Approach
Description and Illustrations
Transition
support Support for learners who are about to move between institutions or between key stages within the school can effectively targets eFSM and LAC pupils. This includes briefing workshops for children and their families, introducing facilities and resources, meeting other pupils through mentoring or peer tutoring, and providing clear and easily accessible information. Transition support is identified by Welsh Government as an area for development with schools being encouraged to:
“identify and share good practice in sharing information and managing effective transitions between schools and childcare settings” Building a Better Future page 42
Social and emotional learning and wellbeing
Learning that improves the ways pupils work alongside their peers, teachers, family and community. Social and emotional learning has strong associations with improvements in positive behaviour, attendance, and well-being.
PDG funded activities can enhance wellbeing through building up the self-
confidence, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and social and personal skills of students. One key example is the use of mentoring and peer tutoring.
Well-being measures suggest that primary schools tend to fare better than secondary schools, but this may be because they have been used more frequently with younger learners. Successful applications of wellbeing involve whole-school approaches that are consistent and detailed across subjects, with sensitive interventions targeting at-risk and more vulnerable pupils.
Teaching
assistants The use of additional funding for appointing more TAs for the support of disadvantaged learners is noted by OFSTED (2012) as the most common use of the Pupil Premium in England. However, as Gross and Hatchett (2012) emphasise:
“TAs and teachers tended to use different types of language. TAs were more likely to prompt pupils rather than give them thinking time. They often supplied answers and were mainly concerned with making sure the task set by the teacher was completed. Teaches, on the other hand, were more focused on what children were learning, used more open-ended questions to promote thinking, and spent more time explaining concepts”
Source: The Pupil Premium – making it work in your school (2012) page 13 There appears to be some serious reservations about the effectiveness of a Teaching Assistant strategy for improving learning. This point is reinforced by the Education Endowment Foundation’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit (2012), emphasising that there is a need for going beyond the simple management of problem behaviour (often linked to SEN) through one-to-one or small group supervision. These critiques point to the potential use of PSG resources for the training and upskilling of assistants so that they are more successful in reinforcing learning outcomes introduced by the teacher. Such an approach reinforces the Welsh Government intention to:
“publish proposals for the introduction of minimum qualification requirements for specific support staff in schools in January 2014”. Building a Better Future Page 49
Case Study
In this primary school around four fifths of the pupils are eligible for the Pupil Premium. The vast majority of pupils are White British. Standards have been rising and are now close to the national average overall. The head teacher after reading the Sutton toolkit information concluded that the assistants were providing valuable emotional support to many pupils who badly needed this, and were good at keeping pupils on task. However, he realised that they were clearly not being maximised to support learning, and that this was a waste of a valuable resource. To help to put this right, the head teacher decided to extend the assistants’ hours. This allowed them to review the day’s learning with teachers, identify gaps in pupils’ knowledge and understanding and to be well informed about the learning planned for the next day. The head teacher also audited their skills and put in place a range of individualised training, according to need. He then instigated carefully targeted ‘skills’ lessons, where pupils worked closely with an adult in very small groups or one to one with teachers or teaching assistants for 20 minutes each day, focused on improving a very specific skill, for a short period of time.
The school’s evaluations showed that pupils made significant gains in a short period of time with the specific skills they were working on. They were transferring these well to lessons, helped by teaching assistants’ good knowledge and understanding of what the pupils needed to do to improve their
achievement. The reason that the skills lessons were highly effective was because they started from a close analysis of pupils’ needs and were taught by well-trained staff. The school’s results at the end of Key Stage 2 in 2012 were the best they had been for many years, and gaps between eligible pupils and their peers had closed considerably.
Learning
Coaches Coaching is an entitlement in Wales as defined by the Learning and Skills Measure of 2009, providing: “some welcome colour to what would otherwise be a stark black-and-white
photograph of attainment. The coaches identify learners who may be experiencing difficulties and who have been referred for special help. But they can also work with those young people who are more invisible; as one coach commented ‘a part of the wallpaper’ of an educational institution. These learners may not cause any problems, but they are not stretching out and achieving their potential”.
Saunders (2008) The Learning Coaches of Wales page 42
The role of Learning Coaching focuses on supporting the ability to learn and to motivate young people so that they remain in learning through achieving qualifications in either or both academic and vocational areas. The defining characteristic of the Learning Coach is “anogaeth” – encouragement – based on helping young people to make sense of various learning worlds which extend beyond the classroom.
Coaches have a strong interest in helping young people to choose subject options within their learning pathways, to develop study skills, to raise aspirations and increase confidence. It should also be noted that coaching is accompanied by an accredited Level 4 training programme, with such professional development attracting many teaching and classroom support assistants. The Learning Coach role therefore provides a strategy for more focused support for disadvantages learners in a variety of schools and colleges throughout Wales.
More able
students The targeting of support for disadvantaged learners who may be achieving moderate educational success but are capable of much higher levels of achievement.
Case Study
This is a larger than average-sized primary school where almost all pupils are from minority ethnic groups and most speak English as an additional language. The proportion of pupils known to be eligible for Pupil Premium funding is slightly higher the national average.
The school recognised that just aiming for pupils to reach ‘age-related expectations’ was not aspirational enough, particularly for some of the more-able pupils. Senior leaders went beyond age-related expectations and helped to remove barriers. For example, a programme of one-to-one support from a learning mentor was specifically focused on a small group of more-able pupils who lacked confidence or social skills to build their self- esteem. An additional teaching group was established to extend the science skills of more-able pupils. Speech and language programmes were targeted at pupils whose progress was being hampered by weak oracy skills, despite their obvious understanding of their learning.
All of the targeted pupils made better than expected progress and were working above age-related expectations.
Support for
new arrivals Support can be targeted for learners who join a school cohort after the start of the autumn term, missing induction and transition programmes. This can sometimes include LAC learners who experience a change with care providers and authorities; it can also refer to children from migrant and asylum seeker families.
Case study
Around half the pupils are eligible at this Primary school where attainment is below average but not low. A boy from Romania joined Year 4 and spoke no English. The school recruited a multilingual assistant for two hours each week,. And also provided targeted support by the school’s specialist ‘English as an additional language’ teaching assistant. This allowed the pupil to receive one-to-one English and reading tuition five times per week. When he joined Year 5 the pupil received four phonics sessions a week, four one-to-one reading sessions and 90 minutes of additional English support. Termly targets were shared with the pupil and also his parents, using a translator. From being unable to access much of the curriculum in Year 4, the boy was working at Level 4b in reading, 4c in mathematics and 3b in writing by the end of Year 5. His attendance, which had initially been low, also improved. In Year 4 it was 86% and in Year 5 it was 96%. He was now well placed to move on to further success in secondary school.
Source: Ofsted (2012) page 23 LAC Virtual
School A flexible resource that responds immediately if any pupil has a major problem at school; providing support in the classroom or on a one-to-one basis where needed urgently.
Conwy County Borough Council introduced a form of ‘Virtual School’ for looked after children in November 2010. This involves a multi-agency approach between schools and educational psychologists, social services, local authority elected members, additional needs departments, and the education co-ordinator for looked after children.