Last week I was invited to attend the national launch of the Key Stage 3 Alliance. The launch of the Alliance asks us to think differently about Years 7, 8 and 9. What if we saw these years not simply as preparation for what comes next, but as a distinctive and important phase in their own right? This sector-led initiative aims to bring together schools, trusts, practitioners and researchers to develop our collective understanding of what works during the early years of secondary education.
The Alliance will focus on four national priorities:
Engagement and belonging
Foundational literacy and numeracy
Assessment and data coherence
Pathways to adult life
Do we have a sufficiently clear and coherent account of what every young person should experience between the ages of 11 and 14? Are all stakeholders united around this account?
Becks Boomer-Clark, Co-Chair of the KS3 Alliance, referred to Key Stage Three as the ‘early years of secondary’. There is something powerful about describing this phase of education in this way as we readily recognise early childhood as a distinctive developmental phase. We think carefully about what children need at this point in their lives and how this should inform curriculum, pedagogy and the environments we create. Could early adolescence benefit from similar attention? Albeit writing in 2014, Blum et al. state ‘early adolescence (ages 10 – 14 years) is among the most neglected stages of development, yet there are few stages during the life course where changes are as dramatic.’
This raises interesting questions for practice. What might change if we designed the early secondary experience with adolescent development more explicitly in mind? How might this affect our approaches to relationships, belonging, curriculum, assessment and enrichment?
The headings above, cited during the Alliance launch, capture the ambition of this work. Broad horizons means ensuring that pupils encounter the richness of subjects. Mary Myatt argues that we need to reclaim Key Stage 3 from wasted years to the ‘ambitious years’ and makes no apology for citing the importance of the Key Stage 3 curriculum for unlocking the ‘magic’ of subjects. This also points to the longevity of the debate around Key Stage 3 following the publication of Ofsted’s Key Stage 3: the wasted years report (2015) which investigated whether key stage 3 was providing pupils with sufficient breadth and challenge, and prior to this, the publication of guidance to schools around ‘Assessment without Levels’ following abolition of the assessment system.
When we think about broadening horizons we want young people to encounter ideas, experiences and possibilities that they might not otherwise meet; this should contribute to providing real choices.
Can young people see connections between what they are learning and the world beyond examinations?
Can they begin to discover their interests and strengths?
Do they have the opportunity to experience success and develop agency?
Inclusion?
Recognising Key Stage 3 as a distinctive phase of education also raises important questions about inclusion. If our ambition is to provide strong foundations, broad horizons and real choices, we need to consider whether these opportunities are genuinely accessible to every young person.
Strong foundations are particularly important to ensure pupils can access an increasingly complex curriculum; where pupils arrive at secondary with gaps in these foundations, we need a response that is both timely and carefully designed. However, responding to these gaps should not come at the expense of access to an ambitious curriculum or wider opportunities.
This brings us back to the importance of the universal, everyday experience of school. The EEF’s Guide to Inclusive Teaching encourages us to consider what we do every day that is especially important for pupils with additional needs.
Call for evidence
The KS3 Alliance has launched a call for evidence seeking examples of ‘effective practice’ in early secondary years, along with research and innovation, ‘as well as lessons from approaches that have not worked’.
As we begin to identify promising approaches, we also need to understand how and why they work in different contexts. The EEF’s A School’s Guide to Implementation (2024) reminds us that implementation is a process, not an event. Developing a stronger evidence base for Key Stage 3 therefore requires us to look beyond identifying effective practices and consider the conditions that enable schools to implement and sustain them. This includes understanding the barriers and enablers that influence implementation, as well as recognising the importance of context.
This encourages us to heighten our curiosity and reflect on existing Key Stage 3 provision by engaging with a range of stakeholders.
What do our pupils tell us about their experience of Years 7, 8 and 9?
Where do engagement, attendance and belonging begin to change?
Which pupils experience Key Stage 3 differently from their peers?
Does our curriculum genuinely build on what pupils learned at primary school?
Can our pupils articulate a purpose for what they have learned beyond the next test?
Perhaps the most important opportunity presented by the KS3 Alliance is the chance to develop a more coherent understanding of what young people should experience during the early years of secondary education. This requires us to think beyond individual interventions or initiatives and consider how curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, relationships and wider opportunities work together.
If we recognise early adolescence as a distinctive developmental phase, what might we need to do differently? And, importantly, what can we learn from schools already doing this well?
References
Blum, R.W., Astone, N.M., Decker, M.R. and Mouli, V.C. (2014) ‘A conceptual framework for early adolescence: a platform for research’, International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health, 26(3), pp. 321 – 331. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1515/ijamh-2013 – 0327
Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) (2024) A school’s guide to implementation. London: Education Endowment Foundation. Available at: EEF – A School’s Guide to Implementation
