Contact Us | Print Page | Sign In | Register
Communication and partnership
Blog Home All Blogs
Blog posts exploring the importance of effective education partnerships, collaboration and communication within and beyond schools when developing and maintaining high-quality policy and practice for more able learners, and challenge for all. Includes examples of effective school-to-school collaborations, and opportunities to get involved in education partnerships and collaborative initiatives involving fellow NACE member schools and NACE partner organisations.

 

Search all posts for:   

 

Top tags: collaboration  enrichment  research  partnerships  policy  access  CEIAG  CPD  parents and carers  transition  aspirations  higher education  wellbeing  Challenge Framework  community  curriculum  disadvantage  early years foundation stage  enquiry  free resources  KS2  leadership  lockdown  Oxbridge  Oxford  remote learning  school improvement  student voice  Wales  apps 

10 keys to consistent provision for more able learners in a cluster
Posted By Idris Davies School 3-18, 14 January 2022
Darren Lynch is the More Able & Talented Coordinator and Vulnerable Learner Lead at NACE member Idris Davies School 3-18. In this blog post he shares 10 key recommendations to establish and maintain consistent provision for more able and talented learners across a cluster, alongside an example of a cluster-wide programme for MAT learners.

The context

Idris Davies School is an English-medium, mixed, 3 to 18 school, with around 1,000 pupils. The school draws pupils from a group of villages in the northern part of the Rhymney Valley, in South Wales. In Year 7, pupils also join from five partner primary schools. Around 33% of pupils are eligible for free school meals, much higher than the national average of 17.5% for secondary schools in Wales. Around 72% of pupils live in the 20% most deprived areas in Wales. 

10 recommendations to maintain consistency of provision for more able learners in a cluster

  1. Secure support at leadership level in all partner schools.

  2. Engage colleagues and encourage sharing of personal experiences. Many will have unique stories to tell. Involve colleagues in pupil nominations so they have a vested interest in the growth of their learners.

  3. Take the child, their family and their class teacher on the journey with you. Find the most important ‘cogs in the wheel’ for your individuals. As well as parents, we have taken grandmothers and aunties to universities for the first time as part of our work with The Brilliant Club’s Scholars Programme (see below for more details). All parties can learn from the experience, and each is important.

  4. Know your individual pupils and families. Link with pastoral teams and teaching colleagues to learn about individual circumstances and the bigger ‘picture’ – gaining a wealth of intelligence that will support success.

  5. Prioritise communication to all partners, especially hard to reach families. Some may prefer the traditional written form or telephone call, while others prefer the convenience of electronic communication.

  6. Raise the profile of your provision – promote and publicise around the school community and online using social media. Regular updates and photographs are popular.

  7. Be flexible and resilient. Our provisions have run continually throughout the two-year Covid pandemic, utilising the developments in online learning and online communications. Our high pupil expectations should not waver.

  8. Seek honest feedback and prepare to refine your offer. Some partners prefer an anonymous electronic survey, whilst others welcome a face-to-face conversation.

  9. Identify local role models, be it past pupils or local personalities, who have succeeded from your area. Being able to relate is a powerful motivator.

  10. Identify an individual’s worries and overcome those barriers. We have adapted our provision to increase the focus on issues such a student finance and self-esteem, which our children and families commonly raised.

Example: a cluster-wide programme for more able learners in Years 5 and 6

For the last three years, Idris Davies School 3-18 and its partner primary schools have worked with The Brilliant Club’s Scholars Programme to support more able and talented learners in Years 5 and 6. Each year 24 pupils are selected to engage with the programme, which links them with a PhD tutor to work through a challenging course pitched at a key stage above the pupil’s current stage.
 
For some pupils, the only doctor they may have ever met is in a medical setting, but this programme opens up the world of academic research and gives young people the opportunity to study university-level work in an accessible manner, and to visit leading universities.
 
We have used the programme as part of a cluster-wide strategy to tackle disadvantage, targeting students who are eligible for the Pupil Development Grant, who have no parental history of higher education and who live in deprived areas according to the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (WIMD).
 
Benefits of the programme include:
  • Challenging courses on subjects beyond the curriculum, taught by a PhD researcher.
  • Opportunity to engage with new and challenging topics and ideas – from “Mathematics: Lying with Statistics” to “Anthropology and Archaeology: Making a Museum” or “Business, Brewing and Brawls: the Role of Women in Medieval Towns”.
  • Experience of university-style learning in small group tutorials.
  • Two visits to competitive universities. So far our pupils, their families and class teachers have visited Oxford, Bath, Cardiff Universities. Our PhD tutors have also provided insights on Nottingham, Swansea and Bangor Universities.
  • Develop key university-readiness skills, including self-efficacy, critical thinking and metacognition.
  • Cited as an effective use of Pupil Premium/Pupil Development Grant by Ofsted/Estyn.
  • Supports the school to meet Gatsby Benchmarks 3 and 7; embedded into wider careers programme.
  • Supports KS2-3 transition.
By applying the 10 recommendations listed above, this programme has been implemented consistently across our cluster, supporting our more able and talented learners as they prepare for the transition from KS2 into KS3. 
Read more:
 

Tags:  access  aspirations  CEIAG  collaboration  disadvantage  enrichment  higher education  KS2  partnerships  policy  transition 

Permalink | Comments (0)
 

Member opportunity: school-led research on maths mastery
Posted By Naomi Watson, 15 November 2017
Updated: 07 August 2019
Rising Stars’ Naomi Watson outlines a new opportunity for NACE members to contribute to research on effective support for more able learners in mathematics. Read on to find out how your school could participate…

NACE and Rising Stars have collaborated for over 10 years on initiatives to ensure more able learners and their teachers can benefit from challenging and exciting resources in core subjects, grounded in the curriculum while offering stretching and enriched learning.

This year, we are working together to research how schools are effectively supporting more able learners while teaching mathematics within a mastery curriculum.

As part of this project, we are looking for five NACE member primary schools who are teaching mathematics using a mastery approach to participate in a research initiative. Participating schools will receive free copies of Rising Stars’ Maths for the More Able teachers’ guides and Brain Academy pupil books, and will be invited to integrate these resources into their teaching of mathematics during the spring term.

In April/May 2018 we will bring all participating schools together for a half-day focus group (in Oxfordshire), to gather and share approaches to supporting more able learners in mathematics, and to explore ideas for future resources. The results of the project will be shared with the wider NACE and Rising Stars communities.

Alongside this school-led initiative, NACE is partnering with expert practitioners in mathematics on a series of new resources and articles, which will be made available to all NACE members. For updates on the project, log in to the NACE members’ website, and keep an eye out for the NACE email newsfeed and Insight newsletter.

Register your interest:

To apply to be one of the five primary schools involved in this project, send an email to membership@nace.co.uk, with the subject line “Rising Stars maths project”. Include an outline of your school’s current approach to supporting more able learners in mathematics, with reference to your use of a mastery curriculum.

The deadline for applications is 6 December 2017. Successful schools will be notified before the end of the autumn term.

Tags:  free resources  KS1  KS2  mastery  maths  research 

Permalink | Comments (0)
 
Registered charity no: 1125907 Company no: 06604325