Monitoring achievement and tracking progress

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Monitoring achievement and tracking progress

• Jane Winterbone
• Headteacher
• The Highfield School

Learning to succeed
Science
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The Highfield School

• 1050 students from the ages of 11-18
• Built 40 years ago in a town with three other
  secondary schools
• Serves a community which has pockets of multiple
  deprivation
• 1 in 5 has a special educational need
• 18 ethnic minority

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The context

• School that has undergone rapid change including
  integration of students from a failing school
• Within School Variation some excellent parts
  some not!
• Senior leadership drove the school improvement
  agenda
• Middle leaders did not have ownership of
  standards within their area of responsibility
• Pressure on us to meet targets as part of our bid
  to be a specialist school!

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Creating our culture

• Absolute commitment to the Every Child Matters
  Agenda
• Improvement agenda therefore has to cover ANY
  factor which could impact upon a childs progress
• Promoting the right values building effective
  relationships
• Teachers as learners and teachers as leaders of
  learning
• A clear sense of accountability

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Raising standards How?

• Key to raising standards was to use effective
  systems to track their progress and monitor
  achievement
• Three golden words Issue Action Impact

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Raising standards
Data
Issue
Impact
Action
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How do you find out what the issues are?

• With the person next to you, take five minutes to
  list the evidence you have in your schools that
  could tell you how well students are (or arent )
  achieving and making progress. What structures do
  you have in place to tell you how well the
  students are doing? How well they could be doing?

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Data

• It is through the clever use of data now
  available to schoolscan ask pertinent questions
  about the achievement of pupils and identify any
  variation found within the school. For example,
  are results better in some subjects than others?
  Are some pupils doing better than others?
• David Bell
• Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools

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What data?

• We need to be able to predict how well our
  students should do and could do based on their
  performance in exams
• In our school we use two different predictions
• How well they should do based on how well
  students do in similar schools
• How well they could do based on how well
  students do in the top 25 of schools nationally
• This data creates our targets

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Target Setting Data

• At student level
• At individual class/teacher level
• At subject level
• At individual cohort level
• At whole school level

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What data? - Checking Progress

• We gather progress data three times a year to
  share with students, parents and staff
• It informs conversations with individual
  students, staff and subject areas
• It creates intervention plans to improve student
  achievement

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Progress Report October 2005 Student Parent -
Tutor TTT   Prior Attainment (used to calculate
target grades/levels)
 
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How do teachers make judgements about progress?

• Standardised tests
• Core assessments
• Teacher moderation of work
• Sampling student books
• Observing other teachers lessons
• Assessment for Learning

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What are the issues?

• Through analysing the data we can find out - are
  there any groups of students who are doing less
  well than they should be doing? e.g. white boys
• Are there any subject areas which are
  underperforming?
• Are there individual students who need a support
  package?
• Are there individual classes where student
  learning is less secure?

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What action might we take for individual students?

• Is poor attendance impacting upon their progress?
  We have workshops, an attendance worker and
  rigorous systems for tracking attendance
• Is it a self esteem issue? We have trained staff
  to work with students on identity and self esteem
• Do they have complex issues which need a
  counsellor?
• Do they have motivation issues? We have student,
  staff and business mentors
• Do they need specialised support from the
  learning support department?

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What actions might we take for groups of students?

• A change in teaching styles and/or learning
  activities lots of work on boys
  underachievement
• A change to the curriculum. Our ethnic minority
  students need to see their culture reflected and
  celebrated within the curriculum
• Small tutor groups creating a more intensive
  support network
• Breakfast and after school clubs

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What actions might we take with Individual staff?

• For just five minutes share with someone what
  happens in your school if students are not
  learning well in a teachers class?
• Are you observed teaching?
• Why are you observed? What feedback do you get?
  What's it like?

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Individual staff

• Everyone has a right to observe others to improve
  
• Everyone is observed even me!
• Everyone has a performance management target
  related to improving some aspect of their
  teaching even me!
• Everyone has the right to constructive and
  positive feedback
• Difficult conversations sometimes have to be had
  BUT it is not a blame culture its a learning
  culture

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Observing others

• Emphasis on how well students learn and how
  teacher supports and facilitates that learning
• Staff self assess every term highlight their
  own strengths and what they are working on
• We create a matrix of skills so that staff can
  see who is good at something and go and watch!
• All staff have been professionally trained to
  observe and make judgements about student
  progress
• Pilot programme with students observing

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What actions might we take at whole school level?

• Working groups e.g. English, Science, Maths
  looking at consistency to improve standards of
  achievement
• Whole school strategies e.g. improving the
  achievement of white boys
• Whole school attendance policy and targets
• Buddy departments
• Trigger a department review
• Identify and share good practice in school
• Identify effective practice and research elsewhere

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But more importantly

• We ensure that we have access to quality training
  and further professional development
• We have access to gaining further qualifications
• We let teachers concentrate on teaching and
  learning
• We celebrate!

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What other data?

• Attendance data
• Results of questionnaires and surveys
• Performance management targets
• Lesson observations
• Work sampling
• Interviews with students/staff/parents
• Budget spending
• Department review reports

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Outcome - Measuring the impact

• Use of hard and soft data to analyse the impact
• Dont be afraid to say It didnt work
• Dont think just because it worked this
  time

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Does it work?

• The most noticeable difference in this school
  compared to others is the support provided to
  staff and students.
• The school sets very high standards and makes
  heavy demands on staff BUT it means that the vast
  majority of staff have the possibility of
  progressing on to promoted posts if they so
  choose and as a result it makes it an interesting
  place to work

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Does it work?

• Attendance up by 4
• A level results up by 2 and A and B grades up by
  12
• GCSE A-C grades up by 11
• Maths in two years have gone from 34 to 59
• Science in two years have gone from 38 to 61
• Our 5A-C including Maths and English has risen
  in two years from 32 to 52

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Does it work?

• PhD research indicated high levels of trust
  amongst staff and for the Headteacher
• Low sickness and low staff turnover
• Within School Variation reduced
• School has good local reputation
• Attract more funding!
• Staff get good promotions ?