Crown Hills Community College

Introduction

Section 1: The case study schools and their approaches to curriculum development and narrowing the gap for vulnerable learners

Crown Hills Community College

Kings Oak Primary Learning Centre

Priestmead Primary School

Section 2: Curriculum and narrowing the gap: emerging themes and approaches

2.1 Supporting vulnerable learners’ access to the curriculum

2.1.1 ‘Whole child’, highly personalised approach

2.1.2 Primary: developing children’s language and literacy skills

2.1.3 Secondary: improving motivation, equipping students with learning habits and skills

2.2 Making curriculum experiences more relevant and engaging

2.3 Assessment and monitoring children and young people’s progress

Section 3: Discussions and implications for policy and practice

Section 4: Method, references and technical appendices

Purpose and aims of the research

Designing a probe methodology

Setting up the project

Selecting case study schools

Developing research instruments

Case study visits

Analysis

References

Appendix 1 Concept map

Appendix 2 Enquiry questions

Introduction

This probe is the sixth in a series designed to illustrate and explorepractice surrounding curriculum development in context. On this occasion we focus onhow teachers, who are planning and enacting curriculum innovations, are able to design curriculum experiences that narrow gaps in outcomes for vulnerable learners.

The importance of exploring the curriculum experiences that narrow achievement gaps was, in the first instance,highlightedby the finding of the Year 2 staff survey[1] about curriculum and its development, in which around half of the participants indicated that narrowing the gap was not an issue in their schools and a minority, including 10% of school leaders, did not have a definite view on the matter.

This seemed at odds with the national statistics and the nationwide focus on improving the outcomes of disadvantaged learners[2] and suggested an area where making some illustrative links between curriculum developments in schools and the narrowing the gap agenda might be helpful to school practitioners.

There is a growing body of evidence[3] suggesting that a broad and relevant curriculum, tailored to the needs of learners, can be one of the most effective ways of narrowing the gap for those who are vulnerable[4]. There are also indications that an effective curriculum offer is linked to improved achievement of all learners, e.g.:

Of the schools inspected by Ofsted between 2005 and 2007, 1,663 had outstanding achievement and standards. Of these, 1,343 (81%) also had an outstanding curriculum. Only four (0.3%) had a curriculum which was less than good. In the same period, 4,391 schools were judged to have satisfactory achievement and standards. Of these, more than two-thirds also had a satisfactory curriculum, with only 12 (0.27%) having a curriculum that was outstanding[5].

This research project aimed to explore some effective curriculum development practices aimed at narrowing the gap in outcomes for vulnerable learners in primary and secondary contexts and to relate these examples of practice to wider evidence.

The report is in four sections. In section one a short description of each school is followed by an overview of the school’s approach to narrowing the gap through curriculum development. Section two offers an analysis and synthesis of the effective practices across the three schools. In section three we offer some conclusions, highlight challenges and suggest some tentative implications for policy and for practice. Finally, section four describes our method and includes references, and technical appendices.

Section 1: The case study schools and their approaches to curriculum development and narrowing the gap for vulnerable learners

In this section we provide an overview of the three case study schools. We describe their contexts and the challenges they face and offer insights into how they try to overcome such challenges through curriculum development and a variety of strategies aimed at narrowing gaps for vulnerable children and young people.

The schools were selected because they had of a track record of supporting vulnerable learners in achieving better outcomes. Further detailed scoping confirmed that their approaches to narrowing the gap were integrated into the curriculum. These schools are not therefore in any way representative, aside from the fact that they are in different parts of the country, serve different kinds of communities and address specific challenges to wellbeing and achievement.

CrownHillsCommunity College

Crown Hills Community College[6] in Leicester is a mixed comprehensive secondary school for students aged 11-16, currently with 1215 students on roll. Nearly two thirds of the students are from Indian backgrounds and about half the students speak English as an additional language. According to Ofsted[7](2008), students at Crown Hills are able to ‘take good advantage of the planned and informal opportunities within the good curriculum to learn about other students’ cultures and backgrounds. This contributes to their good spiritual, moral, social and cultural development’. The proportion of students eligible for free meals and those with learning difficulties and/or disabilities is above average. Crown Hills is on a gradual improvement trajectory with regards to attainment, the proportion of students achieving the equivalent of five or more GCSEs including English and mathematics has steadily increased in recent years. In 2009, 45% of students achieved this threshold, which was higher than the local authority average. The college is a specialist sports college and an associate training school and also has leading edge status.

The school’s approach to curriculum

The school’s approach to curriculum is centred on making it relevant and accessible to its students. In terms of the formal curriculum, at Key Stage 3 students take ten subject courses in mixed-ability groups including the Expressive Arts (Art, Dance, Drama and Music) and Life Skills (Careers, Citizenship and PSHE education). Key Stage 4 students take up to ten GCSEs (or equivalent), which may include BTECs in Performing Arts, Construction or Sport and a Diploma in Digital Applications (DiDA). Crown Hills’ Principal spoke of the importance of offering a mixture of academic and vocational subjects like this as a way of ‘responding to need’ for students at different levels. She also spoke of the importance of using the curriculum to ‘help them to believe in themselves’ and to raise their and their families’ expectations. The academic tutoring programme is one of a number of curriculum interventions taking place and is a useful example of how the school has moved on from the more commonly used school improvement strategies aimed at boosting the attainment of small groups of students to a more integrated approach to building the capacity of the school to innovate within the curriculum.

The school’s approach to narrowing the gap in outcomes

The academic tutoring programme for students is one of the key means by which Crown Hills is attempting to narrow the achievement gap for its disadvantaged students. The programme offers personalised support to vulnerable and underachieving students to enable them to access the curriculum and to explore cross curricular patterns in learning behaviours. It developed from a simple question about why their students from less advantaged homes and communities did not perform as well as students with similar prior attainment from more advantaged backgrounds. This led them to consider the depth and quality of the teacher-student learning relationships. They decided to invest in an academic tutoring programme in which students would experience a learning relationship with one member of staff marked by an increased level of challenge and support.

Positive feedback from students, their parents, guardians and carers and staff, as well as the improvement of the majority of target students’ GCSE results in comparison to their predicted grades, is indicative of the effectiveness of the programme for many students.

Kings Oak Primary Learning Centre

Kings Oak Primary[8] is a learning centre for children aged 3 to 11 in a socially deprived area of Barnsley. The centre opened in 2005, following the closure of three schools. Currently the learning centre has over 350 children on roll, most of them of white British background. The proportion of children with disabilities and those entitled to free school meals is above the national average.

Many children (recent figures stand at 93%) enter the centre with lower levels of developmentthan expected for their age. Despite the attainment at Key Stage 2 currently being slightly lower than the national averages, children make good progress during their time at Kings Oak (Ofsted, 2010[9]). The school is particularly effective in supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities, whose progress is ‘outstanding’ (Ofsted, 2010) because they ‘receive regular high quality support in small groups and individually’.

The school’s approach to curriculum

Curriculum development in Kings Oak started about five years ago, when the learning centre opened as a result of an amalgamation of three smaller schools. There was a clear need to change a situation in which ‘children were not thinking’, ‘children were not applying their learning’ and 75% percent of learners were underachieving. The process ‘has been slow and is far from over’ (assistant head). The school’s leaders have sought to develop ‘a new skills based curriculum that nurtures creativity’, through which ‘pupils are motivated to learn and are clearly excited and enthusiastic ‘. Developing creativity, thinking skills, and learner independence are the key principles that underpin the curriculum in Kings Oak. The school leadership team are keen to build on their staff’s strengths and interests so even though these key principles are present across the school, they are emphasised and developed to varying degrees according to year group.

Year 4 practitioners, for example, focus on creativity. They work in collaboration with Creative Partnerships to develop schemes of work and support children’s learning and progress through an emphasis on creativity. Young people are increasingly involved in shaping and conceptualising the curriculum. One of the themes in year 4 curriculum – Gadgets – was selected in consultation with the learners. Children have an opportunity to decide what they want to do and how, and are involved in the evaluation of the curriculum initiative. Year 4 practitioners’ experience and expertise will then be shared with other staff and embedded across the school.

The Year 5 and 6 teams are currently working on developing higher order thinking skills (based on Bloom’s taxonomy[10]) and encouraging independence in learning. The latter is supported through the ‘7Rs’ approach. It was developed in school and was based on staff reflection and interpretation of various skills development approaches, including thinking skills andBuilding Learning Power (BLP)[11]. The ‘7Rs’ approach focuses on ‘reflectivity, relationships, resilience, resourcefulness, risk taking, reasoning and responsibility’ which are present in teachers’ planning, day to day delivery of curriculum experiences and in the school environment (e.g. via posters in every classroom).

The school’s approach to narrowing the gap in outcomes

Kings Oak staff are passionate about offering their learners the same life chances as those from more affluent backgrounds. The school aims to be fully inclusive, has high aspirations for all learners and offers them the opportunities and support they require to achieve the best possible outcomes (Teaching and Learning policy).

Kings Oak has a whole school focus on language and literacy as a lever to enable all children to access the curriculum both in primary school and beyond. Many children enter Kings Oak without being able to speak in sentences or make eye contact with the person they are talking with. The school believes in the importance of early intervention, so has introduced a range of speaking and listening development strategies alongside intensive literacy work in the early years and foundation stage classrooms. These have been effective in significantly improving children's language skills: as a result of speaking and listening activities 66% of children are on track by KS1 compared with 93% being below their age related expectations on entry.

Alongside constant attention to language development and literacy, children’s progress in different areas of the curriculum in KS1 and KS2 is monitored very closely. In addition a range of interventions is in place to support vulnerable learners, for example via additional, often one-to-one, support in mathematics, development of gross and fine motor skills, or for children with dyslexia and other learning difficulties.

Kings Oak also aims to narrow gaps by increasing motivation and participation through creativity and thinking skills as well as through learning outside the classroom. These approaches are applied particularly at KS2, where low motivation and disengagement from learning can be one of the major reasons for underachievement.

Priestmead Primary School

Priestmead Primary school[12] was created in January 2010 following the amalgamation of the First and Middle schools (now referred to as Lower and Upper schools respectively). The school currently still has a Year 7 but this will change from September 2010 when children will move to local secondary schools at the end of Year 6. Priestmead is located in the London borough of Harrow and serves over 700 children, aged 3 to 12. Almost 70% of children are from minority ethnic backgrounds and speak English as an additional language.

KS2 results in Priestmead are consistently above the national and local authority averages (94% English, 89% mathematics, 96% science in 2009). In its most recent Ofsted inspection Priestmead Middle school was rated as a good school with its curriculum being outstanding (Ofsted, 2007).

The school’s approach to curriculum

Following the amalgamation of the lower and upper schools earlier this year, the staff are working towards a consistent and coherent approach to curriculum design. The school is looking to make the most of the curriculum development expertise in both schools and share best practice across the new school. Teaching and learning teams covering core curriculum areas, consist of key team members from both schools and are working on curriculum continuity and development.

Creativity in the curriculum is a common theme in both upper and lower schools. In the upper school, BLP is well embedded and used by all the staff to support children's skills development. All year group teachers plan schemes of work and include BLP elements and objectives into each lesson. Thematic learning is often used in school to enable children to make links and develop skills across curriculum areas. Focus weeks on topics such as sport, food or fairtrade, also offer an opportunity to make connections with children’s diverse backgrounds through a variety of languages, e.g. ‘Football in Farsi’.

The school’s approach to narrowing the gap in outcomes

Priestmead Primary school has adopted a range of approaches to ensure all learners achieve high outcomes. Some initiatives, such as the development of speaking and thinking skills are aimed at all children across the school. Others are aimed at certain groups, for example children of particular ethnic background. Several years ago the school was alerted by the local authority and Ofsted that children of Black and Afro-Caribbean background could be prone to underachievement. To support its learners, Priestmead primary school implemented a number of strategies, such as additional progress monitoring for specific groups of learners, curriculum development aimed at increasing its relevance to different groups of learners, parent/carer and community work. The school’s Somali club is a good example. It was created to engage parents and carers of Somali children and counteract some of the prevailing negative stereotypes about Somalia which were having a negative impact on the children. Somali children running an assembly for over three hundred other children and Somali parents and carers communicating with staff and getting involved with their children’s learning are just two of the positive outcomes of the club’s activity.

Finally, the school offers group and one-to-one interventions to support children in particular subject areas or skills. A range of reading, writing, mathematics sessions address children's needs and support academic progress. In addition SEAL[13], life skills and transition interventions are directed at young people with emotional and behaviour difficulties and support ‘whole person’ development.

Section 2: Curriculum and narrowing the gap: emerging themes and approaches

Research about narrowing the gap indicates that transition is a particularly critical time for vulnerable children and young people because they are:

• less likely to make successful transitions between Key Stages and schools, and are at risk of falling behind as a result;
• more likely than others to change school during a school year or Key Stage, and this can have a significant impact on their attainment;
• less likely to make informed decisions about subject choices and qualification routes[14].

Some of the strategies adopted by schools reported (e.g. Evangelou, et al, 2008) to be effective in facilitating KS2 to KS3 transition include informing the children and their parents about the new environment and the rules and procedures in their prospective secondary school through booklets and talks; allowing Year 6 children to experience the secondary school environment through visits, taster days and joint social events between the schools; and sharing information between the schools, etc[15].