Raising Achievement for All
Michael O’Neill, OBEMelbourne
October 2008
The Merchant of Venice Bassanio
The School Orchestra Trumpet
Roy of the Rovers Striker
Mikhail Botvinnic Chess Champion
Tom Fitzpatrick
Winifred Dean
Denis Cuddihy
Gerry Bonner
Self Belief - Motivation - Values - Role Models
What do you remember from your
School days?
‘There is a link between deprivation and underachievement, a link which must be broken if we are to give our young people an equal chance to succeed. We must discover a way of challenging and enabling young people to achieve what they are capable of achieving, irrespective of background, gender, race or levels of ability or disability. For this reason the education department has adopted as its motto Aiming Higher, and has identified Raising Achievement for All as its key policy direction’.
RAFA, 1998
The Challenge: to break the links between disadvantage and underachievement:
League Tables“Attainment or Affluence?”
Povertycharacterised by
Poor diet / housing
High mortality rates
Inadequate range of role models
Family / neighbourhood stress
Apparent lack of parental support
Negative peer pressure
Poor study facilities
Underachievementcharacterised by
Poor level of attainment
Disaffection
High absence / truancy
Emotional / behavioural problems
Poor rates of progression to FE/HE
Low career aspirations
Low levels of…
self-esteem
confidence
aspiration
motivation
climate of negativity
What do we mean by “achievement”?
• Concept of “multiple intelligences” :
motor, spatial, aesthetic, mathematical,
linguistic, scientific, emotional
• Importance of self-esteem, motivation,
determination, aspiration in determining
success
• The development of the whole person
• The whole range of experiences social, creative, cultural , sporting, academic -
valued equally
• “Improving on previous best”
“… the time has come to broaden
our notion of the spectrum of
talents. We should spend less
time ranking children and more
time helping them to identify
their natural competences and
gifts, and cultivate those. There
are hundreds and hundreds of
ways to success and many
different abilities that will help
you get there.”
Howard Gardner
“Raising Achievement for All”
The strategy
• About everyone's right to succeed• Based on a set of beliefs about
achievement and about education
• Central focus, improving learning and
teaching• Targeting resources to combat
disadvantage
• Intervening at critical stages
• Celebrating success
• Targets of input, experience and
outcome
New Opportunities Fund grant for
the North Lanarkshire Music College
the North Lanarkshire Sports College
the North Lanarkshire Arts College
• Expansion of free Music Instruction
• North Lanarkshire Choirs, Orchestras,Pipe band, Battle of the Bands, Jazz Band and Traditional Music groups
• Annual Concerts in Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
• Residential outdoor educational experience
• Expanded Sports development programme
• Sports Comprehensives
• Music Comprehensive
• Art Summer School at Kilbowie
• Early Years focus on outdoor play , healthy eating and active learning
Developing the whole person
• Expansion of early years provision
• ‘Parental involvement / parenting skills 0-5’
• Early Intervention programme, nurture groups
• Summer Academy @ Strathclyde, S3
• Aiming Higher with Outward Bound Programme, S4
• Easter Schools, S5/6
• partnerships with employers for apprentice jobs
• Primary/Secondary Curriculum Flexibility
• P7/S1 transition:
• Summer Literacy Schools
• Theatre Skills Summer Schools
Intervening at critical stages
Funding and allocation of places weighted in respect of deprivation; staff supported in selecting pupils who will benefit most from initiatives
• Deprivation staffing allocation
• Nursery nurses in most deprived primaries
• Primary Study Support in all schools, P3/7
• Secondary Study Support, S1- S6
• Special Schools Out of School Hours Learning
• Easter Schools
• Outward Bound
• Summer Schools
Targeting resources
• North Lanarkshire “colleges”
‘it shall be the duty of the authority to ensure that the
education is directed to the development of the personality, talents and mental
and physical abilities of the child or young person to their fullest
potential’
Standards in Scotland’s Schools
Act
• Reading Recovery, P2
• Curriculum Flexibility: Age and Stage Relaxation/ Secondary Curriculum Guidelines
• Alternative Curricula: Skillforce / xl Clubs / On Track/alternative qualifications
• Looked After and Accommodated Children
• Discipline Task Force
• Looking Forward: Responding to Children’s Rights
• Gaelic Medium education / Bilingual Support
• Developing and nurturing talent: creating opportunities for excellence
Everyone’s right to succeed
Progression from Primary programme at Kilbowie Outdoor Centre
...intervening at critical stages, targeting resources, developing the whole person, everyone’s right to succeed
• 12,000 young people in 12 years’
• Week-long personal development programme at Loch Eil
• Designed to raise aspirations and develop self-esteem
• Targeted at S4, and at young people most needing support
• Linked to work in school, and to life beyond school
• Supported by the Outward Bound Trust
• Evaluated by Edinburgh University (PhD Study)
• ‘Outward Bound for Heidies’
• Involving all secondaries and special schools
Aiming Higher with Outward Bound Programme
Teaching them skills to ride that roller-coaster
“There are things that I wasn’t much exposed to in my formal education - communication skills, inter-personal skills, problem solving, an ability to think outside the prevailing boxes, for example - which I’ve had to work hard to try and acquire since.”
“My worry isn't that standards are going down the pan. It’s that a system that now educates half the population to post-school level, and utilises all the computerised learning resources it can afford to meet the task, doesn’t have the staff, the space or the time left in which to foster the range of personal skills that really make a difference, create chances and command more and more of a premium in today’s market place”
Alf Young
“Amo Amas Amat?
“When was the battle of Trafalgar?”
“Who wrote Little Women?”
Rote Learning - Content Heavy
Narrowly “Academic” - Little Real Choice
“Knowledge requires not only to be transferred to pupils but also created by them” - Benjamin Zander
Skills from the past
1900
Factory Worker
Good Timekeeping
Compliance
Silence/Obedience
Manual Skills
Routine
Are We Still Preparing Pupils for the Last CenturyAre We Still Preparing Pupils for the Last Century
2008
The Knowledge Economy
Core Skills
Innovation
Flexibility
Globalisation
Lifelong Learning
Core Skills - Transferable
Inter-Personal Skills - Social Skills
Flexibility - Learning Skills
Values - Attitudes
Skills for the Future?
Comprehensives for the 21st Century
• Amendments to modal structures to allow personalisation and choice
• Alternative curricular options
• Age and stage relaxation
• Vocational Education courses
• Enhanced Comprehensives
• Co-operative Learning
Enhanced Comprehensives
• 4 Sports Comprehensives
• 1 Music Comprehensive
• 1 Expressive Arts Comprehensive
• 1 Enterprise Comprehensive with a junior hospitality school
• 1 Science Comprehensive
• 1 Technology Comprehensive
• 1 Life Skills School ( a special school )
• 1 International Comprehensive
Enhanced Comprehensives: Raising Achievement for All
• a regular comprehensive serving the local population
• a school which uses the enhanced area as a vehicle for driving up standards, improving school ethos, reducing social exclusion and building positive lifestyles
• a school with enhanced staffing and resources to enable enhanced curricular/ extra-curricular delivery
• a school which reaches out into the community, involving associated primaries and other neighbourhood secondaries
• consistent with North Lanarkshire’s Raising Achievement for All philosophy and with the National Priorities.
An Enhanced Comprehensive:
What it is NOT:
What it IS:
• NOT a Centre of Excellence, as in other parts of Scotland
• NOT about producing elite athletes/musicians/artists etc
• NOT selective
The Sports Comprehensive: Raising Achievement for All
Aims of the Sports Comprehensive:
• to raise achievement
• to improve school ethos by promoting a strong sense of common identity
• to improve the mental and physical well-being of young people and adults
• to increase self-esteem and confidence, determination and motivation
• to develop social awareness and citizenship, leadership and teamworking
• to develop strong links with neighbourhood schools and the wider
community
• to deter anti-social behaviour
• to help young people develop a lifelong interest in sport, leading to a
healthy lifestyle.
New Curriculum Guidelines 2001
More flexibility in the modes
Less compulsion
More personalisation and choice
Age and stage relaxation.
Flexibility within the following parameters:
• All pupils should be required to continue the study of
English, Mathematics, Religious Education, Physical
Education and PSE
• All pupils should be required to study no fewer than 2 of the
remaining 4 modal areas although, of course, some pupils
may continue to study all 4 areas – Social Subjects, Science,
Technology, Creative & Aesthetic
• Up to individual schools to determine the precise nature
of the option structure within these parameters.
Disapplying two of the modal areas for individual pupils to learn and achieve to the best of their ability by allowing:
• pupils with individual strengths to emphasise a
particular curriculum area
• pupils making significantly less progress than their
peers to consolidate learning and progress across the
curriculum
• pupils to participate in programmes of vocationally-
related learning
• pupils to participate in a range of planned
opportunities.
Alternative curriculum provision and qualifications to develop core skills/attitudes
• Outward Bound
• Skillforce
• Right Track
• On Track
• XL Clubs.
Alternative Provision
• Duke of Edinburgh Award
• European Computer Driving Licence
Alternative Qualifications
• Vocational Qualifications
• First Aid Certificates
• Sports Leaders Awards
• Community Youth Awards
Vocational courses from S3 onwards
• InIn school
• Part of S2 option choices
• Alongside traditional subjects
• Recognised qualifications
• Partnerships with further education and industry
• Not a return to junior secondaries.
“There is no point
in getting more
efficient at doing
the wrong thing”