Measuring small steps of progress through the achievement continuum
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Information about the school
Dan y Coed school is an independent special school situated in the West Cross area of Swansea. The school is in a large detached property with easy access to the Mumbles coastline and the city of Swansea. The school shares the site with its residential provision, which provides 52-week accommodation which opened in May 2019.
Currently there are 26 pupils attending the school. The school has five class teachers, six lead learning support assistants and 21 learning support assistants. In addition, care workers from the residential setting support children in lessons and activities as required. A clinical team, including a speech and language therapist and occupational therapist technician, supports the education team.
The school’s aim is to ‘provide a safe and secure school environment that encourages individuality, confidence and self-esteem’.
Context and background to the effective or innovative practice
Dan y Coed follows a skill-based curriculum, tailored to the individual needs of each pupil. Given the wide variety of needs and abilities of pupils, the school needed to ensure that each small step of progress was captured for each of the pupils whatever their level of ability, communication style and learning preference. The assessment system needed to capture progress within lessons, during social times and when learning outside of the classroom. It needed to be applicable to the pupils with the greatest communication difficulties in addition to those pupils studying qualifications. The system needed to encapsulate the progress and impact throughout each pupil’s journey at Dan y Coed as well as providing whole school data that could influence curriculum design, professional learning and innovative teaching strategies.
Description of nature of strategy or activity
The school’s assessment strategy aims to capture valuable information consistently about small steps in progression. The ‘achievement continuum’ relates to any skill and subject area. As a result, small steps of progress are consistently identified across the curriculum and in skill areas important to pupils in line with their additional needs and abilities. The continuum consists of 10 levels of progress which range from encounter, interest, consolidation to application. The graduated continuum allows teachers to provide specific interventions and teaching strategies that enable pupils to move up the continuum until they can successfully master each skill independently.
What impact has this work had on provision and pupils’ standards?
Standards across the school have improved. Most pupils have made effective progress across all areas of the curriculum related to individual areas of need such as independence, social and life skills. Pupils are able to transfer skills from one setting to another and apply these to develop further skills in relation to their additional learning needs. As a result of close tracking and capturing each pupil’s small steps of progress, teaching across the school is effective and creative teaching interventions continuously support development. The strong progress of pupils in some cases has allowed them to return to mainstream school, accessing the full curriculum after years out of mainstream education. Many pupils have achieved qualifications appropriate to their future destinations. Many pupils who have left Dan y Coed have moved on to successful further education placements or alternative education settings.
How have you shared your good practice?
Capturing such small steps of progress across the curriculum has had a tremendous impact on pupil motivation, progress and planning for next steps of each pupil’s journey. Dan y Coed has been able to share this way of assessment with the other schools within the Orbis group, to support them to assess small steps of progress for each pupil across many different curriculums and learning experiences. In turn, this has enabled other settings to develop and implement effective approaches to assessment, planning and progress tracking at an individual and whole school level.