One of the reasons why provision management may be increasing learning outcomes in reading, spelling and maths for pupils is the ‘big fish-little pond (BFLP) effect’. When the pupils were withdrawn for their provision map intervention, they would either be in small groups with other pupils who have similar difficulties or individually with an LSA. The work was then appropriately targeted for the pupils’ needs and ability level. This may then facilitate the development of their self-concept, which in turn leads to increases in motivation, effort and success (Long, 2000). Also pupils were being given interventions that were known to make a difference and improve learning outcomes and were appropriately targeted for the skills the pupils needed to reinforce as identified by the audit of need embedded in the provision management system. These interventions were delivered by the staff with fidelity, thus ensuring that the requirements of the intervention were adhered to, in order to obtain the same level of results that the intervention designers gained in this research when they validated the learning outcomes for the intervention.
This research indicates that the pupils who had provision maps made more progress in spelling, reading and maths than the pupils with individual education plans, which is possibly due to the pupils experiencing success in their learning rather than failure, which was then raising their self-efficacy through enactive attainment (Zimmerman, 2000) that is mastery of a task which is a strong determinant in raising self-efficacy. Vicarious experience may also have impacted on the pupils’ self-efficacy if they were working in small groups as they would be grouped similarly for ability, which would then allow them to observe similar peers performing a task which would encourage and motivate them to complete the task (Schunk, 1991).
In contrast to this it is possible that it was not vicarious experience impacting on the pupils self-efficacy, but the mere fact the pupils’ provision management interventions was taking place in small ability groups and this allowed the staff to instruct the pupils within their zone of proximal development (ZPD). The ZPD is the area between the pupils’ level of actual development and their level of potential development (Vygotsky, 1978 cited in Daniels, 2005). Small group instruction encourages active engagement from the pupils, which enhances learning, and the staffs has greater opportunity to identify and tailor activities to work in the pupils’ ZPD based on performance (Children’s Progress, 2001). Pupils working within their ZPD have greater learning capacity and this could therefore explain the improvements in scores for pupils receiving their provision through a provision map rather that IEP
If the pupils are having fun and are relaxed in their environment during the
interventions then they are less likely to experience anxiety and stress and therefore will not be misinterpreting physiological reactions as a lack of skills (Schunk, 1991), which in turn will lead to them experiencing success. The qualitative data from the LSAs indicates that they were having much more fun with the pupils when
undertaking the interventions than in class. Choice Theory indicates that when pupils are not having fun they stop working (Glasser, 2001) and if the pupils started having fun again which then facilitated them being able to learn, which in turn may have resulted in the increases in standardized scores for spelling, reading and maths. Because having fun is intrinsically motivating then the pupils were motivated to learn and to succeed. Further research would need to be undertaken to determine if fun was an important element in the success of the pupils from the pupils’ perspective. From
the perspective of the LSAs, fun was believed to be an important variable in the success of provision management or should this be just about pupil learning.
Trautwein et al. (2006) claim that academic self-concept emerges through
academic achievement. The pupils in the provision mapping group were experiencing success and it is likely that their self-concept and in turn their self-esteem were increased, which would have made the pupils feel good about their learning and themselves and would have made them more likely to succeed (Zimmerman, 2000). Although there is conflicting evidence on whether intervention programmes improve self-esteem, this study indicates that from the perceptions of the LSAs and the management team the self-esteem of the pupils increased. In order to fully determine and validate the views of the LSAs and management team that provision management improves the self-esteem of pupils, and improves learning outcomes for the targeted pupils, then further evidence would need to be gained. This could be explored through the use of questionnaires that measure self-esteem; which could be collected pre and post intervention, or through individual interviews, or the use of pupil focus groups. To improve the reliability of the study a combination of these could be employed to explore the concurrent validity of these views.
The current research supports the views of Woolfson and Truswell (2005), SCRE (2000-2002), Farrell et al., (2010), DfES (2005) and Ofsted who state that, when LSAs are well trained and use validated group interventions, these factors do have a positive impact on the learning outcomes of pupils with ALN. Unlike the research of Gray et al. (2006), the quantitative data in this study does support the discourse of the LSAs and the management team that the pupils have made progress in reading, spelling and
maths through interventions predominantly undertaken by the LSAs. This adds further evidence to the research that LSAs provide value for money if they are well trained and delivering with fidelity interventions that are proven to increase learning outcomes for pupils.
This research further supports the work of Norwich and Lewis (2001) that pupils with ALN require provision that is additional to and different from the mainstream
curriculum. The provision management system has ensured an additional to and different from provision and both the quantitative and qualitative data have shown that this approach has led to an increase in the attainment of pupils which was greater than for those pupils on individual education plans. Pupils with IEPs in schools often have targets that are classroom related and do not always involve provision that is
additional to and different from the mainstream curriculum. This research shows that by planning and managing a school’s extra provision through provision management then the attainments of pupils in spelling, reading and maths can be increased, which is the right of all pupils with additional learning needs.
The school undertaking provision management have also adopted a unique differences position with continua of teaching approaches (Norwich and Lewis, 2001) that is consideration is given to the approaches with regard to how much they are used in practice. They allow pupils to reach mastery of key skills by providing practice time. They also ensure that they use interventions that are proven to raise the outcomes of pupils not only with ALN but also those from low-income backgrounds as the
achievement gap can only be narrowed when interventions are “wider than changes in school resources and must also go beyond schools policy” (Chowdry. Greaves and
Sibieta, 2010, p.82). This study supports the view that purely assigning more resources to schools and reducing class sizes will not be effective on their own in raising low attainment and the key to success is the quality of time limited interventions employed by the school (Duckworth et al., 2009).
Within this study the discourse of the staff and the quantitative analysis support the increase in attainments of spelling, reading and maths scores for pupils with ALNs. A direct comparison cannot be made with the school using IEPs as it is possible that the change in system in the provision management school was only an effect within their school and that the IEP school could have been using the IEPs more effectively to monitor and raise teaching and learning of pupils’ with IEPs. Also the degree to which the IEP school was using evidenced based interventions compared to the provision map school was not addressed in this study and therefore if more effective
interventions were being administered in the provision management school could explain the improvements in the school
The audit of need has resulted in the school using evidence based planning of pupils’ predicted needs (DCSF,1997), which is also likely to have had an impact on the improvement in spelling, reading and maths standardised scores. As the audit of need is part of the provision management system then this further supports the research question that provision management is effective for raising the attainment of pupils with ALN in spelling, reading and maths.
This research provides further evidence for the view that provision management is not just a system for pupils with SEN, but is also a system for identifying and dealing with under achievement (Ekins, 2010).