Barry Smith - Learning about Learning

I was looking back at some of the old posts I had written and came across one I wrote not long after I had started blogging entitled Lies, damned lies, and statistics.  I was discussing the use of MidYis testing in our school and as I now am much more focused upon understanding the uses of assessment, it was interesting to read my thoughts and try an gauge my thinking process at that point.   

The main point that I have begun to explore further is that of the uses made of such testing at an individual level.  Standardised tests have (varying degrees of) predictive validity when used at a cohort level, ie when making predictions about achievement for year groups, but at the individual level there is too great a degree of variability to predict anything about a particular student’s future achievement. 

That, it seems to me, is the crux of the matter and is where schools who use tests such as MidYis and CAT face their greatest challenge.  How can we make best use of such instruments of assessment? How can we come to a fuller understanding of their limitations, as well as their uses, when using them to inform our practice and judgements about youngsters?  

Teacher and students expectations and beliefs about themselves as learners, as research has shown, are a significant factor in the achievement of youngsters, so using the information in an approriate way is absolutely vital.  What ways can schools use these summative assessments in a formative way to inform planning and practice? Are the assessments themselves key, or is it the use to which we put them? 

Summary of my notes from the event on Jan 17th

Keynote : Sir Robert Smith(Scottish and Southern Energy) - Smith Group

Self appointed, business and entrepreneurs group.  Interested in supporting MCMC youngsters.

Only Turkey and Mexico have worse stats  for OECD countries for NEET 16-19 year olds (35000)

Key to have college/school/business triangle of provision.

Smith group offering work experience placements, being rolled out across Scotland this year.

Using federation of small businesses, providing vocational ed opportunities and work experience for youngsters.

Keynote: Graham Hollowell

NEET Strategy Coventry & Warwickshire

Government strategy

Careful tracking

Range of voc ed programmes

Personalised support & guidance for youngsters

September Guarantee is a guarantee that every youngster who applies for a learning opportunity will get one

Early identification / indicators

Workshop 2

Glasgow’s vocational education.

All under one central group including training for work, apprenticeships etc

Special Programme for looked aftger youngsters : EVIP

Programmes include recognised qualifications like lifeguarding and CITB

Referrer (school) will decide who goes on the course, not the college or central agency group

In S4 they have an employability day, with a mock interview from an employer

Co-ordinated support plan is in place for every young person taking part in vocational courses

Opportunities:

EVIP(enhanced vocational inclusion programme)

YOUTH START

SOCCER SUCCESS

WINTER LEAVERS

Development of alternative curricula

EVIP (full-time programme)

Vocational coach

CSP

Intensive employability input

Development and recognition of soft skills(Step it up) youthlink website : (it is an evaluation tool)

Transition planning and support

Funded (until end of financial year)by external funding from Scottish Government, european funding etc

Glasgow City Council have one round of ‘corporate’ recruitment for which every youngster who is on a vocational programme is guaranteed a first level  interview and prepare for this with their vocational coach

The loss of the Community Liaison Team Active Steps outdoor education provision from our ALPs programme due to funding not being renewed will be a major blow.  Sally Harris and her team have done a fantastic job working with our youngsters in the past year and it will mean a re-think of our programme at the school.  I know that the team have done similar, excellent work throughout East Lothian in the past few years with many different groups of young people and their provision will be sorely missed.  A great shame.

I’ve just completed the interim evaluation of the ALPs programme, reporting on progress thus far.

In summary:

The programme has improved links with partner organisations, particularly Telford College.  There has been siginificant benefit to the young people on the programme as a result of this, providing opportunities on the Sports Leadership course that almost certainly would not have come along without the work done in S3.  There has also been very close working with the Integration team, Active Steps and Mobex.  In particular the links with the Integration team have helped with work being done in the community as the Integration Team are ‘well kent faces’ with the youngsters.

Incidents in school have reduced by more than half for the group, compared with the preceeding 15 week period.

Exclusion statistics were too small to make a meaningful comparison, they remained constant as compared with the preceeding 15 weeks.  What is significant is that there was no third term ’spike’ as in previous years for this cohort.

Attendance was not improved overall, due in large part to the statistics being heavily influenced by the poor attendance of a couple of individuals.  Attendance on programme activities was very good overall.   Two youngsters have left the programme because of family re-location.

The youngsters involved and outside agencies working with them were positive about the experience thus far.  Each youngster has an idea of their desired destination beyond school and is working with the school’s career officer to establish their own individual pathway.

Work experience opportunities are being taken up by the youngsters to help build their portfolio of employability skills.

Every youngster has had the opportunity to undertake a college placement this year.  So far four youngsters are involved in college programmes of one form or another.

In conclusion, we are well on the way to reaching our goal of having each youngster leaving school for a ‘positive’ destination.   It has for me re-inforced the notion that in terms of the school curriculum more choices does mean more chances.

If you would like further information about any of the above or a copy of the interim evaluation please get in touch.

Stephen Heppell’s visit to the school was a great opportunity for me to see some of the incredible animation and film work being created by the youngsters at Preston Lodge High School.  If animation and film-making are your thing it would be worth getting in touch with our Art department, PT Jim Cramb and the other members of staff are helping to create our film-makers of tomorrow. The link above is to an immensely powerful film about the Holocaust used in school for Holocaust memorial week and created by Preston Lodge students.

I then had an opportunity to discuss the ALPs programme with Stephen,  Ewan MacIntosh and David Gilmour and share experiences and views on working with youngsters who are in need of significant support in the mainstream setting. 

Having these opportunities helps convince me further that the type of work we are doing with our ALPs youngsters has the potential to spread much further than just the ‘NEET’ group.  I hope that we will have the opportunity to explore avenues for such development in the coming years as A Curriculum for Excellence broadens out our ideas of the curriculum.

I went to Telford College today to see our ALPs students make a presentation to bring to end their time with the college.  It was fantastic to see the boys making such an effort with what was obviously a real challenge for them. 

We now have four out of seven boys placed on a vocational course for next session and are moving ahead with the organisation of work placements.  The boys are also taking part in a pilot programme with our HE department to learn the ‘industry skills’ of a sous chef, courtesy of Dave Robertson who was himself a chef before coming into teaching.  This is an idea loosely based on the Hospitality Skills for Work programme that we have been considering as a possibility for the future.

Finally, we welcome Stephen Heppell to the school on Wednesday to see what we have been doing with technology to help engage the students and to chat to some of the ALPs participants.

Ice-breaker fun!

We finally got ALPs off the ground today with our induction day at the Pennypit Community Centre at Prestonpans, a really top class facility.  It was a great day and it was tremendous to see all the ‘thinking’ becoming ‘doing’. 

I was also delighted that the input from all the different people connected together to present a discernable ‘whole’.   It re-affirmed again to me that we are ‘on to something’ in delivering a model of this type. The blend of personal development, active learning through outdoor education, thinking skills, mentoring and employability skills has great breadth and depth of skills development coupled with reflection.  By the reaction of some of the parents who attended our induction there is a positive feeling about the potential benefits of the programme too.  

We were very pleased to welcome Kay Affleck, who is responsible for ELC pre-vocational opportunities, along for an hour this morning and we had a good chat about the possibilities for the ‘careers’ focus of this group in S4.

I’l be writing more in the coming week, but I think most of my ALPs blogging will migrate to our new site with short updates and pointers here from time to time. 

….is tomorrow!  We have our induction tomorrow and it looks like everything is in place for the start of the programme.  We’ve had a couple of last minute issues with students, but that is the nature of things, so we will be starting with a slightly reduced group size, but hopefully will be back up to full strength in the next week or so. 

I’m actually ridiculously excited. I’ve been thinking tonight about the number of hours that a great number of people have given to the project before it has started, it is fantastic.  All those 7.30am meetings since back in October, and only a fruit scone, croissant and a coffee induced headache to show for it! 

The work will continue as the programme progresses, we are already considering how we can further integrate or ‘mainstream’ this kind of provision to give opportunities to a larger cohort.  I’m particularly excited about teaching our thinking skills course, I believe the potential benefits are enormous and will be keeping my blog updated with the progress.

I’ve produced a short ‘welcome’ powerpoint presentation for students, parents, staff, mentors and guests who will be coming tomorrow.  It can be accessed below, but I stress it’s short!

active-learning-partnerships-induction-day-powerpoint.ppt

Today I’ve been meeting with parents and potential ALPs students.  So far we have had agreement from 6 of the 8 we had selected.  The feedback we received about the content was very positive and both students and parents are looking forward to the programme starting.  We’ve invited parents along to the induction day to meet with the staff who are delivering each individual element.  We had only one parent who was unable to make it and that was through work commitments.

As we were talking with the first parents, we were chatting about the blogging and self awareness aspects of the programme.  One of the parents commented on how he was a bit wary of using the computer and thought that he might not access the ALPs site as a result. That reminded me of the discussion we had had one Friday morning about involving parents more with the programme.  The upshot is that we now have 4 parents who would like to come and take part in a session to help them navigate the ALPs site and to learn about blogging.  While I accept that we are not adult education providers I do think that this can only be a positive thing in bringing these parents closer to the ALPs programme and their child’s educational experience.  We also asked for feedback from parents about the layout of the site, we’re looking for some parental representation on our ALPs development group once the programme has begun.

I’m both excited and nervous now as we move towards the induction date and start of the programme.  Have we covered everything we need to?  Is the system robust enough to deal with unexpected events?  Have we missed anything glaringly obvious?!  Will all of the youngsters ’keep it together’ in school until then?  I really hope so.

I also have my Unit 3 SQH submission next Friday.  It’s going to be squeeze to get it in! I’m finishing all my data gathering tomorrow and should have the write up done over the weekend all being well…..

Final note, if you fancy a bit of world music this Saturday,  there is a one world peace concert at the Queen’s Hall at which we(Waa Sylla) are performing some African drum and dance.  By Monday I think I’ll be ready for a sleep.

We had a full staff meeting on Friday afternoon.  The agenda was filled with what looked like some of the usual issues, litter, graffiti, the behaviour of certain groups of students etc. However, far from turning into the possible greetin’ meetin’ it could have been, it became a very positive discussion of classroom practice and the strategies that we can use to work with some of our most needy youngsters.  There were significant differences of opinion aired, but all were done so within a framework of professionalism and respect. I came away feeling really encouraged, it was a lesson in not assuming that you know the way things are going to pan out just because it may have happened in the past.   

Earlier in the day we’d had our early morning ALPs planning meeting to discuss the students who were being selected for the programme and to discuss the induction and the programme itself.  I was again amazed by the turnout.  We had representation from the local police, the integration team, POPs, Mobex, Active Steps andschool staff!  All at 7.30am on a Friday morning.  It brought home very clearly to me the strength of feeling and commitment there is to support young people in the community who need guidance in a positive direction.

Looking back at my previous post vision and values, I’m pleased I did post it because I’ve had not only a response from others formally through the blog comments but also informally from colleagues who read it.  It was definitely a worthwhile exercise and one I will no doubt repeat in the future.  Declaring and discussing values as professionals I’m coming to believe is a way to shape ‘where we go’ with A Curriculum for Excellence on a local, regional and national level, but I find that there are less opportunities to do so than you would imagine for such an important matter.  Such things take not insignificant consideration and reflection.  It is seems clear to me that blogging/learning logging, whatever you want to call it, is filling an important role in that sense for many people.