Raising Achievement for All

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Raising Achievement for All

• Michael ONeill, OBE
• Melbourne
• October 2008

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What do you remember from your School days?
Tom Fitzpatrick Winifred Dean Denis
Cuddihy Gerry Bonner
The Merchant of Venice Bassanio
The School Orchestra Trumpet
Roy of the Rovers Striker
Mikhail Botvinnic Chess Champion
Self Belief - Motivation - Values - Role Models
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The Challenge to break the links between
disadvantage and underachievement
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
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League Tables Attainment or Affluence?
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What do we mean by achievement?

• Concept of multiple intelligences
• motor, spatial, aesthetic, mathematical,
• linguistic, scientific, emotional

• 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.

• 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

Howard Gardner
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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

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Developing the whole person

• Early Years focus on outdoor play , healthy
  eating and active learning

• 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

• New Opportunities Fund grant for
• the North Lanarkshire Music College
• the North Lanarkshire Sports College
• the North Lanarkshire Arts College

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Intervening at critical stages

• Expansion of early years provision

• Parental involvement / parenting skills 0-5

• Early Intervention programme, nurture groups

• P7/S1 transition
• Summer Literacy Schools
• Theatre Skills Summer Schools

• Aiming Higher with Outward Bound Programme, S4

• Summer Academy _at_ Strathclyde, S3

• Easter Schools, S5/6

• partnerships with employers for apprentice jobs

• Primary/Secondary Curriculum Flexibility

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Targeting resources
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

• North Lanarkshire colleges

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Everyones right to succeed
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
Scotlands 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 Childrens Rights

• Gaelic Medium education / Bilingual Support

• Developing and nurturing talent creating
  opportunities for excellence

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Outward Bound 1966
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Outward Bound 2006
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Aiming Higher with Outward Bound Programme
...intervening at critical stages, targeting
resources, developing the whole person,
everyones 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

• Involving all secondaries and special schools

• Supported by the Outward Bound Trust

• Evaluated by Edinburgh University (PhD Study)

• Outward Bound for Heidies

Progression from Primary programme at Kilbowie
Outdoor Centre
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Teaching them skills to ride that roller-coaster
There are things that I wasnt 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 Ive had to work hard to try
and acquire since. My worry isn't that
standards are going down the pan. Its 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, doesnt 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 todays market place Alf
Young
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Skills from the past
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
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1900
2008
Factory Worker
The Knowledge Economy
Core Skills
Good Timekeeping
Innovation
Compliance
Silence/Obedience
Flexibility
Manual Skills
Globalisation
Lifelong Learning
Routine
Are We Still Preparing Pupils for the Last Century
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Skills for the Future?
Core Skills - Transferable
Inter-Personal Skills - Social Skills
Flexibility -
Learning Skills
Values - Attitudes
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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

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Enhanced Comprehensives

• 4 Sports Comprehensives

• 1 Music Comprehensive

• 1 Enterprise Comprehensive with a junior
  hospitality school

• 1 Expressive Arts Comprehensive

• 1 Technology Comprehensive

• 1 Life Skills School ( a special school )

• 1 International Comprehensive

• 1 Science Comprehensive

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Enhanced Comprehensives Raising Achievement
for All
An Enhanced Comprehensive What it is NOT

• NOT a Centre of Excellence, as in other parts of
  Scotland
• NOT about producing elite athletes/musicians/artis
  ts etc
• NOT selective

What it IS

• 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 Lanarkshires Raising
  Achievement for All philosophy and with the
  National Priorities.

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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.

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New Curriculum Guidelines 2001
More flexibility in the modes Less
compulsion More personalisation and choice Age
and stage relaxation.
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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.

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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.

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Alternative curriculum provision and
qualifications to develop core skills/attitudes
Alternative Provision

• Outward Bound

• Skillforce

• Right Track

• On Track

• XL Clubs.

Alternative Qualifications

• Duke of Edinburgh Award

• European Computer Driving Licence

• Vocational Qualifications

• First Aid Certificates

• Sports Leaders Awards

• Community Youth Awards

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Vocational courses from S3 onwards

• In school

• Part of S2 option choices

• Alongside traditional subjects

• Recognised qualifications

• Partnerships with further education and industry

• Not a return to junior secondaries.

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There is no point in getting more efficient at
doing the wrong thing