The Enquiry Report
Ronnie Woods
Bransholme
Networked Learning Community
Enquiry
Report June 2003
Background
Bransholme is a huge council estate on the
northern periphery of Hull. Built in the 1960’s and 70’s as the
dockland areas were cleared. It has high levels of unemployment and comes
into categories of highest social deprivation nationally. The population
in the area is falling with people migrating to find work. Hull council
have consolidated the housing stock, clearing the areas in poorest repair,
landscaping and investing in the remaining stock. Despite the age and
nature of the housing stock the estate looks quite well looked after,
there is not a great deal of vandalism in evidence.
The fall in population has affected the
school population, which has led to reorganisation and school closures.
The remaining schools which form the Network are all relatively large with
primary school populations as big as 400 -500 children. There are two
large comprehensive schools of 1400-1600 pupils one of which, Kingswood,
is a Fresh Start School.
The schools in the Network are all part of
the Bransholme EAZ, which is due to end in the autumn of 2003. The
director of the EAZ who was one of the co-leaders in the bidding
documentation, but has since stood back, led the bid. The Network is now
co-led by two of the primary school headteachers. The Network is closely
linked with the EAZ, their work has grown out of work already being done
within the EAZ and the EAZ have committed staff time to support the
Network.
Working with Nottingham University they
have introduced an American literacy programme called Success
for All into a number of schools. This is an all or nothing programme
with an 85% positive secret ballot amongst all staff before adoption. Not
all schools were prepared to make this commitment so the EAZ have
facilitated a working relationship between some of the teachers in their
schools and Hull University to create a package which emphasises an aspect
of the Success for All programme, Co-operative learning. Their first project is to spread the use of this package
across the network.
Who have I involved in the process of this
enquiry?
In the course of the day I interviewed both
of the co-leaders of the Network and one of the EAZ innovators who is also
closely involved in the development of the Networked Learning Community. I
interviewed them before visiting schools and reflected upon the day with
them at the end of my visit. In the course of the day I visited two
primary schools, and a secondary school where I met and interviewed a
range of staff. I also met with a group of children in one of the primary
schools.
How have I gathered the evidence and
information about the example chosen?
The co-leaders of the Network asked me to
enquire into the work going on in the schools in Success for All,
co-operative learning and in the work going on in Kingswood High School in
Accelerated Learning. In
conducting my interviews as well as talking with the key individuals in
the Network who are responsible for its ongoing development I talked with
staff in schools who were working with the projects. I also interviewed a
small group of primary aged children about how they found working with
co-operative learning had changed their classrooms since its introduction
a few months ago.
The introduction of Success for All
predates the NLC as does the preparation for introducing co-operative
learning and accelerated learning. In some ways I was looking at what had
gone before and so I tried to focus upon what could be learned for their
model for projecting the work wider and how that was impacting upon
teaching and learning in the classroom.
What is the example? Description
Taking on Success for All (SfA) rather than
going with the National Literacy Strategy was quite a radical move on the
part of the schools who were first involved. In my ongoing discussions
with the co-leaders about its impact in their schools they have enthused
about its impact with almost missionary zeal. In my early discussions I
asked them to quantify that impact.. Both of the co-leaders described
massive gains in end of key stage results, 44% to 73% level 4 in KS2
English over the last 4 years, 77% to 93% level 2 in KS1 reading over a
similar period, elsewhere 100% level 2 Writing at KS1. Impressive outcomes
in the environments in which these schools work but they also emphasised
the other skill they felt their children were gaining from the programme,
their ability to work together and how that transferred across the whole
curriculum and the self confidence which they took with them to their
secondary schools. Harder to measure but possible to enquire about..
Striking in seeing SfA in the classrooms
are the routines the children are taught. Throughout my discussions and as
I visited classrooms people talked about the ways in which the children
were taught to value the contributions of others and shown procedures
which allowed them to make their own contributions in an appropriate way.
The most oft repeated routine was think/pair/share, an opportunity to
think on one’s own, to reflect with another and to share their ideas
more widely. Watching children using these resources in the classroom it
was obvious that SfA was more than a literacy programme.
I discussed the problems of the early
introduction of the programme with the staff of the school. It had been
tough in the early days; a teacher had been trained as an SfA facilitator
and had contributed to the training and support not only of teaching staff
but also of a group of Classroom Support Assistants (CSA’s). The
programme also groups children according to how well their literacy skills
are developed and in the early days there had been groups which had
contained children of widely different ages across two Key stages. The
head’s had worried about this but found that the older children in the
lower groups had responded to the challenge this presented. They also felt
that they had worked through this problem and that with the programme well
established it was no longer an issue. This system also demanded a large
number of groups, small steps with children progressing form group to
group as their progress justified this. Not only did this have
implications for spaces in which these groups might work, which has led to
some novel solutions, it had huge implications for the role of CSA’s
under the guidance of teaching staff were to be responsible for their own
groups, how they progressed through the programme, the setting and
monitoring of homework tasks but most importantly the daily teaching of
the programme.
The skilling of CSA’s and the degree to
which they had become highly skilful was universally agreed to be one of
the major reasons why the programme was so successful. Teaching staff
enthused about their contribution, CSA’s expressed pride in what they
were achieving and delight at the opportunity they had been given. One of
the headteachers spoke anecdotally about the Registered Inspector being
astonished at the conversation on the teaching of diagraphs with a CSA.
I tried to get beyond the obvious
enthusiasm being expressed. Had there been any difficulties, were there
any downsides? As the
implementation of the programme had evolved and the wide age range in
teaching groups had begun to resolve themselves, issues for children who
were finding it difficult to make progress emerged. They had found the SfA
organisation unresponsive about addressing the needs of these children at
first, suggesting that the programme could accommodate all abilities.
However the leverage which several schools working together was able to
bring to the SfA organisation meant that they had responded and between
the organisation and the in school facilitators materials had been created
to support these children. Another issue in a similar vein was how
incoming children from non-SfA schools were accommodated. However this had
come to be seen as a positive since invariably the issue was that they
were further behind than their peers, a measure of the programme’s
success, and they had become skilful at accommodating these children.
Another issue I tried to probe with them
was where teacher’s professional discretion fitted into a highly
structured programme. Each time I probed this idea the teacher’s
response was that they quite liked the structure and that within that
structure there was room of creativity;
A colleague suggested that;
And that this energy was brought to other
subject areas, where because of the routines of co-operative learning the
children were more ‘skilful learners’. As I observed a class of
children co-operatively refining their writing, sharing their ideas,
reflecting and debating on the quality of those ideas in a safe
environment I was struck by a
highly structured programme which
promotes independent learning in classrooms. It has also transformed
teacher’s pedagogies and made a measurable difference to children’s
learning. I asked one of the headteachers about the journey to get to
where they are, he said;
“It’s been a huge financial commitment, to was really hard in the early days but we wouldn’t go back
Success for All was originally introduced
into 4 schools. This activity was very much the product of activity within
the EAZ. One of the driving themes of the Networked Learning Community is
how this might roll out across the schools in the Network. The very nature
of the programme, total commitment by the whole school, confirmed by an
85% vote to adopt makes it tough for the passionate advocates to spread
the word. Their solution has been to take the techniques and classroom
routines of the co-operative learning and working with the EAZ and Hull
University School of Education created a package which can be adopted by
schools who find the total commitment to SfA a step too far.
The model for role out which the Networked
Learning Community relies upon involves the schools who were early
adopters of SfA becoming the source of expertise for the schools who are
new to the programme. For the teachers who contributed to the authorship
for the Co-operative Learning package to facilitate its implementation in
other target schools. They see this process continually rolling out so
that first cohort target schools become the facilitative expert schools
for the next cohort of target schools. An ever growing group of
‘experts’ facilitating the creation of opportunities from
teachers in other schools to share with and learn from their expertise.
In my visit to a school which was one of
the first target schools to adopt co-operative learning I discussed with
the in school facilitator how her role had evolved and the support she had
received. She talked about the two days of training she had received, the
training pack she was provided with, some insights she had gained on how
to observe lesson, the opportunities given to discuss plan and debate. She
also talked about the opportunity she had been given as a young teacher to
lead the work within school, how nervous about it she had been at first
and how her confidence had grown as her colleagues came to understand and
appreciate what was involved. She talked about the privilege it was to be
in other teacher’s classrooms, observing the children, not the teacher
and how wonderful it was to;
She also enthused about the quality of
debate in the staffroom, she reflected upon discussions about learning and
about discussions about co-operative learning, about removing some of the
divides across the age ranges in the school, about a consistency that runs
through the school and she summed these feelings up by suggesting that;
“There’s
a new professional language in school, a new way of making professional
dialogue.”
She also talked about ongoing support, the
power of the cross-school facilitator group, the opportunity to learn from
school to school. She finished by reflecting;
“It’s so exciting, the opportunity to engineer change, to be responsible across the school for teaching and learning.
It’s
nice that it’s been successful and it’s nice for people to come and
say so.”
A young teacher empowered by the process of
implementation, empowered to lead.
I also had the opportunity in this school
to talk to some children about how it was for them. To ask how things had
changed in September. They talked abut their classrooms, of writing
stories co-operatively, of using think,
pair, share in groups of four to discuss aspects of their learning and
at the same time;
And as we continued our dialogue we moved
to their relationships beyond the classroom one of the boys talked about
how the yard had become less confrontational;
“You
don’t get dirty looks, you know them, you’ve worked with them and you
understand one another.”
The confident and articulate way in which
these children expressed themselves was reflected when I met and talked
with other children in the classrooms of both of the primary schools I
visited. When I commented on this to the teachers they talked of
individual children for whom co-operative
learning had transformed their lives in school.
One of the issues for the primary school
Headteachers had been how the exciting things they were doing in the
primary school were to be built upon in secondary school. Kingswood, the
local high school, had been a Fresh Start school, which had then gone into
special measures. Measured by the percentage of children achieving 5 A to
C’s one of the lowest performing schools in the country. One of the
means by which they had emerged from this low point was to work with their
primary partners in the EAZ. Some of the primary Head’s acted as
critical friends to the High School and as part of this process staff from
the high school began to visit classrooms in the neighbouring primary
schools. The dialogue has been about learning and packages have been
created to introduce both co-operative learning and Accelerated Learning.
The focus of my visit to the school was on
the use of these initiatives in Y7 and how they hoped to build upon early
successes and spread what one of the staff I spoke to as;
Emerging out of the work with the primary
school has been the creation of a dedicated working area for Y7 children,
which they enter through a separate entrance, where they have many of
their lessons and where staff come to them rather than they going out to
staff. Within this home base teachers have worked hard on looking at
learning, learning from their visits to primary schools but also from one
another, coaching and peer observation, providing a consistent pedagogy,
which focuses on children’s learning. This environment for learning is
supported by the pastoral systems within the home base which one of the
staff described as;
“ A refuge, a place that’s special, for the kids”
In discussing the perceived continued
impact in Y8 I asked how the work they were so proud of in Y7 was to
impact upon the rest of the school. Roll
out for the high school was to be from Y7 but also through the work they
were doing with any NQT’s who joined the school and by working with the
whole of the science faculty on a consistent pedagogy for learning. As
they talked and enthused about how the school was being transformed they
talked about the team, about happy teachers who are ambitious for their
children and about not just co-operative children but also;
What internal factors have been helpful?
The thought that has been put into building
capacity within the schools, the in school facilitators, the support they
have been given but also the support they give one another. The idea that
the learners will become the leaders in the next phase also appears to be
very powerful in building capacity within the schools.
The words learning and consistency repeated
themselves throughout my visit. The emphasis on learning, the focus on
pedagogy and the idea that it’s not about conformity it’s about
consistency. Consistently high expectations of children and of oneself in
one’s interaction with those children.
What internal factors have been a
hindrance?
Expense. SfA is expensive as has been the
creation of the co-operative learning package. There are also staffing
implications to these especially in the early stages of SfA. There has
been a commitment to these expenses supported by EAZ resources. The
continued success of the programmes will only be sustained if the
financial commitment is sustained or sustainable.
What external factors have been helpful?
Without the EAZ, this work would never have
begun. They have provided resources both human and financial which have
brought the schools together around a common goal. The relationships and
trust built as a result of the EAZ also smooth the way in the roll out
across the schools.
What external factors have been a
hindrance?
The uncertainty about future support from
beyond the schools. The EAZ will end in the Autumn, there may be a
reconfiguration and aspects of it may reappear in another form but it is
the uncertainty of whether that support will be there which is hard to
plan for in both the primary and secondary schools
Summary of Learning from the Enquiry
- Although much of what I enquired about was pre-NLC’s the quantifiable difference the work has made to children in demanding social circumstances is exciting.
- The
model for roll out is interesting not only because it draws practical
expertise from those who have wrestled with the genuine problems of
implementation but also builds leadership capacity in both the early
adopting school and the target school.
- There
is evidence of pupil learning, adult learning, leadership learning,
school wide learning and school to school learning.
- The
building of leadership capacity within the schools and some thought on
how that might be facilitated needs to be considered if the work is to
thrive without the substantial support it receives form the EAZ
- There
appears to be an almost contradictory model of a highly structured
programme, which fosters independent learning.
‘It’s about learning’ a phrase they use was evident in the daily work of schools.