1. Why did the school decide to undertake The Challenge Award?
In the Autumn Term 2002 the school was subjected to a rigorous Ofsted inspection. At the end of the assessment, the school was labelled "underachieving". Although many of those involved with the school felt the final judgement was harsh and the process very demoralising, we could not argue with the main finding that we had able children who were leaving with satisfactory grades. The Ofsted team had scrutinised the children at entry level and compared their base line results with their end of KS2 results and found that the children should have been attaining results that beat the national average; instead, ours were in line with the national trend. The team felt that children were being taught the skills but not given the opportunity to use them in most curriculum areas. We were told that we would be inspected again in just 2 years and would receive an interim visit by an HMI roughly half-way through. We knew we did not have time to waste and that we had to pay serious attention to the needs of our A.G. & T. pupils. It was around this time that I, as the Ab.Co. heard about the NACE Challenge Award and felt that it would be a useful tool to help us audit our current level of provision and give us a sense of direction in terms of the things we needed to address.

2. How did you get started?
I was the first Ab.Co. that the school had had and, therefore, began from scratch. The first thing we, as a staff, did was write a definition of what we felt a "more able" child at Hermitage was. We then integrated this into a policy for the provision of our more able (later updated to able, gifted & talented) and drew up a register, identifying all of the children from Years 1-6 who we felt were more able and what their specific talent was. Staff were also asked to identify opportunities for extension on their planning where, previously, differentiation had generally only been for the S.E.N. children. Differentiation became quite a complex issue in the school and we realised that some staff did not have a variety of methods of differentiation to call upon. As a vertically grouped school, with an average of 2 year groups per class, children were extended by being given tasks, text books and objectives planned for the year group above. We held a staff meeting, looking at examples of differentiation from a QCA published training pack, to develop the idea that children can be extended in a variety of ways, all of which were felt to be more beneficial to the child than pushing them up through the year groups.

3. What activities have you undertaken specifically to support the development of the Award?
Although we used the Challenge Award framework to guide us through the necessary steps to improving our school and the opportunities we gave our children, we did not actually undertake any activities specifically to gain the award. Everything we developed and put in place was purely to improve our school and bring it up to the standard that the Ofsted inspectors felt it should have been at. We feel that everything we have done has made a tremendous difference to the educational opportunities of the children in our care and has made us better teachers with a firmer grasp of a range of teaching skills and given us the confidence to try new ideas. This is not to say that we do not feel the award was a worthwhile investment of time and money however. The framework is so clearly divided into the different aspects required to enable a school to provide an all-encompassing environment for able, gifted and talented children to learn to the best of their abilities, that it gave us a very clear sense of direction. It also gave us a benchmark and a checklist, which, at times, we needed to boost moral, whilst at others, it showed us what we had left to cover. I believe that without the framework to refer to, the job of developing provision, regulating assessment and evidence, and providing the necessary examples of all of this to prove what we were doing, would have been almost impossible.

4. Has your provision for A, G & T improved since undertaking the Challenge Award?
The Able, Gifted and Talented at Hermitage are now a recognised group of individuals and there is an expectation by all staff that their needs need to be considered as much as those of the S.E.N. children. All staff are now using the term A, G&T on a daily basis when they talk about planning, teaching and assessment and are identifying opportunities to extend the AGT throughout the curriculum through an ever-increasing range of methods. Therefore, the change in expectations of all the school communities, staff, pupils and parents, has altered dramatically.

5. Has it made an impact on CPD?
In an effort to spread the responsibility for AGT across the staff, performance management has been used to help teachers and L.S.A.s develop their skills in planning for challenge within their own classrooms and in their subject areas. For example, one member of staff, responsible for a foundation subject has a target to develop the skills of the AGT within her subject area. As a floating teacher with no class responsibility, this has allowed her to remain instrumental in the SDP and school improvement and helped direct where she should teach to have the greatest impact on her CPD. L.S.A.s too have had targets relating to AGT written into their performance management action plans to encourage them to work alongside the equally challenging, but more able members of the class, rather than just the S.E.N. children.

6. Have you talked to pupils as part of your work with the Challenge Award? What impact has this had?
This is an area that we have only just begun to delve into in a formalised way. The whole ethos of evaluation and self-evaluation means that pupils and teachers are constantly involved in positive and constructive dialogue which has changed the way that we all work. As part of the Challenge Award process, we have "interviewed" a small number of AGT children with fascinating results. The LEA also requested that we interview our year 5/6 children to find out their viewpoints on mathematics teaching and learning within the school. The analysis of the results, by the LEA, has made interesting reading and has prompted other members of the class to try and incorporate similar questionnaires within their own classes. Annually, pupils complete the Ofsted pupil's questionnaire, the results of which are analysed by the Headteacher and then discussed with the staff. This is certainly an area we wish to develop as the positive benefits of this activity have been very clear, showing that is worth making the time to do.

7. Which aspects of the Challenge Award have been most useful?
The audit that we carried out first was an excellent way of identifying our strengths and areas for development with regard to our identification and provision for AGT pupils. It gave us a sense of direction and a checklist so we knew where we were in terms of our development. The way the award is organised was also extremely useful as it helped us to think about AGT from a number of different aspects, ensuring that the strategies and procedures we devised were not merely superficial measures but lead to all-round provision that catered for all of the child's needs and all of the children within the school. Now, having been through the whole process and realised the enormity of the award, I would actually say that gaining the award was one of the most useful aspects. It gives schools something to strive for and a reward at the end of the long and bumpy road that represents the whole process. It gave us the recognition we needed and deserved for all the time and effort we had put in to turning around an area of our school that was identified as a weakness and has now evolved into a strength.

8. What have been the Challenges of promoting the Award in your school and how have you overcome them?
The toughest challenge (as mentioned) was promoting the award amongst the staff and gaining whole school support and responsibility. However, because of the way the award materials are organised and the way we introduced it to staff, they all took ownership of it and took on the tasks required to build up the necessary portfolio of evidence. It was clear, come the assessment, that all of the staff were on-board with the practices and changes we had implemented on our quest to achieve the award when they were interviewed, without the presence of the Ab.Co. They all demonstrated a good knowledge and understanding of the changes and the reasoning behind them and the differences that these had made to our school. We were singing from the same hymn sheet!

I don't feel we did enough to promote the award outside the school, with the parents and other school communities however. This was largely due to a complete under-estimate of the prestige and importance attached to the award by myself. If I had realised quite how significant our achievement actually was as we prepared to go through the assessment process, I would certainly have highlighted our plans to the parents more regularly and more obviously. Having said that, we were delighted by the number of positive responses we had from the parental community following both the acquisition of the award and the award ceremony. The parents felt that it was a just reward for a lot of hard work and that the school was moving forward with the children at the centre of our plans.

9. How are you managing the monitoring of the action plan?
AGT is now a regular item at staff meetings, either as a training event (for both teachers and L.S.A.s) or as a monitoring opportunity. Staff are given time to complete Individual Challenge Plans for children on the register together, which allows the Ab.Co. to work alongside them and support the process of planning challenging provision. The AGT action plan had become part of the SDP throughout the time when we were working towards the award and was, therefore, closely monitored by the Head, Governors and Ab.Co, who regularly reported on progress at the full Governor's meetings. Now that the school has achieved the award, there is still a need for an action plan to be drawn up in line with the financial year dates. This has ensured that this area of the children's' education remains a key focus within the school and demonstrates that it is still an area of growth.

10. What advice would you give to school setting out on the Award?Make sure that all members of staff are onboard with the project. Once we had much of the provision firmly in place, we began the evidence gathering stage. As a staff, we sat down with 5 trays and the first 5 elements. We went through them one by one, stating what examples we could lay our hands on to show evidence for each sublevel of the element. We also noted who had that evidence or could provide it given time. Each member of staff sat with a piece of paper and noted down each item they were personally responsible for and which element it was to be included in. We arranged another staff meeting a few weeks later to allow people time to collect and collate their pieces of evidence. These were gathered in and then the other 5 elements were looked at in the same way. It was through these activities that the Challenge Award became "whole school".

11. Where appropriate, give examples of how your school has achieved particular Elements of the Award.

Element 1 - A whole school strategy:
Reward systems, weekly celebration assembly, reference to AGT in all subject policies, inclusion of AGT issues in staff meeting, pupil concerns boxes (for anonymous discussions), an action plan, AGT policy and references from the latest Ofsted report on the school.

Element 2 - Identification:
Pupil interviews, examples of teachers planning with references to AGT cohorts, register, records of pupils chosen for external events - e.g. sports matches, individual targets, teacher's assessment records and tracking data.

Element 3 - Targets for improvement of provision:
Extra-curricular provision, Governor's reports to parents, evidence collected from subject days/weeks - e.g. Maths Day, Art Week, action plan analysis ( to see where progress is being made and show what still needs doing), monitoring by teachers and/or Governor's, FS2 to KS1 FSP assessments, transition records (F2-KS1, KS1-KS2 and KS2-3), PANDA reports, S.A.T.s analysis & cohort targets, examples of formative assessment from children's work, examples of quality marking from children's work, Individual Challenge Plans (I.C.P.s), self & peer evaluation and children's annual report reply slips (child & parent comments).

Element 4 - Curriculum:
Self-evaluations, peer marking, evidence of a range of learning styles being used in subjects, examples of lesson plans showing "higher order questioning", use of "response partners", teaching and learning policy, marking posters (explaining marking codes to all staff and children), monitoring folder (containing monitoring grids to focus staff observations - WIGIT, WIGIL, etc.), subject weeks (e.g. Art Week to develop additional skills and provide alternative experiences to those identified in the curriculum), pupil mentors/class monitors/class friend and transition notes on AGT pupils.

Element 5 - Underachievement::
Targeted improvement Programmes (T.I.P.s) and S.A.T.s analysis/tracking data.

Element 6 - Training:
AGT.Co. job description, course record for all school staff, evidence of in-house training, CPD certificates from external staff training, performance management and CPD policies, membership of national organisations, evidence of NQT induction training and CPD training for L.S.A.s.

Element 7 - Support programmes:
AGT Register, extension programmes (e.g. spelling lists that go beyond the requirements for the age range), I.C.P.'s, visits by external professionals/specialists (e.g. Art Week - artist visit, sports coaches, parents with specialist skills) and membership of organisations.

Element 8 - Resources including ICT:
Photographs of children using resources (e.g. maypole, sports equipment, coaching sessions, etc.), analysis of audit into strategies used by teachers to support AGT in the classroom (including section on use/availability of resources), parents support page on school website, web builders club (giving children the chance to shape the school's website), extended reading ranges within each key stage for AGT readers, ICT policy, use of local secondary school laptop suite and ICT specialist and resources specifically designed for AGT.

Element 9 - Parental involvement:
School prospectus, annual report to parents, use of parents with a specialist skill (e.g. parent hockey coach), evidence of home-school liaison over I.C.P.'s and T.I.P.s, specific area of school website with links to sites that aim to support parents and invitations to parents to join in/view the end product of a project (e.g. local secondary school dance presentation).

Element 10 - Monitoring the action plan:
Audit of provision, action plan, Ofsted feedback, subject monitoring relating to AGT, subject work moderations, action plan analysis (mid-year progress check) and Governor monitoring.

12. What use, if any, have you made of the Challenge Award support materials? How effective have they been? (e.g. the WIGIT)
We adapted the WIGIT (etc.) grids to make it easier to utilise these for monitoring by subject coordinators. We have split each grid into separate strands to allow coordinators to focus on one specific aspect, e.g. use of the support assistant, differentiation, etc. This has allowed teachers to make more detailed observations and give more focused, constructive feedback. We have also designed proformas to ensure that written feedback is given after a lesson observation (important for CPD and performance management) and that the Ab.Co. also receives feedback on any aspects of the lesson relating to AGT.

13. How has The Challenge Award influenced the way you approach your role as co-ordinator of able pupil provision?
I carried out an audit amongst the staff, early on in the process, to see how they viewed their role as a teacher and a subject coordinator with regards to our able, gifted and talented pupils. The results were quite astounding and marked a turning point for me. It became clear that the staff assumed responsibility for the A.G. & T. pupils was the role of the Ab.Co., this included monitoring the curriculum, the teaching, the planning, the learning, the assessment, the subject training, etc. When asked what they thought a good lesson might include, they all mentioned provision for the more able. I made the suggestion to each member of staff that, when observing a lesson as part of their coordinator monitoring, if they were looking to see that the lesson was appropriately differentiated to include challenging activities for the more able, surely, this meant they were monitoring able children. Having established that all members of staff were not just responsible for the needs of the able children in their classes but for the provision for able, gifted and talented children within their subject area, my job became a lot easier. Everyone was open to the idea of training, and developing their understanding of this group of children and how to provide for them. We are about to revise the teachers' job descriptions to make their responsibility for able, gifted and talented within their subject area clear and incorporate subject responsibility for I.C.T., as this is another area of the curriculum that we have begun to see as an umbrella rather than a strand.

14. Any further comments you would like to make about the Challenge Award?
Everybody at Hermitage Primary School was delighted to hear that we had achieved such a prestigious award. It marked the end of a very hectic and difficult, yet excitingly productive period in the schools' development and has given us a firm base on which to build and grow. For me, the greatest reward was being told that we have evolved into an inclusive school that challenges children of all abilities. After everything that every one of those children has helped us to achieve, we were thrilled to hear that they were all reaping the rewards.

The Challenge Award Self-Evaluation
Framework is available from NACE
www.nace.co.uk
t: 01865 861879
f: 01865 861880

NACE Members £69.00 + 10% p&p
Non-Members £89.00 + 10% p&p

The Challenge Award Self-Evaluation
Framework, Heather Clements and Elaine
Ricks, published by NACE, 2003

Contact challengeaward@nace.co.uk