![]()
1
Developing school policy
Institutions developing effective policy for AG&T recognise that:
- Policy is the key to establishing and safeguarding effective practice
- There is no āone-size-fits-allā solution to policy development and discrete AG&T policies can either stand alone or be linked to more generic teaching and learning and/or inclusion policies
- Policies need to be as unique as the institutions in which they are formulated.
All schools have a policy for their able learners, even if the policy is not to have a formal policy. Such an approach is not necessarily an indication of institutional inertia or complacency but can derive from the sincerely held educational philosophy that the most educationally advantaged youngsters will automatically gain most from the provision on offer and that diverting attention, effort and resources from the more needy is both unnecessary and, to the degree that it is socially unjust and elitist, potentially wrong.
The expectation that cream will automatically rise to the top, however, is not endorsed by experience. As with all learners, the more able, the highly able, those with marked aptitude(s) for particular area(s) of study, the gifted, the talented (to use only some of the more common designations for youngsters with high potential and/or attainment), vary significantly in their progress, self-awareness and overall performance in school.
Some of the reasons underlying the phenomenon of gifted underachievement will be examined in Chapters 2 and 3 of this book but the trend for able, gifted and talented (AG&T) youngsters generally to feature as an underperforming pupil group in our schools and colleges is well recognised. At the time of writing, for example, a controversy has arisen in England regarding the reported one in seven (11,500+) GCSE students on central government AG&T programmes nationally who failed in 2007 to achieve five subjects, including English and mathematics at grade C or above ā a level of attainment generally associated not with high ability but with performance at expected levels.
To enshrine the view that young people of all abilities are entitled to equal consideration as learners, the 1988 Education Act in England decreed that an acceptable curriculum must be ābroad, balanced, relevant and differentiatedā (emphasis added). This emphasis on individual entitlement prompted schools to consider the different learning needs of pupils across the whole ability range when drawing up policies to ensure the effective delivery of the curriculum. In common with many other countries, this drive to give pupils access to an education that matches individual requirements and guarantees continuity and progression in learning for all has since been at the heart of many schoolsā development of policy and practice in relation to their AG&T youngsters. In 2004, for English schools, the Childrenās Act and Every Child Matters legislation consolidated this principle by adding the concept of personalisation to that of differentiation as a guarantor of a childās right to an education that takes account of his or her strengths and weaknesses as a learner.
Can Quality Standards provide a starting point?
For English schools, National Quality Standards have been released which may have a wider currency elsewhere. These are broad benchmarks against which schools can audit and assess their current level of provision for AG&T. In essence these standards provide a range of performance indicators and descriptors against which to measure institutional development. The school policy standard outlines three levels of acceptable performance:
- Entry level. The gifted and talented policy is integral to the school/collegeās inclusion agenda and approach to personalised learning, feeds into and from the school/college improvement plan and is consistent with other policies.
- Developing level. The policy directs and reflects best practice in the school/college, is regularly reviewed and is clearly linked to other policy documentation.
- Exemplary level. The policy includes input from the whole-school/college community and is regularly refreshed in the light of innovative national and international practice.
For settings seeking more detailed progression lines for policy development the National Association for Able Children in Education (NACE) has a comprehensive Challenge Award package (see www.nace.co.uk for details).
What factors should be taken into account in developing policy?
Clearly, any whole-school policy needs to be informed by the schoolās own profile with regard to pupil ability and performance as well as by its wider approach to learning, teaching and school improvement. There is no āone-size-fits-allā policy document that can be bolted on to a unique organisation to ensure that the specific needs of its more able cohort will be appropriately met. There are, however, a number of common considerations to be taken into account in developing a document that aligns the schoolās individual requirements to the overall objective of establishing an environment where high achievement is expected, planned for and celebrated. Any development of policy should:
- Be in line with the wider Teaching and Learning (T&L) Policy and/or any departmental or subject-specific curriculum policies (e.g. literacy or science) that seek to define and establish the organisational view of best practice in curriculum delivery and pupil engagement. It is even possible for the AG&T policy to be an integral part of the T&L and subject-specific policies and, for example, specify the particular approach to AG&T provision within individual curriculum areas
- Take account of the audit/analysis of pupil performance data and other assessment evidence revealing the impact of current provision on pupilsā learning to identify and plan to address area(s) of relative weakness and/or underperformance in the overall profile of more able learners across the school (see Chapter 3)
- Be informed by the aims and objectives identified through the annual process of school self-evaluation and formalised in the appropriate whole-school improvement planning document
- Establish an agreed definition of able, gifted and talented pupils within the context of the school and its overarching educational ethos (Chapter 2)
- Provide clear identification strategies for the pupils who are to be the subject of modified and/or enhanced provision (Chapter 3)
- Support whole-school and classroom-based strategies for securing inclusion and appropriate levels of challenge for AG&T learners (Chapters 4 and 5)
- Explicitly establish that supporting AG&T pupils is the responsibility of all staff and not simply that of specific post-holders
- Specify any particular provision to be made for exceptionally able or talented individuals
- Clarify the nature of the provision to be made to support target groups, reflecting the development of a personalised, flexible and differentiated learning experience for all pupils
- Take account of the views of parents/carers and other stakeholders and partners, including evidence derived from pupilsā own perceptions of learning in the school (Chapter 6)
- Include an action plan to map out and establish roles, responsibilities and monitoring/evaluation protocols with regard to the plan to ensure that it is driven through the organisation and updated as appropriate.
Audit or why is the policy needed?
What a policy needs to achieve is directly linked to the problems it has to address. This is why a starting point for policy creation is an audit to identify key issues relating to AG&T learners in the school. Data relating to pupil starting points or prior attainment at the start of school or key stage, to pupil progress or achievement over time and to attainment in national or school-based assessments will provide an important body of information about the size of the AG&T cohort, the nature of the progress made by individuals and groups both generally and in particular subject areas and about the impact of the current provision on the measured outcomes for target pupils. Clearly, the nature and extent of the available data will differ between settings but an audit will certainly reveal important information about the effectiveness of the school in supporting the achievement and attainment of its AG&T pupils relative to other pupil groups. Typical findings could include:
- A lower or higher number of pupils with above average scores either across the board or in particular areas on entry to the school
- Below average attainment at the higher levels at the end of Key Stage or public examination assessments when compared to that of schools in similar statistical contexts
- Relatively limited progress for pupils with high starting points, for example across a phase of education when compared to similar pupils in more effective schools and/or to other, more rapidly progressing pupil groups in the focus school
- Significant imbalances in attainment or progress at the highest levels among pupils of a particular gender or social or ethnic group contrary to national contextual value-added trends or to the performance of this/these group(s) in other curriculum areas within the school or in other statistically analogous schools
- A decline in attainment and/or progress patterns over time for pupils with the highest starting points suggesting that school improvement targets set for the most able on the basis of traditional value-added expectations are unlikely to be realised
- Evidence that individual youngsters on the school AG&T register or with the highest starting points/baseline assessment profiles make relatively less progress and/or attain less well in one particular curriculum area or age range than in others
- Evidence that particular public examination or assessment questions in a subject have been relatively poorly answered by otherwise able pupils in comparison to other questions in the test or to similar pupils in other schools.
It is impossible to be precise about the amount and quality of the performance data available to individual settings but for those schools within the jurisdiction of the UK Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), the interactive Raiseonline software supports a wide range of school-level analyses relating to overall progress and attainment patterns, group monitoring, individual pupil tracking and performance analysis within a sophisticated contextual value-added formula providing schools with an accurate picture of their performance on a relative percentage scale across a wide range of indicators. Where Raiseonline is not available or appropriate, other performance data such as setting-specific baseline assessment information taken on entry to nursery, Early Years Foundation Stage Profile Assessments taken at rising 5, predictive IQ testing or summative end-of-year tests, should also be used as part of the wider ...
