Title: System wide survey of pupil perspectives on the curriculum'
1System wide survey of pupil perspectives on the
curriculum.
- Presenters
- Paul Crisp and Laura Smith
- CUREE
2Building the Evidence Base
3What were we interested in?
- Concerned with 4 curriculum domains derived from
QCA policy interests - Challenge and inspiration
- Flexibility and choice
- Student lifestyles and health
- Motivational influences
- Mile wide, inch deep
- Take the pulse
- Provisional and illustrative
4Method of data collection
- Web based survey in March and April 2008
- 8 Focus groups used to
- Explore issues which could not effectively be
dealt with via a survey - Explore in greater depth interesting/ ambiguous
findings from the survey - Draw out the views of some students who were
unlikely to participate in the survey
5Survey design features 1
- About 100 questions
- Separate secondary and primary (latter had fewer
questions) - Quick and easy to complete (max 20 mins)
- Looked for impressions, opinions and feelings
(not verifiable facts) - Few free text and mostly select from list
answers - Delivered entirely on-line
6Survey design features 2
- Separate (optional) sections for
- Contact details
- ethnicity
- Additional section for subsidiary enquiry on
14-19 (Diploma) - Extensive use of bi-polar (semantic
differential) question type - Some reversed questions for validation check
7What did it look like?
8Focus groups
- Conducted 8 focus groups in total all secondary
- Two at individual schools
- One at pupil voice conference
- Three specifically exploring 14-19 and diploma
issues - Two in pupil referral units
9The sample
- Total responses 2819 (target 1200)
- Secondary 1807
- Primary 1012
- Total participating schools 66
- primary 37
- secondary 29
- Close match to English school population for
gender, disadvantage, student achievement and
value added - Sample from larger schools than English mean
(sample mean 925, all schools mean 728)
10Sample - ethnicity
- Sample close to national average for overall
proportion of ethnic minority students - Under represented in Asian and black students
- Over represented in other category
- Could be consequence of students choosing to be
non-specific in replies
11Findings primary now -challenge and inspiration
- Majority feel curriculum
- is varied
- takes account of what they know already
- contains a lot of practical activity
- involves a substantial amount of group/collective
working - draws on out-of-school experiences
- is useful to them out of school
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13Findings primary future-challenge and
inspiration
- Would like broadly what they get now with more of
the features they experience positively eg - varied lessons
- practical activities
- use of the internet
- working with people from outside school
14Findings primary -challenge and inspiration
- But
- Though 50 think lessons are just the right
amount of challenge - 31.1 said they were too easy
- 17.1 said they were too hard
- Might suggest that the level of challenge in the
primary curriculum is less than the students
expect or are capable of
15Findings primary autonomy and influence
- Primary students experience the curriculum as
largely directed by the teacher in these areas - what they learn
- where they learn
- quantity of homework
- In the future, pupils want more autonomy/
influence over - how they are taught
- what they are taught
- who they work with
- how much homework they get
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17Primary - lifestyles and health
18Primary motivational influences
- Parents and friends had high expectations
- 60 thought their friends wanted them to do well
at school, rising to 85 for parents expectations - Around 30 felt that parental pressure was a
bit/lot too much while 22 felt that parents put
too little pressure on them
19Secondary- challenge and inspiration
- More than 50 felt that
- they did a lot of practical activities
- they often used what they learned at school in
their lives outside of school - they did a mix of different things in lessons
- they used the internet often at school
20Secondary- challenge and inspiration
- A substantial minority felt that
- Their teachers often made connections between
subjects - Their teachers were good at finding out what they
already knew - They often worked in groups with other students
- They were not generally positive about
- connection between lessons and their own
experiences - the use of audio visual resources
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22Secondary challenge and inspiration
- There was a broad spread of response about the
degree of difficulty of lessons - 51.5 said they were about right
- 31.2 said they were too easy
- 17.4 said they were too hard
- As with primary students, most secondary students
wanted more of the features they felt positive
about
23Secondary experience and aspiration
- The biggest (gt20) gaps between student
experience and aspiration were in - Opportunities to link lessons to experience
- Amount of practical activity
- Mix of activity
- Use of AV resources and the internet
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25Secondary flexibility and choiceindividual
subjects
- From focus groups picture of
- idiosyncratic practice which varied by teacher
and institution rather than by subject - Postive view of practice in science, English,
maths and PSHE but also unimaginative and teacher
dominated learning in those subjects - few practical activities in math although often
challenging (e.g. Lots of problem solving)
26Focus group suggestions
- Maths
- more problem solving
- trips on a maths theme
- more practical work
- more explanations
- Importance of English
- speaking
- spelling
- having an expanded vocabulary
- being able to write letters etc in a business
context
27Secondary autonomy influence
- Not surprisingly
- 66 have experience of peer-assessment/marking
- 47 say teachers ask what they are finding
difficult - 20 say they have a choice about how much
homework - 11 say they have a choice about what homework
- Over 70 of students would like to
- be able to choose who they work with
- have a say in how they are taught
- have a say in what they learn about in lessons
- Nearly 70 of students would like
- to have a greater choice in what subjects they
want to do - more say in how much homework they get
28Secondary lifestyles and health
- Significant majority say that they eat healthily
and have been taught about healthy eating - Only 13 claim that teachers dont know anything
about drugs - 56.8 say influenced by learning at school, but
- Only 4.6 say their friends are
- Focus groups said that schools teaching about
drugs was not very effective
29Secondary motivational influences
- Secondary school felt more stressful and more
demanding then primary school - 17 felt not pressured enough by teachers
- 73 said parents expected them to do well at
school - Nearly 30 of students thought they were under
too much pressure from parents.
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31Some interesting points
- More students (primary and secondary) feel that
their lessons are too easy than feel they are too
hard - Secondary students thought that maths was both
the hardest and third easiest subject - Focus group generally critical of the teaching of
maths but recognised importance of the subject - Apart from maths, no strongly perceived
correlation between the subject and the manner of
its teaching - Some of the secondary curriculum reforms being
implemented formally in 2008 are already
experienced by significant numbers of students
32Some interesting points 2
- Drugs, alcohol and healthy eating education is
well established in both primary and secondary
schools.. - But , for secondary students, the sight of
overweight people on television on the street
had greater impact than school activities - Dealing with stress was the least developed
aspect of lifestyle personal wellbeing
education - Secondary schools were felt to be more pressured
environments that primary but parental
expectations were high in both. - Substantial minorities of students felt they were
under too little pressure from teachers or
parents, although parents (at 24.5) did worse
than teachers (17) - Few significant differences in responses when
examined by gender or Key Stage level . Age had a
bigger impact but still not a very big one
particularly in the areas of choice and autonomy.
33Contributors
- Philippa Cordingley
- Prof Mark Hadfield
- Colin Isham
- Emma King
- Prof Daniel Muijs
- QDP Services