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LMCC Impact Study - Lindsay Johnson
LMCC Impact Study - Lindsay Johnson
Context
Shevington High School is a smaller than average sized secondary school in Wigan. The
school receives its pupils from a large number of primary schools in the Wigan and
Lancashire area. The school’s roll has been growing in recent years at a time of great
financial hardship for schools which seems to be felt more intensely in smaller schools.
The school has always received pupils with a full range of ability: from the most able to
those who enter secondary school well below the standard expected at the close of Year
6. The school also receives a number of pupils who have performed well in Year 6 SATS
but record reading ages well below their chronological age at the beginning of Year 7.
Despite this, the school has typically maintained GCSE results in English above the
National average.
LMCC Project
I believe that tackling literacy issues quickly is important before pupils risk becoming
disengaged with a secondary curriculum that they struggle to access, however, with
severe budget restraints, implementing interventions beyond classroom teaching has
become even more challenging. The greater challenges of the new GCSE and
disappointing performance in the first year of the new GCSEs heighted the desire to
ensure gaps in learning were addressed as soon as possible. As the new SLT lead for
Literacy this year, I was provided the opportunity to rethink prior approaches to literacy
development and being given the opportunity of linking this to the LMCC project
provided additional support and challenge to the thinking behind the initiative. Whiling
previous initiatives had had some success, staffing changes and financial restraints
meant that I had to design something different. It was therefore crucial to embrace the
principle of abandonment; ending previous initiatives that were no longer going to work
well given the constraints, and try something new. The LMCC sessions encouraged
thinking around the concept of abandonment and this was very helpful in accepting the
fact that it is often a good idea to remove some initiatives in order to make room for new
ones which may have a greater long term impact.
Planning
In preparing to refocus the leadership of Literacy at the school, I needed support in
identifying possible pathways to lead successful literacy interventions. It was important
that the strategy selected would have impact quickly, so the National Literacy Trust’s
Secondary Literacy Research and Policy Guide was incredibly helpful. The values
represented by the Literacy Trust echoed our school’s values and I was determined that
pupils’ life chances would not be reduced due to poor literacy skills. The focus group for
the project was approximately 10 Year 7 and 11 Year 8 pupils who had the lowest
reading ages in the school at the time of their last test, but were not in receipt of specific
support through the EHCP. These are children that could easily be ‘lost’ in a system
which struggles to fund interventions for those who have weak skills but are not
determined to have a ‘special need.’ It was intended to widen the strategies used to a
wider audience once the success of the interventions had been measured. LMCC again
introduced the idea of introducing a small pilot scheme before scaling up the project. In
the past, I think I had felt that small scale projects which only impacted on a small
group of pupils, were to be avoided – they wouldn’t show enough impact to justify the
time and resource dedicated to the initiative. Again, discussions through LMCC helped
to dispel that myth and in reality, having gone through the process, trialling an
initiative and removing problems with it along the way, is obviously a much better way
to approach curriculum change.
I needed to find an intervention strategy which would support our other systems: high
quality first teaching, Accelerated Reader and encouraging reading for pleasure. Many
pupils in our focus group struggle to do the kind of independent reading required by
Accelerated Reader due to their very low reading ages. The National Literacy Trust’s
Research and Policy guide, ‘Supporting literacy through interventions’ proved to be very
useful. Links to the ‘Literacy and Numeracy Catch Up strategies documents’ and the
work of the EEF helped to confirm the fact that lower cost per pupil strategies could be
successful and cost efficient. Alongside Accelerated Reader, I had trialled of IDL
Learning in the summer term and the engagement of a selection of pupils was
encouraging. I could see how this programme could support reading, spelling, writing
and typing skills and pupils might be able to do this independently with minimal
support from a non-specialist. Crucially, this was also within our budget.
The progress for the new intervention would be measured using the testing provided
through the IDL programme, but also using GL Assessments NGRT reading test which
we already used to screen pupils. The importance of an independent baseline
assessment outside of the IDL programme’s testing was crucial to track progress. Pupils
were tested in July 2017 and would be retested in March 2018 and again in July 2018.
The main anticipated obstacles were in implementing the strategy with a member of
non-specialist staff leading it who had no experience of intervention in reading. Due to
staffing restraints, this was the only member of staff made available to me to oversee
the initiative. Research suggested someone with a specialist ‘knowledge of literacy’ who
was likely to be a strong ‘nominated learning mentor’ would lead to the greatest impact,
however the individual in question did not really meet either criteria. In addition to this
problem, the reluctance of pupils to engage with additional literacy work when they
already knew they were performing at a low level in this area was likely to be a barrier.
These were problems that I would have to overcome.
During implementation, only one member of staff was made available for two twenty
minute slots during registration time in the morning. I didn’t feel that a weekly slot for
each year group would be sufficient – but this was all we had. There were mixed
responses from students – some worked diligently and independently – others tried to
avoid sessions and arrived late at first. Had the member of staff overseeing the initiative
been more passionate about literacy and the reasons why it was so crucial to help these
students, then I believe these barriers would have been quickly overcome. It was
frustrating not to be able to just go and lead the sessions myself, but my time had been
allocated elsewhere. Furthermore, I felt I needed to avoid slipping into past habits of
just doing something myself if I wanted it done, and actually finding a way to lead the
change without actually implementing it all by myself.
After a few weeks of the project, it was clear that the staffing issue needed to be
resolved. When a member of staff left, an experienced Teaching Assistant who had
worked on literacy intervention previously became available and took over the sessions.
I knew her impact would be immediate and it was! She had both specialist ‘literacy
knowledge’ and made a very convincing ‘nominated learning mentor.’ I also secured an
extra session per week, so each group had two sessions. I wrote to parents to try to gain
support from home in supplementing the work done at home and requested that parents
read with their children. The teaching assistant also engaged 3 year 9 pupils to work as
pupil mentors which we knew had worked in the past. With the additional sessions, the
motivation of an inspirational TA leading the intervention pupils started to recognise
their own progress. Testing using IDL’s tests suggested that some pupils had made
massive progress from their starting point.
As the project progressed I wanted to see hard evidence that it was having the desired
impact. IDL testing for individual pupils showed progress but this only tested decoding
skills and I wanted to see improvement in comprehension skills as well. The NGRT test
would confirm comprehension progression as well and would allow me to compare
progress from the baseline tests in July 2017. The same test would be repeated in July
2018 allowing the analysis of a year’s progress.
In March, although most of the pupils still achieved reading ages below 10, there was
clear progress for most pupils. Of the 21 pupils, 16 pupils made 6mths or more progress
in their reading age. 12 pupils made more than one year’s progress and 5 pupils made
more than 2 years progress. Considering the short amount of time that pupils had
working on this intervention and their initial lack of engagement, the results were very
encouraging. More importantly, the pupils were pleased with their own progress and
many were motivated to continue their work in order to improve further. Of the 2 pupils
that did not progress one was an EAL student who has made good progress with
decoding words, however comprehension may need longer to embed. Two additional
year 7 pupils joined the group just before the March testing on request of their parents.
By July all but one pupil had progressed from their starting point. 12 pupils had
progressed well beyond 1 year chronological progress. 9 of these had improved by
between 2 yrs and 6yrs in their reading age. 4 pupils had not maintained the reading
age that they achieved in March, but had still ended the year with a higher reading age
than they started with. (The extreme heat of July 2018 may to some extent explain the
lower scores of some pupils as not all pupils were in the best mind-set or situation when
retaking the tests). 8 pupils ended the year with a RA above 10 years meaning that they
should now be functionally literate. The two pupils who had been added to the group on
the request of parents, who did start with slightly higher reading ages, made very good
progress, making more than 2 years progress each in about 6 months of involvement
with the programme. 1 pupil did not make progress, although he has now become more
invested personally in improving his skills and I feel he will progress next year.
Next Steps
LMCC has really refreshed and supported my thinking about curriculum change. Prior
to this course, I felt like small initiatives might be viewed as only a half-hearted attempt
to make a change, whereas now, I see the value in using a small pilot, adjusting the
planning based on the findings and then scaling it up to a wider audience as
appropriate. Even if an initiative remains small, it can still have a positive impact on a
number of pupils who would not otherwise have been helped. Since this was a literacy
initiative: something relatively simple, but something incredibly powerful in terms of
supporting the ‘Whole Education’ of individuals if literacy could be improved and in this
case it did really help many of the pupils involved. I feel privileged to have seen the
change in these individuals. The effect on the individuals seems to have been wider
than just on their literacy skills, as many of them have wished to continue with the work
even after they gained enough competency to leave the programme, they wanted to
continue and did so with pride and a smile on their faces.
I have also confirmed in my mind, the importance of allocating the best possible staffing
to initiatives like this. The power of a skilled and motivated member of staff to
implement the initiative is crucial. Also, unsurprisingly, if the member of staff involved
can engage and create buy-in from the pupils, their progress increases. If I had not
secured a staffing change part way into this initiative, I do not think it would have been
so successful and if I met the same situation again, I would have tried to make the
change earlier to secure the success of the project.
Moving forward, I now need to find a way to sustain this change and ideally manage to
scale to project up so that more pupils with reading ages below their chronological age
can benefit from this life changing opportunity. Given the resourcing shortages, it might
be possible to do some of this through engaging some parental support and home
learning. The fast progress of the two pupils with slightly higher reading ages who were
supported in the initiative by their parents was also very encouraging and an area to
develop further. I am determined to sustain the change beyond the end of my
involvement with LMCC. Hopefully, I will also apply the leadership learning and
reflection opportunities that I have gained to other leadership challenges in the coming
year.