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Research: leading learning in the classroom

November 9th 2016

Professor Sonia Blandford, CEO and Founder of Achievement for All, and Catherine Knowles, Development Researcher, have kindly put pen to paper and written a guest post for us that details some of their more recent research. Enjoy... Inspirational teachers improve achievement in a way that changes children and young people’s aspirations and in doing so improves their life chances by securing access to continued achievement and enhanced life chances. For children and young people to become aspirational in the school environment staff need to be aspirational for them. Without a whole-school culture that models aspirational values and holds a strong belief in every child and young person’s abilities to access and achieve, it is difficult for them to do so. Evidence shows that when teachers are given responsibility for the children and young people in their classrooms, supported by senior leaders and provided with focused training, their expectations increase. They want to move forward faster and they want to take all pupils with them. With this approach, teachers can expect:

A more active role in assessment and monitoring More frequent review of learning targets More data-led discussions with senior leaders (providing further opportunity to identify pupils not making expected progress and work out why) Planning with other teachers.

Teachers say they develop a better knowledge and understanding of the pupils they teach, resulting in more individualised approaches to teaching and learning within the classroom; and children and young people enjoy learning more. This is a key component in the Achievement for All framework, a government initiative, piloted in 2009, with the aim of raising the achievement of children and young people with SEND; Today, Achievement for All has worked collaboratively with 4,000 schools and settings (2-19 years) to improve outcomes in reading, writing, maths and behaviour for all children and young people vulnerable to underachievement, with impact across the school. Parent and carer engagement has also been a key element in the success of the programme. For one Year 7 boy, his story is typical of many children and young people whose lives have been transformed through Achievement for All. He arrived at Lyng Hall School in Coventry with a statement of SEN. He had speech and language difficulties and was making slow progress. The professionals supporting him thought he should have gone to a special school. Today, that boy having successfully completed university and taken his PGCE, is a teacher in a school in the West Midlands. Recent data from an independent evaluation by PwC (2016) has shown that targeted children and young people in Achievement for All schools and settings made higher levels of progress on an annual basis than similar pupils in other schools. In brief, the progress of targeted children and young people in reading, writing and maths is well above national expected levels. Schools and settings confirm that the programme has increased the motivation, confidence and self-esteem of children and young people, they also report that they like learning and enjoy lessons more. Schools and settings engaged in the programme have experienced a strong reduction in absenteeism. Parents and carers are happy; they feel that their children are more confident since involvement in Achievement for All. Schools and setting leaders comment the programme is good value for money. As one head teacher stated: "We have learnt such a lot in the Achievement for All process about a different way of working, teaching and impacting positively on the learning of the ‘hardest to reach’ students in school”