The co-ordination of the provision for the progressive development of pupils’ skills
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- Information about the school/provider
- Context and background to the practice
- Description of nature of strategy or activity identified as effective or innovative practice
- What impact has this work had on provision and outcomes for learners and/or their families?
- How have you shared your good practice?
Information about the school/provider
Bishopston Comprehensive School is an English-medium 11 to 16 mixed comprehensive school situated in the Gower near Swansea. There are 1128 pupils on roll, with 6.12% of pupils being eligible for free school meals. Most of the school’s pupils speak English as their first language and most come from a white British background. Very few pupils speak Welsh as their first language. The percentage of pupils with special educational needs is 19.5%. Bishopston’s specialist teaching facility (STF) supports pupils with speech, communication and language difficulties. In addition, the majority of pupils attending the STF have a diagnosis of autism.
The school’s leadership structure includes a team of middle leaders with responsibility for key skills areas including literacy, numeracy, digital competency, creativity, physical skills and metacognitive skills. Senior and middle leaders prioritise collaboration, consistency, and continuous improvement in teaching and learning. The co-ordination of the provision for skills, led by the Deputy Headteacher, ensures a multi layered approach to quality assurance, self-evaluation and shared effective practice. which supports the development of skills across the curriculum.
Teaching staff work collaboratively to plan and deliver a curriculum that supports the progressive development of pupils’ skills. This is co-ordinated carefully across all subjects so that there are many rich opportunities for pupils, including pupils with additional learning needs (ALN) and pupils in the STF, to develop their skills across the curriculum.
Context and background to the practice
As part of the school’s ongoing self-evaluation and curriculum development, leaders identified the need to strengthen consistency and progression in the provision for the development of pupils’ skills across the curriculum. Regular internal monitoring activities, including book looks, lesson observations and learning walks, highlighted variability in the teaching of skills. In response, leaders developed a structured approach to quality assurance and professional learning, with a focus on peer collaboration and middle leadership. The aim was to ensure that all staff had a shared understanding of skills, high expectations for all pupils and access to effective professional learning for teaching and assessing skills.
Description of nature of strategy or activity identified as effective or innovative practice
Skills’ co-ordinators audited provision across the curriculum. This allowed the school to identify key strengths and areas for development. Skills’ co-ordinators then shared these key strengths and areas for development with all staff as part of the professional learning plan. Training involved all staff, individual departments and individual teachers. When auditing digital skills, it was recognised that ‘copyright’ was not addressed in areas of the curriculum where it was believed it could add significant value to pupils’ understanding. Expressive arts leaders believed it was important that pupils developed an understanding of the implications of copyright as an awareness of copyright for artists and musicians, for example, can protect individual rights and prevent legal challenges. Effective co-ordination of digital skills has now resulted in improved authentic learning in the expressive arts curriculum.
Regular self-evaluation ensures the ongoing identification of areas of strength across the curriculum and whole school areas of focus for improvement. For example, one literacy learning walk focused on the explicit teaching of vocabulary across key stages, following professional learning in INSET. Skills’ leaders use a shared observation, book look and skills report proforma to record evidence of effective practice, pupil engagement and skill application.
Following each learning walk and book look, staff participate in reflective discussions facilitated by the middle leader. These sessions are developmental and non-judgemental, with an emphasis on sharing strategies and identifying areas for further development. Outcomes from the walks are summarised and shared with all staff to inform planning and professional development.
In addition, the skills’ leaders provide focused professional learning sessions linked to ‘skills’ findings. For example, a session on graphs was delivered following a numeracy learning walk that identified inconsistencies in pupils’ use of graphs. These sessions include practical demonstrations, collaborative planning and the sharing of teaching and learning strategies.
What impact has this work had on provision and outcomes for learners and/or their families?
The co-ordination of skills, implementation of the quality assurance calendar and skills’ peer-led learning strategy has led to improvements in the consistency and quality of skills teaching and pupil outcomes. All teaching staff work collaboratively to plan and deliver a curriculum that supports the progressive development of pupils’ skills. This is co-ordinated carefully across all subjects so that there are many rich opportunities for pupils, including pupils with ALN and pupils in the STF, to develop their skills across the curriculum.
There has been an improvement in pupils’ literacy, numeracy and DCF skills at KS3 and KS4 as a result of the co-ordinators’ work. This is evidenced in book looks, KS3 and KS4 outcome data, learning walks and lesson observations.
Staff now have improved confidence in developing pupils’ skills, and book looks/learning walks evidence improved consistency in the provision for skills development across all year groups. The peer led strategy has strengthened professional collaboration. Staff value the opportunity to observe one another’s practice and engage in reflective professional dialogue. The role of the middle leaders has been instrumental in co-ordinating these efforts and ensuring that findings are used to continually inform whole-school improvement. Leaders plan to further develop the role of pupils in the evaluation process.
How have you shared your good practice?
Regular sharing of good practice in whole school INSET has been key to the successful model of peer led skills’ co-ordination. In addition, skills’ co-ordinators have worked with local primary schools to ensure the development of skills’ progression across the primary and secondary phases. Effective practice has been shared through local authority professional learning communities.