way. Teachers and parents comment how quickly this enables all children to begin to talk more confidently about mathematics.  One parent told me: “My son’s school has been using the Maths Mastery approach for over two years now. Over this time, I have noticed that he is able to articulate his thoughts as he works through a problem. He understands the difference between terms such as ‘estimating’ and ‘calculating’. Often, he is able to explain why he arrived at a particular solution. I have also seen him make connections between different topics and build on the knowledge he has to approach a more challenging problem. For example, he can use his knowledge of the 2 and 10 times tables to calculate what 12×2 is and explain how he arrived at the answer.”Conclusion Mathematics Mastery partner schools report increased engagement in pupils, greater confidence and flexibility with understanding of number. This is evident from our annual visits to partner schools, from talking to pupils, teachers and parents. We see an increase in pupil attainment at KS1 (no Mathematics Mastery school yet has gone all the way through to the end of KS2) and in Year One, as measured by standardised tests. But results are not everything. It is my belief that our carefully thought-out approach to the teaching of primary mathematics is beginning to have real and lasting benefit to children’s deep understanding of mathematics, to get them to understand connections between different areas of learning and to develop greater confidence in their own mathematical ability, no matter what their prior attainment.  Seeing the approach in action means seeing children who previously would have been disengaged from mathematics, or who believed they were ‘no good’, gain confidence.It is best summed up by a quote from a Year One teacher, in her third year of teaching mathematics in this way, who said:“All groups of children approach mathematics more confidently and have a better understanding of what they are doing and why. It is wonderful to see so many children at all levels so enthusiastic to participate.”Helen Williams is Director of Primary at Mathematics Mastery.References1. Drury, H. (2014) Mastering Mathematics: Teaching to transform achievement, Oxford: OUP "
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Mathematics

Mathematics Mastery

20 Jun 2017

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      string(5779) "In staff rooms across the UK, comments about students entering school with weak vocabulary, students not being able to access the vocabulary in the KS2 SATS paper or secondary school students not knowing relatively simple words needed to understand a text are often heard. The so called ‘word gap’ is a concern in many schools, but the question remains: what do we do about it? When the English National Curriculum was updated in 2014, it pushed vocabulary front and centre with such remarks as ‘Pupils’ acquisition and command of vocabulary are key to their learning and progress across the whole curriculum’.1 Examples of the importance of vocabulary to understanding curriculum content can be seen from Art and Design (‘perspective’) to Geography (‘environment’), History (‘evidence’) and Science (‘adaptation’). To fully understand these subject areas, students must understand the vocabulary. Much has been written about the specific impact that vocabulary has on reading comprehension. Phonics skills enable the reader to decipher the word on the page, but to understand it, knowledge of the word’s meaning is essential. As the Simple View of Reading suggests, to be a successful reader, children need both phonics and language skills.2  A significant number of children master phonics quite well, but then struggle to understand what they read, as they do not have the wider vocabulary required to access more demanding books from KS2 and onwards. It is established that vocabulary impacts both on curriculum access and reading, but what do we mean by the term ‘vocabulary’? What do you immediately think of when you think of ‘vocabulary’? Is it spelling lists? Reading, or perhaps even looking words up in dictionaries? Vocabulary is, of course, all of those things, but also more. As words may be read, written, spoken or listened to, it is useful to think of us as having four interrelated vocabularies. These four vocabularies all interact with each other, with understanding being the main driver in Early Years, before giving way to reading someway through Key Stage 3. Barbara Bleiman argued rather eloquently in the TES last year that over-focusing on vocabulary may be counterproductive and that instead we should be focusing more broadly on language.3 She is absolutely correct, because vocabulary is learned within a context and a word in isolation is next to meaningless. Words needs to be learned and used within real contexts and so it makes my heart sink whenever I hear about students being given lists of words to learn or look up in dictionaries. Every word has nuances, and every speaker will use words in their own way, so we need to model the use of words to our students, so they learn not only words’ meanings, but also their applications. Within language as a whole, vocabulary does hold a special place, as to master any new subject area a learner must master the terminology. Imagine you were to take up a new hobby, such as sailing. You would soon encounter all manner of new words, such as ‘leeward, helm and jib’, that you would need to understand and use if you were to have any chance of becoming a competent sailor. The same principle applies to any new topic within the curriculum. When students master new vocabulary, they master the topic.Vocabulary reflects our world experiences. The wider our experiences, the greater our vocabulary learning opportunities. It is no surprise at all, therefore, to learn that students who grow up in poverty are most likely to have less developed vocabularies. This word gap starts early and once open it is extremely challenging, and, some would argue, impossible to close. Parents play an important role in vocabulary learning, not just in Early Years, but right through childhood, so engaging all families in word learning is a key part of vocabulary teaching.  It is easy to blame parents for ‘always being on the mobile’ but some parents may have difficulties with vocabulary themselves, and so this needs to be considered. Schools are becoming increasingly aware of the word gap, especially since it was highlighted in the DfE’s 2017 report Unlocking Talent, Fulfilling Potential.4 Some go looking for a quick fix, and before you are tempted to join them, consider that the average adult has a vocabulary of approximately 30,000 words. Some argue it is more like 50,000. To achieve even the lower figure, a child needs to learn seven words per day throughout their school life. To catch up, even a little, requires a student to learn several hundred words more than their word leaning trajectory predicts. This is simply not possible in one short-term intervention, or arguably even in one year. To have any chance of closing the vocabulary gap, it requires a whole-school, year-on-year approach. So what can schools do to improve students’ vocabulary? Considering how central vocabulary is to learning, it is surprising how few studies there have been and how weak the evidence is. As stated previously, to see even a small change with vocabulary takes several years, and so the research studies are long-term and complex. While we wait for those studies to appear, a good starting point is the good practice that is happening in your own school. Every school has teachers who love words, so they are often the ones to talk to, because what they do will often be effective. In the approach that I have developed with Anna Branagan (Word Aware), we looked at best practice from schools and Speech and Language Therapy, as"
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Special Needs

What do we do about the ‘Word Gap’?

8 May 2019