Report Card 2018 published these concerns.

There are large gaps between the most advantaged and least advantaged students and some gaps are getting wider. Gaps that are small at primary school grow through to GCSE and university admission, leaving poorer students playing catch up for the rest of their lives.

• less than half as likely to achieve passes in GCSE English and maths than their peers
• a whole year behind their peers
• just over eight months behind their peers in reading, writing, and maths by age 11
• students on free school meals four times as likely to be excluded than their peers
• After GCSEs, disadvantaged children are six times more likely to be recorded as not going into a job or any other training/ education

Here’s what they suggest:

• The best ‘World-class teachers and leaders’ should be employed  in the most disadvantaged areas
• A system that  is interested in developing the whole child, promoting emotional and social competencies alongside academic attainment
• Joined up support for all post-16 destinations, giving every student a choice about their future

Here are some copied and pasted extracts from the report:

“In the short time that NewsWise has been in existence, a small team of Programme and Project Managers have created an exciting suite of resources to support children’s news literacy. These include a practical workshop and resources for children of upper primary
age, a teacher training session and 16 lesson plans and resources (the ‘unit of work’). The NewsWise programme launched digitally in June 2018, with an editorial in The Guardian, a Twitter account @GetNewsWise and website: https://www.theguardian.com/newswise.”

“547 pupils in schools across England and Wales have now benefitted from taking part in a NewsWise workshop, learning about news literacy while preparing their own news reports.
As this report shows, along with having fun (the most common word children used to describe their experience of NewsWise), children developed a deeper understanding of why and how news stories are created, and became much more confident about reading,
talking about and sharing news. 76 teachers received face-to-face training from an expert member of the NewsWise team, helping schools to support news literacy across the curriculum and ensuring a more sustainable impact. 10 out of 10 said they would recommend NewsWise training to other schools, with 9 in 10 rating it ‘excellent’.”

We never endorse or otherwise here, but it does look like something worth having a look at.

Page 6 of the report outlines the model and makes note of

• Time
• Training
• Resources
• Experience

There is a clear recognition of teacher workload and how this is addressed.

There are some interesting discoveries

• 2% were able to identify fake and real news stories presented as part of a quiz correctly.
• a gap in performance of almost 10 percentage points between girls and boys (with girls performing better)
• those not eligible for free school meals performed better than their peers who were eligible.

This could well be something for teachers who want to do something different.

The area of high-stake testing and its effect on curriculum breadth raises a lot of discussion. This NFER review goes some way in helping the debate by putting forward some research findings.

This is always useful, because, as usual, a lot of teachers will argue a case based on their experience at best, or a gut-feeling that becomes interpreted as fact.

The authors point out that:  “A number of themes emerged from the literature, although the limited nature of the evidence base means that findings must be interpreted with extreme caution.”

Here are some extracts taken directly from the report:

“In this review, we define accountability broadly as a government’s mechanism for holding educational institutions to account for the delivery of high quality education. The idea that the practice of accountability can contribute directly to improvements in education is a powerful one that underpins policy. Paradoxically, though, some hold that accountability systems can also produce negative impacts on education, making it more difficult for schools to deliver the sought after quality.”

“We mapped the main features of accountability systems for primary education in 13 international jurisdictions…  England, Wales, Australia (New South Wales), Canada (Alberta), Estonia, Finland, Germany, Poland, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, USA (Massachusetts) and Sweden.”

Summaries:

England and Wales operate a statutory national assessment programme in the primary phase of education. The assessments are used to hold schools accountable for pupil attainment and progress, although in different ways. In both , statutory external evaluation is carried out; this involves school inspection.
There is a requirement for school self-evaluation.

In Australia, there is statutory national assessment in the primary phase used to hold schools to account.

In Japan, there is statutory national assessment at the end of the primary phase. They are not used to hold schools accountable for pupils’ attainment and progress.

It operates a system of statutory external evaluation which includes school inspection.

New Zealand operates a national monitoring assessment in the primary phase(NMSSA) . It isn’t used to hold schools to account. It is based on nationally representative samples and does not test the cohort of pupils as a whole, but gives an over-all picture of pupil performance.

Singapore operates a self-assessment model (the School Excellence Model, or SEM). Schools self-evaluate and also undergo external validation. There is statutory national assessment of pupils at the end of the primary phase to determine pupils’ secondary school pathways.

In general it appears that high-stake testing has an unintended impact of narrowing the curriculum.

“The introduction of high-stakes testing in Australia is regarded, by some, as the harbinger of undesirable practices described as ‘gaming the system’, leading away from the provision of a broad curriculum.” p 12

“In 2010, New Zealand saw the introduction of national standards in schools. Following an expert consultation, it was reported that
there were concerns that ‘the introduction of Standards increases the risk of a narrower focus on numeracy and literacy in primary schools’. From 2018 onwards, these National Standards will be removed again, to be replaced with the National Monitoring of Student Achievement.” p 12-13

It is worth looking at the section: The increasing achievement gap as consequence of high-stakes accountability on p 18

In ‘School Cultures and Practices:  supporting the attainment of disadvantaged pupils’ the DfE looked at schools that have achieved high standards whilst working with deprived children.

The report points out that the challenge of teacher recruitment and retention needs to be addressed in poorer areas outside of London.

The strength of this work is that it gives very clear examples of effective practice with quotes from the teachers involved.

There are several references to training being needed in how to use data in order to focus the support that these children need. There is clear emphasis on early action here, with both NQTs and RQTs being given this training. It also states that this type of training should be included in ITT programmes.

This ‘data literacy’ level needs to be extended to governors as well so that they can hold the school to account.

Away from the the data aspect, it states that the most successful schools have teachers

• who believe in their school’s ethos
• are confident that their work can make a difference.

It is not surprising to see: “High-performing primary schools emphasised their investment in the EYFS.” (p 86)

There is also a recommendation that they look into the impact of shared purpose on performance.

Strong visionary leadership is noted as is parental involvement

Effective deployment of support staff is worth looking at (p73).

The leadership aspect is reported well (p78) and has some interesting comments about heads and senior leaders who regularly teach. This appears to be far more evident in primary schools rather than secondary.

The paper by Reform ‘Beyond Gadgets’ makes claims such as

• how using video tutoring apps instead of one-to-one tutoring could allow 300,000 additional pupils to make ‘significant progress’ at school.
•  how using online tutors to support disadvantaged pupils at school could allow for an additional 30 million hours of tutoring, within the same budget.
• how technology can free up teacher time in disadvantaged schools to spend on more pupils in need.
• how schools could cut the working day by 25 minutes and cut the time teachers spend monitoring homework by 95 per
  cent.
• research shows that artificial intelligence systems can produce better learning outcomes than comparative human methods.

These are bold claims and they come with many suggestions about what needs to be in place in order for this to happen. For example:

“Schools should provide Continuing Professional Development (CPD) as they are implementing EdTech. This should include sharing successful as well as failed EdTech approaches in the classroom.” p6

“The Department for Education should identify and engage with ‘Tech Expert’ schools to celebrate their achievements and link them up with schools that are struggling to make effective use of
EdTech to support disadvantaged pupils. It should look to recruit several private-sector providers to help fund these networks.” p6

This is just a starting point for a potentially robust debate.

The Nuffield Foundation’s report How do shortages of maths teachers affect within school allocation of maths teachers to pupils?
states that shortages lead to disadvantaged secondary pupils
having less access to experienced and well-qualified teachers.

Along with this:

• inexperienced teachers or those who do not have a degree in maths, are more likely to teach Year 7 to Year 9 pupils than older year groups
• 19% of KS 3 maths teachers are inexperienced. This early exposure to inexperienced maths teachers risks
  switching pupils off maths at an age when they are forming attitudes to subjects and future choices.

They found that where maths teacher shortages occur, schools have hardly any job applications for vacant posts. Add to this that many  applicants are not suitable and you can see why they frequently have to readvertise. This can lead to schools  making  appointments that are “less than ideal.”

It is suggested that well qualified maths graduates go for better paid jobs in the private sector when the economy is doing comparatively well.

This is a very important issue.

For some time it’s been recognised that parents who support their children’s learning have a significant impact on pupils’ achievement. Their involvement can have more influence over a child’s education than their school.

The report from Estyn comes up with these main points:

• Many schools adopt an increasingly comprehensive range of strategies to communicate with parents. Only a few schools actively consult with parents to identify their preferred method
• Secondary school children’s parents receive ‘considerably less’
  communication from their child’s school than parents at primary school
• A majority of schools use text messaging and social media platforms to give parents information about school events but a lot fewer have a two-way system set up
• Too often schools communicate with one parent only. This results in mothers getting the vast majority of communication from schools and this can inadvertently exclude fathers

And comments about parent consultation evenings:

• Generally, parents of primary school children find reports and parents’ evenings more useful than parents of secondary school children.
• Parents prefer it when teachers discuss their child’s
  specific strengths and areas for development.

Have a look at the whole report. You will find it very informative.

The National Literacy Trust has undertaken a substantial piece of research using data from 9,170 pupils aged 8 to 11 who responded to the Annual Literacy Survey : November 2017 and January 2018.

Comments in the report reflect:

• A year-on-year decline in how much pupils aged 8 to 11 enjoy writing and how often they write something that isn’t for school on a daily basis.
• A worrying trend because writing enjoyment and attainment are linked.
• 2016 : 23.2% of children and young people who enjoy writing wrote above the age expected level, but only 3.2% of those who don’t enjoy writing managed this.
• 1 pupil in 5 aged 8 to 11 say that they write something in their free time on a daily basis.

On the positive side, 68.5% of 8 to 11-year-old pupils say they enjoy writing in 2017/18 and 65.9% say it is fun.

The challenge is to help the ones who don’t enjoy writing. The report notes the following:

“The Free Writing Friday initiative by Cressida Cowell aims to remove these barriers in an attempt to boost pupils’ levels of writing enjoyment. The initiative gives pupils a set time every week where they have the freedom to write whatever they want, however they want, without fear of their work being seen, marked or corrected by their teachers, parents or carers. It is hoped that the initiative will create new opportunities for all children to explore their thoughts and ideas through writing, regardless of their attitudes towards writing.”

It would be good to see if your school is aware of this and what plans/ strategies they have to help more children enjoy writing.

WHY CLOSING THE WORD GAP MATTERS comes from the Oxford University Press.

It finds that the vocabulary gap is high in primary and secondary schools. It argues that relatively little research has been carried out into language deficit as children move through secondary education.

Additionally, the teachers who took part in this survey often reported  that the vocabulary gap is a general problem, not specific to any one group of pupils such as those with English as an additional language.

The cause can be put down to a lack of opportunities to practise vocabulary in the home and not enough time spent reading for pleasure.

Other main findings

? Almost half of five and six-year-olds are at risk underperforming academically because they have a limited vocabulary.

? In the first year of secondary school, more than four in 10 students still do not know enough words to do well in school.

? 49 per cent of Year 1 pupils have a limited vocabulary that impacts on their learning.

There are many more in the full document.

What do effective schools do to address this problem?

1. Provide support/ intervention through speech therapists or one-on-one  teaching assistant time in primary school. In secondary school extra literacy lessons, extra resources and mentoring programmes are set up .
2. Ensure a whole class focus on vocabulary in both primary and secondary schools, along with dedicated reading time and literacy help resources.
3. Employ a whole-school literacy policy, which includes giving children access to quality texts with discussion about them. Reading  across the curriculum is valued. Things like word games clubs and specific reward systems have been encouraged.

Teachers are given specific training to help find ways to increase children’s literacy and vocabulary.

Improving Mathematics in Key Stages Two and Three: Evidence Review is published by the  Education Endowment Foundation.

There are useful key findings that will add to your discussion toolbox. Some appear to be common sense but it’s always good to have evidence to back your anecdotally based thoughts.

Here are a few to start off with:

• Calculators can enhance learning but they need to be taught how to use them properly and in a thoughtful way.
• Calculators in primary school aided a greater understanding of and fluency with arithmetic.
• Feedback and collaborative learning have positive effects on learning with the latter particularly so in secondary school.
• Discussion is a key element of mathematics teaching and learning but teachers need to actively structure these dialogues.
• Teaching thinking skills, metacognition and self-regulation can be effective in mathematics.
• Technology can be very effective, but it needs to be used properly.
• Homework: more effective at secondary than primary level.
• Subject (or ‘content’ in the report) knowledge referred to as CK on its own isn’t very effective. It needs to be translated into  PCK – Pedagogic Content Knowledge, to have the most impact. in other words, it’s not what you know but how you deliver it that makes a difference.

There’s a lot more. It runs to 200 pages. But worth looking at the main points.