Whitehall Park

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by Anna Beresford2 views·Updated Mar 20, 2021
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  1. hello and thank you for asking me to talk about
  2. how I can support and the teachers to ensure that
  3. all pupils make the necessary progress to achieve the expected
  4. standards and better.
  5. I'm going to answer the question in three parts.
  6. I'm going to begin by thinking about what we mean
  7. by progress and how it's measured.
  8. I'll move on to think about the conditions that pupils
  9. required to make optimal progress and finish up by talking
  10. about some of the ways I have support and lead
  11. teachers in my school to make optimal progress for their
  12. people. It was, I hope once you've heard those three
  13. things, you will feel confident that I can support and
  14. need teachers to ensure optimal pupil progress.
  15. What do we mean by optimal progress and how it's
  16. measured? So the education inspection framework is really clear now
  17. that progress entertainment is going to be measured in ways
  18. that go far beyond the data.
  19. Data still needs to be strong, but there's lots of
  20. other things involved.
  21. I've included the image of the Honduras Bridge as a
  22. way of sort of exemplifying that so a bridge that
  23. was built and then went after with severe weather conditions.
  24. The river moved bridge was still required, but it was
  25. in the wrong place.
  26. So a school that is only looking at data has
  27. got a bridge in the wrong place.
  28. Mm. Demonstrating that your pupils are making the necessary progress.
  29. And attaining the expected standards has to also include being
  30. confident that people can talk about their learning in ways
  31. that they have shown, that they've understood the knowledge that
  32. they need to know and that they can do the
  33. things that they're supposed to be able to do.
  34. Their books also need to provide evidence and give that
  35. picture. And there also needs to be clear evidence that
  36. pupils with barriers or who come from groups are traditionally
  37. underperform, have highest aspirations or expectations set of them conditions
  38. required for optimal progress.
  39. I think a five fold.
  40. It starts with great teachers, teachers that have four secure
  41. areas. They have sound content knowledge.
  42. They know their subject deeply.
  43. They also know how that knowledge is learned.
  44. They're able to create supportive learning environment.
  45. So places where there is high challenge but high support
  46. where there is respect between pupils and between pupils and
  47. adults they are able to maximize opportunities to learn they
  48. have efficient transitions and they have minimal behavioral disruptions.
  49. And they plan activities and ask questions.
  50. They're going to activate Children's thinking.
  51. Actual progress happens where there are robust assessment systems in
  52. place based on purpose, validity, reliability and value.
  53. Our assessment systems, where there is a clear sense of
  54. why things are being assessed, where what is being what
  55. people think is being assessed is actually being assessed.
  56. So they are valid in other words, a test where
  57. there is a lot of reading content in a masters
  58. where there's lots reading content might well be delivering erroneous
  59. information because it's simply about a child's capacity to redraw
  60. them a mathematical capability, they need to be reliable.
  61. So they need to give consistent results in different contexts
  62. over time and with different teachers.
  63. And finally, they need to be a value, so they
  64. need to be worth a kind of information that they're
  65. bringing up needs to be worth the effort that's being
  66. put into them.
  67. They'll deliver accurate judgments, and those judgments are going to
  68. be used to adapt and adjust teaching to address gaps
  69. and ensure sufficient challenge a quality curriculum is also very
  70. important for optimal progress.
  71. To happen needs to be curriculum where there's a clear
  72. vision, specific outcomes.
  73. So people need to be really care about what people
  74. need to know and what they need to be able
  75. to do at specific endpoints, carefully sequenced, connective and engaging
  76. and relevant to the learners.
  77. Mhm. The recent lockdown and school closures have provided us
  78. with a really strong starting point for parental partnership.
  79. Parents have a better insight into how their individual child
  80. learns and how learning happens more broadly than they would
  81. have done before school closure.
  82. We need to find ways to harness that engagement from
  83. parents because we know the latest research shows how important
  84. parental engagement is in terms of maximizing progress.
  85. We also need to be clear about which pupils aren't
  86. receiving that level of engagement at home and what we
  87. can do to support them.
  88. And finally, overarching.
  89. All of this has to be a school where there
  90. is a growth ethos.
  91. There's a climate of high expectations, high challenge and high
  92. trust people within that adults and people have feelings, autonomy.
  93. They think it's okay to have a go and they
  94. attribute success and failures to things that they can change
  95. themselves. So with those five conditions, with the great teachers,
  96. robust assessment, quality curriculum, parental engagement and a growth ethos,
  97. you will be able to optimize pupil progress.
  98. So what have I done to support and the teachers
  99. in my setting to contribute to those five factors?
  100. Well, to start off with, I have been heavily involved
  101. with coaching and performance management for our teaching team.
  102. The work I've done has motivated and empowered teachers.
  103. It's about getting them to see what the components are
  104. too great teaching.
  105. So it's not about reducing it to sort of a
  106. simple checklist.
  107. But it is about being clear that there are these
  108. full factors that heavily contribute to pupil progress and having
  109. honest conversations about where they are on that journey based
  110. on evidence based on learning, um, walks on lesson observations
  111. and on book scrutiny, he's It's about providing formative and
  112. actionable feedback following those conversations and that look at evidence
  113. and about embracing the growth culture so that together we
  114. have a sense that these are things that we can
  115. change and they're not fixed.
  116. So robust assessment good example of how we've used robust
  117. assessment to maximize progress to close gaps have been our
  118. pupil progress meetings.
  119. These are honest, ambitious and productive.
  120. Their solutions focused conversations.
  121. So they're not just about identifying barriers, but they're much
  122. more about thinking about how we can act and and
  123. resolve these barriers.
  124. They're based on robust data from our various different assessment
  125. processes, which allow us to set clear and actionable targets
  126. and their ways in which teachers can be held to
  127. account but also supported to deliver.
  128. Working groups are really good example of a growth ethos
  129. where everyone has a sense of collective responsibility and also
  130. the idea that there are things that they can change
  131. and develop.
  132. They provide much needed time for reflection, evaluation.
  133. So what we discovered, what we felt was that teachers
  134. one presented with the kind of evidence that we were
  135. seeing as the leadership team, would easily be able to
  136. see the kinds of things that we could see.
  137. That would mean that we could make progress, but them
  138. seeing themselves would be far more powerful.
  139. First of all, the experience of seeing seeing that and
  140. discovering that information yourself means it's more embedded, and it's
  141. also more owned by the people in that process.
  142. It also ensured it about as sure to buy insurance
  143. buying where people feel collectively like they have identified that
  144. improvement. They agree with it, and they are collectively and
  145. individually responsible for doing something about it.
  146. The added benefit we have noticed since during it broaden
  147. it across the curriculum is that it has continue to
  148. develop and enhance curriculum understanding within subject.
  149. So how that subject is taught and learned and levels
  150. across year groups, but also within a year group how
  151. a curriculum can be connected, our quality curriculum.
  152. I have shown through, um, my work with subject leaders.
  153. So through coaching them see CPD and various opportunities for
  154. them to take on that middle leader role.
  155. They've been given autonomy and support, and so they've taken
  156. ownership over there over the quality of our general are
  157. broader curriculum as a school and finally just thinking about
  158. parental engagement.
  159. Um, I have coached subject leads to take on curriculum
  160. information evenings, ensuring that parents are really clear about curriculum
  161. content, the expectations for their child and how they can
  162. best support their child at home.
  163. So those are the ways leading by example and through
  164. coaching and working together, I have contributed to the great
  165. teachers robust assessment, growth ethos, quality curriculum, parental engagement within
  166. my school.
  167. I believe that my understanding of how to conditions required
  168. for optimal progress, how progress is made you don't understood
  169. and my capacity to work in those different ways with
  170. people will really will help to ensure that pupils at
  171. Whitehall Park make the necessary progress to achieve expected standards
  172. or better.
  173. And I hope you think that too.