Welcome to the new academic year and to the September edition of the Antidote e-newsletter.
We spent some of August crunching the data from the 88 schools that have used our online School Environment for Learning Survey (SEELS). As you can see below, this continues to show that students experience a significant decline in their experience of relationships between KS2 to KS4.
Several of this month's news stories describe research which highlights the central importance of building stronger relationships within schools
to raising levels of achievement. They make it clear that this is as much about staff-staff relationships as it is about student-student and student-staff relationships.
Read our SchoolTale to hear how one group of teachers set about developing a more supportive staff community.
And come to our interactive seminar on the 17th October to find out more about the Antidote Process.
|
SchoolTale
|
Sheila could remember a time when the school staffroom was a friendly place to go to for advice, support and comfort. Not now, though. The relentless pace of work nowadays meant that relationships were difficult to build and maintain. There was no time for people to stand back and reflect on what they were doing and meetings never went beyond an exchange of essential information about children, resources, plans and events. People were now serious, disinclined to smile or laugh and always ready to be short and impatient with each other. For Sheila, the surprise discovery from the online survey done by staff at their INSET on the first day of term was that so many other members of staff felt the same. No matter what their level of responsibility, gender or length of service, people were hungry to know each other better. At the meeting held to explore the data, people began to talk about how they stayed in their key stage areas and hardly knew anyone outside their area. The lack of familiarity had bred insecurity about the thoughts and intentions of other staff members. People thought there were cliques and felt unsafe about venturing into the communal staff areas. New members of the ever-expanding support staff were not even known by name to staff outside their key stage or year team. Everyone was too embarassed to ask because they thought they should be able to supply a name for the rather familiar face! By making time to talk about these issues, staff were able to start thinking about what might be done to improve the situation. Over three meetings and a term of reflection, they came up with a plan of action: - Half a day of INSET time a year to work on a curriculum area such as art, PE, music, drama or technology in a way that was practical and experimental so that everyone had to work together.
- Each key stage and the office team to plan one voluntary social event a year. Some were to be cheap and local, others more adventurous and some connected to festivals such as Christmas.
The impact of these two developments was a rapid improvement in: - Staff well-being
- Collaborative working across the whole staff team
- general social interaction through the school.
|
SEELSFact
|
Our current sample of 20,000 students shows a significant decline across KS2 to KS4 in their experience of the relationships that support their learning. The graph below shows that the most significant decline is in the quality of their relationships with adults, the least their quality of relationships with friends.
There is a clear perception that there is less emotional safety and decreasing opportunities to talk about feelings in secondary school than primary. The quality of peer relationships declines significantly between primary and secondary, but now between KS3 and KS4. Interestingly, we also know that some schools are bucking these trends.
|
In the news:
Government rejects proposals for change to assessment
|
The government has rejected the case for reforming the current assessment process because it "puts the system out of balance".
"There is no reason", says the government in its response to the report of the Children, Schools and Families Committee, "for testing to result in an unbalanced, narrow curriculum or uninspiring teaching."
"The breadth of the curriculum and the quality of teaching", it continues, "are both entirely within the control of the school and the teacher."
Testing and assessment; the government's response to the Committee's third report of session 2007-08 can be downloaded from
www.dfes.gov.uk
|
Ofsted highlights teaching to the test
|
Teaching to the test is a problem that needs to be addressed, according to Ofsted's response to the report of the Children, Schools and Families Committee on assessment.
"In some schools", it says, "an emphasis on tests in English, mathmatics and science limits the range of work in these subjects in particular year groups, as well as more broadly across the curriculum in some primary schools.
The government insists that it has never encouraged "teaching to the test", and denies that increases in national test results might result from this practice.
Testing and assessment: Ofsted's response to the Committee's third report of session 2007-8 can be downloaded from
www.dfes.gov.uk
|
Teacher learning needs to come from within
|
Research sponsored by The Innovation Unit and the National College of School Leadership (NCSL) concludes that a school is more likely to improve when it "learns from its own best people and practices rather than being encouraged to follow central guidance or policy."
Describing the results of externally-driven change over the past decade as "disappointing", the report says that promoting "what an individual school can do to learn from itself" is "beyond the focus of much present educational policy."
Schools learning from their best: The Within School Variation (WSV) Project by Professor David Reynolds can be downloaded from
www.ncsl.org.uk
|
| Well-being guidance on the way |
Draft guidance on the role of schools in promoting well-being, pubished by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), reiterates the need for schools to contribute, with others, to all aspects of children's well-being, within their "core mission of educating children to their full potential."
The department is also consulting on plans to require schools to work with other partners in Children's Trusts to improve the outcomes for children and young people.
"By extending the so-called 'duty to cooperate' to all schools", said DCSF chief Ed Balls, "we can ensure headteachers get the package of measures they need to make sure all children fulfil their potential."
School's role in promoting pupil well-being: draft guidance for consultation can be downloaded from
www.dcsf.gov.uk
Responses to promotingpupil.well-being@dcsf.gsi.gov.uk are requested by 25th September, with a view to publishing the final guidance next year.
|
Relationships vital to achievement
|
A survey by Ofsted of schools where white British boys from low-income backgrounds perform better in public tests and examinations than their counterparts in other schools, emphasises the importance of relationships in explaining this difference.
"An important feature of the most successful schools surveyed was the close attention they paid to supporting the emotional development of the boys and helping them understand the impact of their behaviour on their learning."
Another key factor was a strong emphasis on "establishing a clear sense of community where everyone felt 'accepted', and had something of value to add to the life of the school and the neighbourhood."
White boys from low-income backgrounds: good practice in schools (Ref. 070220) can be downloaded from www.ofsted.gov.uk
|
Schools need to focus on relationships
|
If schools are to tackle educational inequality and raise levels of achievement, they need to be re-designed with a focus around relationships, according to a paper written by policy advisor Charles Leadbeater for The Innovation Unit at the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF).
"Children learn," he says, "when they have the right relationships. Those relationships make them feel cared for; give them recognition for who they are, where they come from and what they have achieved; motivate them to learn and engage them to be participants in learning."
Leadbeater says the consequence of adopting such an approach is to promote the importance of:
- learning in a wide variety of settings from a wide variety of people,
- giving pupils more say over what they could learn, how, where and when,
- providing an experience of learning that is collaborative and experiential, encouraging self-evaluation and self-motivation.
What's next? 21 ideas for 21st century learning by Charles Leadbeater can be downloaded from
www.innovation-unit.co.uk
|
Think-tank calls for teachers to have more control over training
|
A think-tank report on how to improve the quality of teaching in UK schools has suggested that individual teachers should be given more control over their professional development, rather than being required to undergo a potentially "restrictive" Masters degree.
Teachers, it says, should be given:
- a fund to spend on their own professional development
- a mentor to guide them throughout their career
"The school would focus its efforts on building the mentoring programme, while individual teachers would be responsible for using their entitlement, with the support of their mentor, to make the best possible use of this system."
"There is widespread agreement," the authors claim, "that teachers have far too little control over their own professional development, and that too much of it is determined by central government priorities."
More Good Teachers by Sam Freedman, Briar Lipson and Professor David Hargreaves is published by Policy Exchange and can be downloaded from www.policyexchange.org.uk
|
|
Communication skills should be at the heart of the curriculum |
The promotion of communication skills should no longer be elbowed out by literacy and numeracy, according to a report commissioned by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) from John Bercow MP. "The ability to communicate," his report says, "is an essential life skill for all children and young people and it underpins a child's social emotional and educational development." The Bercow Report: a review of services for children and young people (0-19) with speech, language and communication needs (DCSF-00632-2008) can be downloaded fromwww.dcsf.gov.uk/bercowreview |
|
|
|
|
*********
Come to our interactive seminar!
Friday 17th October
2-4pm
Find out how to join up work on SEAL, Healthy Schools and Personalised Learning to make teaching and learning even more enjoyable!
Join us at Antidote's offices:
3rd Floor, Cityside House, 40 Adler Street, London
E1 1EE
|
|
|
|
