Research School Network: Improve universal provision for all pupils OneCornwall

Cathy Potter and Marc Rowland, working alongside a dedicated group of education professionals in Cornwall, united under the Cornwall Education Partnership (CEP) through the OneCornwall Teaching School Hub, insightful journey to share and refine strategies for addressing the critical issue of attendance in schools ensuring that educators are equipped with the best practices to foster student engagement and attendance.

Building on the recommendations of the EEF on addressing the attendance challenge, the report made a number of recommendations. One of these was ​‘improve universal provision for all pupils You can access the full repot here: https://www.onecornwall.co.uk/_site/data/publications/attendance_booklet/index.html

Attainment and attendance

Pupils that attain well, attend well. Classrooms are about learning as part of a large group. It is therefore, essential that pupils experience success with regards to both learning and being part of a group. Success leads to motivation. Learning becomes something to engage in rather than get through. Staff can create the conditions in which pupils are more likely to experience both academic and social success but can also unwittingly create invisible barriers if pupils’ learning needs are not attended to.

Do teachers have good knowledge of pupils’ learning needs, and how is this information shared regularly?

When staff have good knowledge of pupils’ learning needs, adaptations to teaching and interventions more closely hit the mark. What do pupils know? What do they need to know next? This knowledge and its deployment are a key part of creating psychological safety in the classroom, ultimately leading to pupils feeling that they are ​‘good at this.’ Assessment of pupils’ learning needs is a broad domain, and leaders need to be clear that assessment, monitoring, and transitions systems give staff actionable data to support pupils.

Here we can briefly explore one fundamental aspect – that of checking for understanding. Barack Rosenshine underlined that more effective teachers had strong checking for understanding protocols, asked lots of questions and evaluated pupil responses. He also outlined the wrong way to check for understanding: teachers calling on volunteers to hear their
(usually correct) answers and then assuming that all of the class either understood or had then learned from hearing the volunteers’ responses.
When teachers aren’t investigating the difference between ​‘I taught it’ and ​‘they learned it’ many pupils can feel left behind and unheard. It is too often the case that pupils with a weaker understanding sit through lessons compliant but inhibited and fearing exposure. Pupils who regularly experience this may avoid coming to school.

Labels can get in the way of thinking about learning needs. A child with a diagnosis of autism who is also finding learning challenging might need glasses rather than positioning all his learning needs in relation to his autism. To quote Margaret Mulholland, we need to be experts in our pupils, not labels. SEND diagnoses must not cloud responding to observable, diagnosed learning needs (e.g. they now need to learn their 5x table, they now need support in constructing a cohesive paragraph).

Do teachers have the expertise and support to meet pupils’ needs? Does professional development enable teachers to continue to improve?

More now than ever, we have descriptions of how to implement and sustain professional development, such as the work of Sam Sims et al. The ​‘what’ and the ​‘how’ of teaching are vast and complex, meaning that teachers’ professional development needs are huge. It is imperative
to use time impactfully.

Within professional development, teachers should be guided to prioritise key aspects such as reading diagnostics (phonic knowledge, fluency of reading) and the core mathematical concepts outlined in the DfE’s Mathematics Guidance (ready to progress criteria). Backwards planning units of work is helpful in teachers grasping the journey they will take pupils on, and therefore what knowledge to prioritise and check along the way. Professional development should support teachers to avoid the trap of narrowing the curriculum as a result. Assessment tools are not a curriculum, and teachers should be supported to understand this difference.

What systems are in place to seek and hear pupils’ views? Is this used to help identify potential barriers to pupil learning and engagement?

The ​‘curse of the expert’ makes it hard to stay conscious of how a novice learner will experience content for the first time. Failing to view our classrooms, learning content or paired talk from the perspective of pupils can mean that there are barriers to engagement of which we are unaware. We may be using words pupils don’t understand. It may be that rather than I do > we do > you do, our pupils will feel that they really get it with I do > we do > we do > we do > you do. It may be something as simple as ​‘I can’t see the board.’

How do you ensure that you are successful in your learning?

Without listening to our pupils, teachers may invest a great deal of time in preparing lessons which are ineffective without knowing why learning is failing. Teachers and other staff should have a shared understanding of the components of inclusive quality first teaching, specific to their subject and phase. Subject and phase leaders should ensure that their daily practice, and that of the teachers in their teams, is inclusive and high
quality for all.

There should be memorable, joyful learning experiences in which all learners, particularly the disadvantaged, are expected and encouraged to participate.

Activity might include:

-Professional development for teachers and other classroom practitioners, focused on assessment of need
- Recruiting and keeping specialist teachers. Disadvantaged learners may be disproportionately impacted by a high turnover of staff or difficulties in recruitment, as well as inconsistencies in expectations, relationships, or knowledge of prior learning/​experiences

All pupils thrive when there is a relentless focus on high quality teaching (and a shared understanding of what this is).

Resources:

The Great Teaching Toolkit may be a resource that supports this work, alongside EEF guidance: https://evidencebased.educatio…
https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/guidance-reports
https://www.onecornwall.co.uk/…
https://www.researchgate.net/p…
https://educationendowmentfoun…

https://www.aft.org/sites/defa…
https://teacherhead.com/2021/1…