Portsmouth
Learning Community
Final Report on the partnership between Portsmouth Local
Authority, Portsmouth Schools and the University of Sussex
by Professor Michael Fielding, Professor Judy Sebba and Fiona Carnie on behalf
of the University of Sussex Portsmouth Learning Community Team.
Contents
Page No.
Executive Summary
3
Evidence Base
7
1.
Introduction
8
2.
Methodology
11
3.
The Portsmouth Context
14
4.
Main Findings - Student Voice, Assessment for Learning
and School to School Learning
4.1 Benefits and changes attributable to Portsmouth Learning Community
4.2 Student Voice
4.3 Assessment for Learning
4.4 School to School Learning
4.5 The three strands working together
18
5.
Main findings - Other key issues
5.1 Primary to secondary transition
5.2 The Masters degree programme
5.3 Contributions of the various partners
5.4 Key facilitators
5.5 Key barriers
5.6 Capacity Building
5.7 Sustainability
36
36
37
37
41
41
43
44
6.
Conclusions
47
7.
Recommendations
50
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Mayfield School Case Study
Wimborne Junior School Case Study
Admiral Lord Nelson School Case Study
St Paul’s Primary School Case Study
Resources
University of Sussex Team members
18
21
30
33
35
52
56
60
64
67
68
1
Preface
The University of Sussex would like to thank Portsmouth Local Authority for inviting us
to work with them on this groundbreaking project. We are grateful to colleagues within
the Authority and to the many schools and students who engaged with us in this work
and hope that they will feel that this Report does justice to our joint endeavour.
2
Executive summary
A bold and imaginative response to challenge
The partnership between Portsmouth Local Authority
and the University of Sussex was part of a bold,
imaginative response by the then School
Improvement Service (SIS) to the difficulties and
challenges for schools and educational services in the
wake of a very challenging OfSTED Report in 2000.
A number of key decisions were made. Firstly, given
the Authority’s commitment to devolving as much
money as possible to schools, the remaining funds not
linked to National Strategies were targeted at three key
priorities – Student Voice, Assessment for Learning,
and School to School Learning. It was these core
commitments that made up the discretionary element
of the 2002 Education Development Plan.
Secondly, the decision was made to engage with a
university with national and international reputations in
these domains, rather than appointing additional SIS
staff. In the words of a senior Local Authority
interviewee centrally involved in setting up the
partnership, ‘We could have spent the money on
people, but we chose to buy in expertise.’
Thirdly, the approach which informed the partnership
between SIS and the University of Sussex was one
that transcended the limitations of National Strategies
and helped many staff and schools regain their
confidence in the appropriateness and effectiveness
of a more broadly conceived view of education and
schooling. In the words of a senior informant, ‘We
needed to give them their confidence back. They had
been told they were [no good] by too many people,
too often … We needed a different way.’ Part of that
‘different way’ grew out of a recognition that
emphasising
‘5 A*-Cs and Level 4 in English and Mathematics [also
requires] a really sophisticated understanding that you
don’t improve this by doing more National Curriculum
and National Strategies stuff in Year 6. … You don’t
raise standards in writing by giving kids more tasks to
write. What you do is enrich their experience at school
so they feel they’ve got something worth writing
about … It’s that notion that, particularly in areas like
Portsmouth, kids’ lives need enriching. Just because
you can’t measure it immediately doesn’t mean it
doesn’t have a profound impact and I think what we
were doing in Portsmouth was enriching young
people’s lives and so that made them feel better
about school and that had a knock on effect on
attendance and achievement and so on. … It was
about enriching the learning experience.’
Senior LA interviewee
This report is, in part, a vindication of that
adventurous decision half a decade ago; in part, a
celebration of the resilience, courage and dedication
of educational professionals whose commitments to
their Portsmouth communities are, again in the words
of a senior informant, ‘enormous’. It is, in part, a
celebration of the work and lives of young people of
Portsmouth who, in some instances and on
memorable occasions, helped adults to understand,
not only their potential, but also their actual
capacities and achievements that had been
significantly underestimated or misunderstood. It is
also a document that points to new professional
learning, both about the nature of school
improvement and about the processes and
structures that have turned out to be a help or a
hindrance in the five year first phase of Portsmouth
Learning Community.
Overview of the Final Report
The structure of the Report is as follows. After the
Introduction which explains the background to the
Portsmouth Learning Community (PLC) we set out, in
Section 2, a number of keys issues to do with the
Report’s Methodology. Section 3 The Portsmouth
Context extends and deepens our opening
observations and includes data and short
commentary on demographic matters and
3
improvement in outcomes and standards over the 5
year period, together with feedback from children and
young people.
As a consequence of the range and quality of this
work, Portsmouth is attracting national attention in the
field of Student Voice.
The substantial Main Findings in Section 4 provide
the core of this Report and contain some important
insights and lessons learned about creative
approaches to teaching and learning within and
across schools. We begin with Section 4.1 Benefits and changes attributable to Portsmouth
Learning Community which, broadly speaking,
suggest that across the LA standards have risen over
the 5 year period and that in some schools where
standards rose the staff attribute this, wholly or in
part, to developments arising from the Portsmouth
Learning Community. Section 4.2 – 4.4 look at
Student Voice, Assessment for Learning and School
to School Learning and in each case there is
reference to the outstanding work of Portsmouth
colleagues.
Portsmouth work on Assessment for Learning Section 4.3 has also attracted national attention with
leading experts, such as Professors Paul Black and
Mary James, responding to innovative Portsmouth
developments at a special conference hosted at the
Dame Judith Professional Centre. Key distinctions
between Assessment for Learning (AfL) as ‘interactive’
or ‘transparent’ in its orientations helped develop
understandings that went beyond AfL as a set of
handy classroom techniques. Rather, in the words of
a junior school teacher
4.2 Student Voice articulates the main themes
around which the Student Voice work in the City was
organised. Student Voice has clearly been one of the
key successes of the PLC and the comments and
quotations from teachers are eloquent, humbling and
inspiring. Thus,
• The head of an infant school reflects on how ‘The
children have taken me by surprise by how
perceptive they are’
• A junior school teacher acknowledges that ‘the
relationship between me and the children has
changed …. They question a lot more. And not just
question me, they question themselves and other
children’
• Portsmouth secondary schools develop impressive
work on personalised learning and radical
departmental review practices as well as exploring
the issue of respect
• School councils go beyond an easy tokenism to
searching curriculum evaluation
• Pupils at junior schools engage in sophisticated
forms of negotiation and evaluation of their own
learning
• Special school students lead ground breaking work
on inclusion on a city-wide canvas
• Governor Services support leading edge new
developments with student governors
• Students as Researchers projects are introduced
across the sectors
4
‘AfL is something you are, not something you do.’
Whilst insightful and accurate, the implications of this
are as challenging as they are exciting. If AfL is less a
set of techniques and more about underlying values
and beliefs, the implementation of AfL requires a
culture change in many classrooms with a shift of
responsibility, similar to that in Student Voice, from
teacher to learner. Indeed, as one secondary school
student said to us
‘I don’t want a teacher who influences me. I want a
teacher who teaches me not to be influenced.’
Sentiments such as these were illustrated in different
ways by many teachers across the City.
Much of the Student Voice and AfL work in the City
developed through various partnerships, friendships
and alliances encouraged and supported through the
city-wide commitment to School to School Learning
considered in Section 4.4. A number of responsive
arrangements, structures and organisational support
mechanisms developed in Portsmouth in response to
new needs or to supplement the existing
arrangements and relationships that develop in any
Local Authority over time. Some approaches proved
particularly fruitful e.g.
• use of Learning Visits/ Learning Walks and
• the development, via the University, of links with
highly innovative schools outside the city
This supportive organisational infrastructure is very
important. However, what comes over clearly again
and again is the necessity of shared vision and of the
irreducible and persistent importance of relationships.
As one secondary headteacher said
‘What I’ve learned is that whatever infrastructure I put
in place … or encourage to be put in place by the LA
… won’t make it work. What makes it work are the
relationships and the links.’
or, in the words of another school senior manager
‘Through the Portsmouth Learning Community I think
we found some kindred spirits. We’ve been quite
innovative, done things that are quite risky.’
Some of the schools that seemed to make the most
progress in their PLC work pulled the three strands
(Student Voice / Assessment for Learning / School to
School Learning) together to develop a vibrant
coherence. In Section 4.5 - The three strands
working together it is clear that those schools which
engaged actively with all three strands were schools
in which members of staff felt supported in risk taking
and in developing different approaches.
Other key issues arising from the programme are
explored in Section 5: Main Findings – Other Key
Issues. Some of the most interesting and profound
School to School Learning actually took place
between schools from different phases of education.
Thus, in Section 5.1 - Primary to secondary
transition, there is an example of staff at one
secondary school visiting a partner junior school who
challenged them to think about how students from
the junior school would react when they got to
secondary school, having been used to choosing their
own level of work and self-assessment. In a small
number of instances some teaching staff and senior
leaders took advantage of the bespoke Masters
degree programme which we consider briefly in
Section 5.2.
The extent to which a partnership like Portsmouth
Learning Community works well depends, in
significant part, on the dispositions and capacities of
all those involved and the degree to which they
understand and complement each other’s ways of
working. In Section 5.3 we say a little about the
Contributions of the various partners in the PLC
programme looking at what the data tell us, firstly
about the role of the University of Sussex Team;
secondly, at the role of the Local Authority; thirdly, at
the role of headteachers; and, lastly, at the role of the
wider community.
The emerging professional knowledge and
understanding of some of the key lessons to learn
from an ambitious and imaginative Local Authority
approach to school improvement over a 5 year period
are set out in the next two sections of this Report. In
Section 5.4 we begin by outlining what the data
suggest were the Key facilitators, pre-eminent
amongst which was the leadership role of
headteachers. Unsurprisingly, some of the Key
barriers that emerge in Section 5.5 are the reverse
image of approaches that in some schools helped
PLC work to be such a success. There were,
however, other factors that emerged, amongst which
were the differential history of its introduction to
primary and secondary schools and its ambivalent
relationship with the standards agenda.
The demonstrable benefits that have emerged from
this first phase of the work of Portsmouth Learning
Community are a cause for celebration. The next two
sections of our Report pick up on those successes
and on the emerging knowledge of how one might go
about developing collaborative, imaginative learning
across a Local Authority. Section 5.6 on Capacity
Building underscores the importance of external
partners working in ways that enhance the skills,
confidence and capacity of Portsmouth colleagues
and students. Section 5.7 Sustainability extends
these considerations and pinpoints two issues of
particular importance, namely, time and timing and
the development of a rich culture of professional
learning within, as well as between, schools.
5
Section 6 Conclusions offers 7 key issues coming
through the data on our partnership work with
Portsmouth over the past 5 years. Firstly, in 6.1
Establishing ownership we acknowledge the
importance of paying special attention to the
multiple histories and the wide-ranging and
sometimes quite different expectations of all those
involved from different phases of education in the
City. Secondly, in 6.2, The role of headteachers
comes through, both positively and negatively, as
key to any collaborative undertaking within the
context of a Local Authority. Thirdly, in 6.3
Standards and other outcomes: contradiction or
complementarity? the national context of 21st
century education in England and, in particular, the
perceived emphasis on a dominant understanding
of standards and how they are best improved, is
seen to have a major influence on the nature and
progress of any school improvement initiative. What
was particularly pleasing was the finding that most
school and LA staff acknowledged that while
pressure from tests and performance tables were
apparent, the work on Student Voice and AfL
supported by School to School Learning were
assisting them to raise standards as well as
achieving many other outcomes. Fourthly, 6.4 The
role of the ‘outsider’ facilitator suggests that
there is particular value in both the affirmation and
challenge of an external party separate from, but
complementary to, the work of Local Authority staff.
Fifth, the importance of continuing to work on
Primary to secondary transition comes across
strongly in 6.5. There are significant implications for
the challenges of spreading and sustaining ‘good
practice’ in 6.6 Kindred spirits, champions and
enthusiasts. As before, we come back to the
importance of positive, meaningful relationships in
the conduct of human affairs, something that is still
challenging, in a field like education. Lastly, in 6.7
Competing initiatives in the Local Authority, our
data highlight the multiple demands made on
schools, LA and university staff and point to the
importance of all parties attending to ways in which
the three main strands of work might have
complemented or been more deliberately integrated
with other initiatives.
6
In Section 7 our Recommendations for future
action itemise 9 key points. These have to do with
• Continuing development of the 3 strands across
the City
• Developing mutual support and challenge
between schools
• Ensuring effective communication of the
programme to all staff
• Encouraging cross-phase communication and
development
• Developing external links to enhance future
learning
• Reducing or integrating the number of initiatives
• Engaging all LA staff in the programme
• Reviewing models of CPD and aligning them with
research evidence on joint practice development
• Recognising that shorter term benefits of the
programme, such as affective outcomes,
reduction in exclusions, increases in attendance
etc contribute to, but are not yet reflected in
longer term test results.
Finally, it is important to draw attention to 5 key
Appendices which we hope will warm your hearts,
energise your spirits, inspire your future work and
provide important resources for Portsmouth
colleagues for some time to come. The four Case
Studies of
•
•
•
•
Mayfield School (Appendix 1)
Wimborne Junior School (Appendix 2)
Admiral Lord Nelson School (Appendix 3)
St Paul’s Primary School (Appendix 4)
give grounded, inspirational accounts of how staff
and young people at Portsmouth schools have
pioneered imaginative work which has developed a
remarkable synergy between Student Voice,
Assessment for Learning and School to School
Learning, some of which has received national
acknowledgment.
Our final Appendix 5 lists a series of user-friendly
Resources we have co-developed and produced
with Portsmouth colleagues and young people
during our 5 year Portsmouth Learning Community
partnership.
Evidence base
In writing this report the following data has been used:
School visit summaries from:
• Admiral Lord Nelson (sec)
• City of Portsmouth Girls (sec)
• Cumberland Infants
• Futcher (spec)
• Mayfield (sec)
• Paulsgrove Primary
• Redwood Park (spec)
• Somers Park Primary
• St Paul’s Primary
• Wimborne Junior
Data from other school visits
Case studies of various schools
Notes from a wide range of PLC meetings
Interviews with a range of Local Authority staff
Summary of primary and secondary head teacher
evaluation interviews (2004)
Diversity Pathfinders report
AfL overview paper
AfL files on each participating school
4 AfL reports
Interim reports to the LA 2003, 2004, 2005 & 2006
Student Voice Link teacher meetings
School Council Questionnaire 2007
7
1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Origins and intentions
In 2002, the Centre for Educational Innovation at the
University of Sussex and Portsmouth Local Authority
entered into a 5-year partnership to support the
development of ‘Portsmouth as a Learning
Community’, an authority-wide collaboration that would
eventually include all maintained schools in the city. The
University was contracted, initially as part of the
Diversity Pathfinders initiative, to work on three
interlinked areas: Student Voice, Assessment for
Learning (AfL) and School to School Learning, all of
which were priorities in the Local Authority 2002
Education Development Plan. Central to this work was
the aim to ‘put students at the heart of decisions which
affect their lives’, thus exemplifying Portsmouth Local
Authority’s recognition of the importance of listening to
young people in its efforts to improve social cohesion
as well as raise aspirations and achievements.
The opportunity for a university to work with a Local
Authority (LA) over such an extended period of time
is, so far as we are aware, rare, if not
unprecedented, and has helped in the development
of knowledge and understanding about how
teachers, students, Local Authority advisers and
university researchers can work together. It is
important to pay tribute to the prescience of
Portsmouth LA in identifying and financing work in
three areas that were subsequently to become
national priorities, culminating in the 2004 Children
Act and the introduction of Every Child Matters, in
which recognition of the need to listen to the views
of children and young people, both at a strategic
level and in day-to-day practice, is centrally
important.
1.2 The commitment to co-construction
Central to the development of this work has been
the commitment to collaboration and
co-construction. The project started from the point
at which people in Portsmouth were perceived to be
and aimed to construct a way forward together.
Whilst the Sussex University team comprised
colleagues with national and international expertise
in the three areas, there was a conscious attempt to
avoid being positioned as the bearers of imposed
solutions. Rather, the University team worked hard to
establish themselves as people operating alongside
advisers, staff and students to support them in
taking these three areas forward in ways that were
appropriate to local situations and settings.The team
shared research and ideas from elsewhere and these
fed into developments. However, the basis of the
work was always about listening to what people had
8
to say and developing a way forward together. This
applied equally to the drawing up of the strategy, the
planning and facilitation of events and the production
of resources. As the project progressed and
Portsmouth staff and students developed expertise
and confidence, University team members gradually
played both a more supporting and a more
challenging role.
The project commenced in the Autumn Term of
2002, and after significant engagement with
secondary and special schools and, slightly later,
with primary schools, the three strands of the project
developed in different ways.This was a direct
consequence of pre-existing activities and
arrangements, particularly in respect of AfL and
School to School Learning.
1.3 Assessment for Learning
In relation to AfL, the context provided by the LA and
the headteachers meant that primary and secondary
schools followed different paths. Prior to the inception
of the Portsmouth Learning Community, a structure of
phased development had been worked out by the LA
for its primary schools, such that around 15 schools
per year were invited to participate, with two teachers
from each attending three days of AfL training, one day
per term. The training was to be provided by Shirley
Clarke, a national figure in the field, who was
contracted by the LA. To begin with, the role assigned
to the University team was merely evaluative: the team
was asked to attend training days and visit schools in
order to report on progress. Shirley Clarke went on
maternity leave after the first year’s phase, and the
University team took over all the arrangements for
external INSET provision and follow-up with primary
schools. Secondary schools were also invited to attend
but did not in fact participate in the early phases.
Separate arrangements were made for secondary
schools whereby the University team and the adviser
responsible for the Secondary National Strategy met for
termly half-day meetings with an AfL link teacher from
each centre/school. All but two schools engaged with
the AfL work which was undertaken by the University
team.
1.4 Student Voice
Regarding Student Voice the work began with a series
of visits by the University team to secondary schools to
explore the level and understanding of student
participation across the city. Cross-city engagement
with young people came in March 2003 at a Student
Voice Day involving students and staff from all the
secondary schools and centres across Portsmouth.
Following this event, the strategy for Student Voice was
drawn up. Initial Student Voice work with primary
schools involved running a number of events with staff
and students to explore What is a Listening School? In
addition a series of seminars on Student Voice were
arranged for primary headteachers.
In order to implement the Student Voice strategy, the
University Student Voice team gradually expanded to
include the LA adviser with responsibility for Student
Voice, a newly appointed Student Voice Advanced Skills
Teacher – likely to be one of the first in England - and
four other teachers representing secondary, special and
primary schools. This group met regularly throughout the
duration of the project to reflect on progress and plan
future work. Student Voice Link teachers in secondary
schools and later, primary colleagues who were involved
in the Primary Student Voice Network, were key in
sharing good practice across schools and taking forward
Student Voice work within their own settings.
9
1.5 School to School Learning
School to School Learning was a focus for the
University’s work in Portsmouth from the outset and
every opportunity to bring students and staff from
different schools together was sought in order that
they could learn with, and from each other. This
strand of the project commenced with a closure day
for all secondary schools to enable the sharing of
good practice in different subject areas across the
city. This event had been planned before the start of
the contract with the University of Sussex and
dominated the work on this strand in the early part
of the project. Meanwhile the agenda for School to
School Learning in the primary sector was
determined by meetings with primary heads where
key themes for collaboration were identified. As the
project progressed, the work of the University team
was able to move towards exploring different ways
in which schools can learn with and from each
other, and much of this took place through the AfL
and Student Voice strands.
Opportunities to work with school staff and LA
advisers were taken whenever possible and
included regular reporting at head teacher
conferences, a wide range of seminars on different
themes, in-service training events, involvement in
meetings of Continuing Professional Development
Coordinators, sessions for Advanced Skills
Teachers, Newly Qualified Teachers and SchoolCentred Initial Teacher Trainees as well as
contributions to Local Authority Adviser meetings. A
member of the University team was co-opted on to
the Portsmouth Raising Achievement and Standards
in Education (PRAISE) steering group which for
most of the duration of the project was seen as the
strategic group with responsibility for overseeing the
work of the Portsmouth Learning Community. The
University team was instrumental in setting up the
Council of Portsmouth Students (COPS), a
cross–city student body with representation from
most of the secondary schools and centres. By the
end of the project, moves were afoot to set up a
primary COPS.
1.6 Portsmouth Learning Community: The first 5 years
Over the five years of the project there were many
pressing demands and preoccupations in the city.
Some detracted from the learning community
concerns, examples being staff recruitment and
retention, changes in personnel, structural
reorganisation, and performance tables. Others,
10
such as the Every Child Matters agenda, supported
and enhanced the Portsmouth Learning Community.
Some colleagues saw fragmentation and
contradiction in what they felt was expected of
them. Others were assertive and proactive in
creating their own coherent developmental agenda.
2: METHODOLOGY
In compiling this report we have drawn on a wide
range of data collected over the course of the
project. Research questions were identified at an
early stage and have been the focus of the data
collection. For much of the duration of the project a
small research group, consisting solely of members
of the University of Sussex team, met to reflect on
the progress of the project and identify sources of
potentially useful data.
2.1 Documentary data
We have drawn on a range of documentary data
such as records of meetings, school visits and
activities, plans, reviews and interim reports.
Performance data and data on student and staff
attitudes such as the Keele Survey have been
supplied by the Local Authority. We have also been
able to draw on the 2007 Annual Performance
Assessment Submission to Ofsted and
performance data from the DCSF website.
11
2.2 Interviews
A number of interviews have been carried out with
Local Authority staff, heads, teachers and students.
Interviews with school staff were carried out as part
of school visits. Selected staff in the Local Authority
who were seen to be key to the development of the
project were identified and interviewed in the final
year of the project, 2006-7, in order to draw on their
insights and understanding of the work.
2.3 School Visits
Visits have been made to schools for the purposes
of collecting data throughout the duration of the
project. Some schools were selected for specific
visits during 2006 and 2007 in order to provide indepth information. This enabled the University
research team both to interrogate and refine our
preliminary interpretations of the processes taking
place and to illustrate in practical terms, the ways in
which changes were developing. It also helped us
identify the facilitators and barriers. The selection of
these 10 schools was undertaken explicitly on the
basis that they reported undertaking developments
in one or more of the three areas of the programme
and that they were willing to share these
developments with the University of Sussex team.
We are aware that other schools may have been
undertaking relevant activities that we missed and
that deliberately seeking the ‘action’ may have
affected our overview of the effects of the
programme.
There is a danger with this type of research that we
find what we seek. The team is aware of the vested
interest we had in finding positive outcomes.
Attempts have been made to address this through
conducting some school visits in pairs, transcribing
some interviews more fully, using many different
data sources both in terms of types of data interviews, focus groups, observation, documentary
analysis and in terms of collecting multiple
perspectives from a range of ‘stakeholders’. All
school visit notes were approved, in some cases
following amendments, by the staff involved.
12
In reaching conclusions, one member of the team
not involved in school visits undertook an ‘audit
trail’ on the data from the school visits to check
that the links made to these data in the analysis can
be demonstrated. The outcomes of this exploration
provided some reassurance of the extent to which
interpretations were felt to be substantiated by the
data gathered. However, in reporting the findings, it
should be acknowledged that changes that are
described range from affecting every student and
teacher in a school through to examples in which
only one teacher and the students they teach have
been influenced by that change. It is these
differences between the accounts of respondents
about the change experienced that are interesting to
substantiate or triangulate.
Attributing change specifically to the Portsmouth
Learning Community was also a problem for all
parties involved, particularly as all three areas Student Voice, Assessment for Learning and School
to School Learning gained prominence in
government policy during the five years of the
programme. The LA had many initiatives of which
this was only one that they considered to have had
an influence on practice in schools. Furthermore,
several schools gave examples of work on Student
Voice, AfL or school to school networking that they
were undertaking before the Portsmouth Learning
Community began and which was extended, rather
than initiated by the introduction of the programme.
The Sussex team on occasion may have been more
likely to attribute changes observed in the schools
to the Portsmouth Learning Community, because
they had less contact with the other developments
in Portsmouth, while other changes that should
have been linked to the Learning Community were
not recognised as such. The school staff and
students found it difficult to isolate the effects of
the Portsmouth Learning Community. One infant
school head stated:
It is difficult to isolate the effect of the Portsmouth
Learning Community from the many other
influences on collaboration, funding, and so on, but
the Portsmouth Learning Community has
supported the philosophy of schools’ working
together with a focus on learning and development
In setting it up, the LA had a clear intention to raise
standards, but whilst there was a strong belief by
key figures that working on student and teacher
engagement would improve results both in
attitudinal surveys and high stakes testing, any
such change would be unlikely to be attributable to
direct intervention in the short term. Other
outcomes such as increasing attendance, reducing
exclusions and improving teaching might be
accepted as shorter-term proxies for raising
standards. Furthermore, there were different
perceptions of what was meant by the ‘learning’ in
the Portsmouth ‘Learning’ Community, with
teachers and students relating learning to wider
communities beyond the classroom and many
activities undertaken in the programme reflecting a
broader view of learning than the test results
usually taken as reflecting standards. The validity
and reliability of test results arose as an issue in
discussions with schools.
13
3: THE PORTSMOUTH CONTEXT
Portsmouth became a unitary authority in 1997. It is
an area with higher than average indices of
deprivation including unemployment (2.4%
compared to 1.6% for the Government Office South
East area), lone parent households, low life
expectancy and rising levels of youth offending.
In 2000, before the Portsmouth Learning Community
began, it received an Ofsted inspection and 13 areas
of improvement were identified, 9 of which related to
the School Improvement Service. Low performance
was seen as the key problem and expectations had
to be shifted. In 2001, the Local Authority undertook
a survey of school students and the feedback was
not good – a significant proportion of students felt
disengaged from their schools and from learning
with the problem increasing in severity with the
transition from primary to secondary school.
When the Portsmouth Learning Community was
introduced, Portsmouth was an area described by
one interviewee as full of negativity and a number of
headteacher respondents felt that there were areas
within the city suffering from an inward-looking, low
aspiration, ‘island’ mentality. Many schools were
achieving low results, the staff turnover in schools
was high and the morale was low. A key aim was to
get school staff to look beyond the boundaries of
their own school. Over the period of the programme,
standards have risen in Portsmouth though there are
undoubtedly many factors that have contributed to
this, including the Portsmouth Learning Community
programme.
The Every Child Matters agenda was pre-empted in
Portsmouth by the development of the ‘Portsmouth
8’ - a set of 8 outcomes for children and young
people that were drawn up after extensive
consultation across the city. The intention was to
raise expectations and aspirations through the
‘Portsmouth 8’ such that all children and young
people should grow up:
• having the right to an active say in any
development
• healthy
• emotionally secure and confident
• having succeeded as far as they can at school
• having facilities and opportunities to play safely
• having stayed out of trouble
• living in a safe place
• having the opportunity to succeed in achieving
their dreams.
This vision underpins the 2006/07 and 2007/08
Children and Young People Plan. When the Every
Child Matters outcomes were introduced nationally,
the Portsmouth 8 was replaced but the Local
Authority was well prepared for this development.
3.1 Ethnicity
Portsmouth has a small but increasing minority of students from ethnic minority groups.
No of pupils in Portsmouth City schools and nurseries from ethnic minority groups1
No of pupils
14
May 2004
May 2005
Nov 2005
Mar 2006
Jan 2007
194
228
243
277
316
1
Portsmouth LA (2007) RAS Pupils in 60 Portsmouth Schools & LEA Maintained Nurseries; Country of Origin and Language Background.
May 2004, March 2005 and January 2007. Portsmouth City Council.
These pupils came from 38 countries, the largest
groups from Turkey, Somalia, Pakistan, Kosovo, Iraq,
Iran, Congo, Angola, Albania, Afghanistan and more
recently, Sudan. In January 2007, there were an
additional 223 refugees and 116 asylum seekers
awaiting a home office decision.
3.2 Improvement in outcomes2
Over the period of the Portsmouth Learning
Community initiative, outcomes in the city have
improved in many areas. In 2007, no schools required
special measures and the three with notice to improve
were all making at least satisfactory progress. There
were very few permanent exclusions and whilst both
the number of students and days involved in fixed
term exclusions were still high, they were reducing
significantly. Overall attendance in Portsmouth is
improving compared to the national trend.
Children and young people are actively involved in
the development of Local Authority strategies. For
example COPS has presented the issues of how
improvements to school toilets could reduce
incidents of bullying and improve attendance at
school. They also presented their views on how fixed
term exclusions could be reduced.
3.3 Improvements in standards2
Overall, in 2007 the most significant improvement
occurred at KS2 and KS4. Improvement from 2006 to
2007 and over a three year period (2005–07) at both
key stages is in the top quartile for all LA’s in 7 out of
8 indicators. In 2007, at KS2 Portsmouth’s
improvement from 2006 was ranked 3rd in the county
for English, 2nd for mathematics, 4th for science and
2nd for overall points. Similar rankings exist for level
5+ improvement in KS2. At KS4, Portsmouth is the
12th most improved authority at 5+A*-C, 13th at
5+A*-G (with and without English and mathematics)
and 25th at 5+A*-C including English and
mathematics. In the reflection of the wider inclusive
curriculum, Portsmouth is the 10th most improved
authority on total average points reflecting its
commitment to an inclusive approach.
In GCSEs from 2006 to 2007, there was an increase
of 6 points at 5+A*-C to 53%. At the benchmark of
5+ A*-C including English and mathematics, results
improved by 4 points from 29% to 33%. Forty-six
percent of pupils gained a grade C or higher in
English, a drop of 1 percentage point on the 2006
figure, but in mathematics, 41% gained a C or higher,
an improvement of 4%. Looking at the trends from
1997, Portsmouth has made greater improvement in
GCSE scores than both the South East Region and
LAs nationally.
Data reported here has been extracted from two sources:
Portsmouth City Council (2007) Children, Families and Learning Bulletin September 2007, Portsmouth.
Ofsted (2007) Portsmouth City Council 2007 Annual Performance Assessment Submission re Review of Children and Young People’s Plan London: Ofsted.
2
15
GCSE results: Percentage of Pupils achieving 5+ A*-C and 5+ A*-G3
Achieving 5+ A*-C
1997
2007
Portsmouth LA
31.6
53.4
South East Region
47.7
England
45.1
% points difference
Achieving 5+ A*-G
1997
2007
% points difference
21.8
81
88.2
7.2
62
14.3
89.8
92.7
2.9
62
16.9
86.4
91.7
5.3
At KS3, there is most improvement at L5+ in mathematics and science and at L6+ in mathematics.
Portsmouth was in the top quartile for improvement in mathematics and the second quartile for English and
science in KS3. Again, the trend from 1997 to 2006 shows improvements in both English and mathematics
that are higher than the South East Region and LAs nationally.
Key Stage 3 Results: Percentage of Pupils achieving Level 5 or above4
English
1997
2007
Portsmouth LA
47
65
South East Region
62
76
England
57
74
Maths
% points difference
1997
2007
% points difference
18
50
67
17
14
65
78
13
17
60
76
16
In 2006-07 in KS2, Portsmouth was the most improved Local Authority in England for mathematics, joint first
for English and second for science. The percentage of pupils attaining level 4 or above was 79 in English, 75 in
mathematics and 86 in science. The ranking on English improved from position 125 to 81 and for mathematics
from 149 to 99. The trend from 1997 to 2007 shows greater improvement in Portsmouth than in both the
South East region and LAs nationally.
3
4
16
The data in the tables in this section are adapted from the DCSF website http://dcsf.gov.uk/inyourarea/statistics/las_lea_851_4.shtml
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/inyourarea/statics/las_lea_851_3.shtml
Key Stage 2 Results: Percentage of Pupils achieving Level 4 or above5
English
1997
2007
Portsmouth LA
55
79
South East Region
66
England
63
Maths
% points difference
1997
2007
% points difference
24
52
75
23
81
15
63
77
14
80
17
62
77
15
At KS1, the low percentage of pupils attaining below level 1 places Portsmouth in the top quartile nationally in
reading and mathematics and in the second quartile in writing. The 2007 results were broadly in line with 2006,
with a 1% point rise in reading, a 1% point drop in writing and mathematics, remaining at the 2006 average.
Portsmouth’s value added score from KS2 to KS4 in 2006 is 995.8 compared with 969.3 in 2005 and against
a national average each year of 1000. The progress from KS3 to GCSE has also improved. The value added
score in 2005 was 986.4 and in 2006 it was 999.6. These measures indicate good improvement in the
progress made by students aged from 11 to 16. Girls generally outperform boys in recorded assessments
from the Foundation stage onwards, except in mathematics and science at KS2 and KS3 in which boys are at
least in line and frequently attain higher than girls.
3.4 Feedback from children and young people
The data from the annual Keele University survey of
pupils’ experience of school show a higher degree of
satisfaction in primary than in secondary schools. In
primary schools, 88% of students report having a
good relationship with teachers compared with 86%
for the national survey as a whole. At secondary it is
53% in Portsmouth compared with 55% nationally.
Overall satisfaction with schooling at primary level
stands at 68% compared with 69% in the national
sample. There has been little change in this figure in
the last 3 years. At secondary level, the satisfaction
5
rate is 48% compared with 51% nationally. Both the
Portsmouth and the national secondary rating are
declining slightly over the years.
Overall, standards and value added in Portsmouth
are rising in most areas though remain just below the
national average. The improvement since 2001 has
been very significant. Students are consulted and
involved in decision-making in the city, but their
satisfaction with schooling remains near the national
average and has not changed significantly.
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/inyourarea/statics/las_lea_851_2.shtml
17
4: MAIN FINDINGS 1: THE THREE STRANDS
4.1 Benefits and changes attributable to Portsmouth Learning Community
As the national and international literature on significant
school improvement demonstrates, progress in schools
varied widely and the precise contribution of the
Portsmouth Learning Community initiative is difficult to
identify. Furthermore, the degree to which changes
were school-wide or only affected one teacher and the
students he or she taught, must be acknowledged.
Nevertheless, the data suggest that across the LA,
standards have risen over the 5-year period and that in
some schools where standards rose, the staff attribute
this wholly or partly to developments arising from the
Portsmouth Learning Community. For example, at one
junior school the headteacher commented:
Standards in the school remain below national
averages but are rising at a rate above that of the
country as a whole.
Many students were reported as developing greater
control over their own learning and increased in
confidence in response to the work on Student Voice,
Assessment for Learning or some combination of the
two. For example, a secondary teacher stated:
Pupils are more independent. Pupils are more
confident and secure in what they’re learning. Pupils do
better, achieve more, especially, for example, with the
lower ability. It gives them the scaffolding they need.
In some schools, staff reported that the Portsmouth
Learning Community provided specific ideas and
opportunities that have had a direct influence on their
schools’ development, for example the radio project at
a secondary school described below. At an infant
school, input from the University team into a Primary
AfL Network meeting in Autumn 2006 led to the staff
carrying out their own analysis of the usefulness of the
school’s assessment practices. Each method of
assessment was rated according to its reliability,
validity, outcome, and overall value for the different
people who have access to the information (teachers,
students, parents). A chart displaying the staff’s
analysis was up on the staffroom wall and was the
focus of continuing discussion and decision-making.
18
The headteacher said it was an example of what was,
for her, the best kind of staff meeting: the staff took
over the discussion for themselves.
Other school staff also reported improvements. One
secondary school history teacher commented on the
positive difference he saw AfL had made to his
department’s outcomes:
My Year 10 who aren’t going to get As or Bs, but
they’re all quite genned up on the difference between
‘comprehension’ and ‘inference’, on how to see two
sides of a story, and I can actually talk to them about
the construction of a piece of work… They’re more
capable of doing the work on their own, and they’re
more interested. They will take more interest if they
know what’s going on. It has already begun to produce
better results, better residuals and so on, better exam
results. I’m convinced of it. They won’t know quite as
much about the Schlieffen plan as they did, they won’t
be able to go into the logistical detail, but they’ll be able
to construct two-sided essays, will be able to see
points of similarity … and you can keep up the level of
interest.
A secondary school teacher reported on the benefits to
their students’ learning:
I know that was a good lesson because X (boy) who
was disaffected last lesson was making lots of
contributions and quite happy to read his work out; and
Y (another boy) who didn’t get a level in his SATs (the
previous year) was reading out his work, and he’d got
the right idea…
These teachers represent a significant proportion of
those in primary, secondary and special schools
who felt they could see positive effects in their
classrooms as a result of their engagement with
ideas promoted by the Portsmouth Learning
Community. We see their perceptions as validated by
students from primary schools who, in referring to
major features of AfL and to some extent, Student
Voice work suggested:
The big picture helps us look at the things we will be
doing in this topic, and improve our work. It helps us
to evaluate all of our work at the end of a topic and
also lets us look back at all the work we have covered
over the time
(learners seeing the relevance of specific tasks to a
whole topic or work unit)
When we get stuck we refer back to the ‘remember
to’s’. They help us understand and achieve our work.
Being visible, they help because you don’t have to
remember, you just look at the board
(learners building resilience and self-reliance)
Tickled pink means that what you have done is right;
green means that you’ve got to check what you’ve
done and make it better. It means that you get to
check your work and see how you can make it better in
the future
(learners having explicit guidance about how to improve
understanding and performance)
We don’t put our hands up; you have to think about it.
This is so that every body has time to think, and you
have to have an answer in case you are asked. If there
is a difficult question the teacher will just give time to
think about an answer which can be helpful
(learners having increased and supported opportunities
for reflection)
Sometimes we do the draft and then Miss asks us all
what we have included and then we make the list of
success criteria to be used for the best piece
(learners’ active involvement in decision-making about
key features such as assessment criteria, method,
ways of improving)
When we mark one another’s work, we understand
more about what we know - we’re on the same level
and can understand a partner’s problems better than
the teacher - we can speak so they understand.
(learners engaging in many forms of peer support,
including ‘talking partners’ and constructive, criteria-led
peer assessment)
Views on whether Portsmouth Learning Community
made a difference seem to relate to the strand of work
with which the respondent was engaged. So for
example, one Local Authority interviewee suggested
that the Student Voice work had made by far the
greatest impact, with student councils becoming much
more embedded, students as governors developing,
though concerns were expressed that without the
School to School Learning and the Portsmouth
Learning Community more broadly, some of this
impetus would be lost. In contrast, another Local
Authority interviewee who had been more involved in
the AfL strand felt that AfL had been more effective
than Student Voice because it had a tighter focus, with
fewer different initiatives. The AfL meetings were more
frequent, involved more senior staff, had less staff
turnover over time and expected feedback on
progress.
One headteacher suggested that Student Voice was
where greatest transformation has taken place across
the schools in the city:
The big big big thing for me of the whole five year
project has been what power you can unleash when
you do look at something which is actually really
focused and where you get a shared understanding
across more than one institution. Student Voice I think
is the best example of that......
...Five years ago, where people even thought of
Student Voice I'm sure they all thought of it as
Student Council and that was it. And people
thought they were well ahead of the mark if they
had a Student Council that met.....Now there's a
completely different understanding of that....if you
look at the projects, the projects are quite specific;
people have bought into them at different levels. So
different schools have been interested in Students
as Governors or Students as Researchers or in
students co-constructing the curriculum.
.....globally the understanding of what we're talking
about and how powerful it is has risen
exponentially in that time. When secondary heads
meet now there isn't even a question about how
19
powerful Student Voice is; there are different
points of view about how to capture it, use it, go
with it but there isn't a question about it.....I think
we've seen a sea change.
This view of Student Voice as creating
transformation across the City was strongly
supported by the senior managers in the LA.
Reflecting back on how the Portsmouth Learning
Community had been set up, one respondent felt
that there was insufficient development at the start
to establish shared values which then meant that
different people had different views about the
purpose of the programme. It was suggested that
this was reflected in the tendency of headteachers
to focus in the meetings and activities, on improving
individual subjects but less on real collaboration.
On the other hand, a Local Authority manager felt
that Portsmouth was a different city to how it had
been in 2000 and that the Portsmouth Learning
Community had made a contribution to this. In
particular, the focus on the learner had been crucial
to this progress.
“
The data suggest that across the LA, standards have risen over
the 5-year period and that in some schools where standards rose,
the staff attribute this wholly or partly to developments arising from
the Portsmouth Learning Community ”
The ‘routes’ that schools took during the process of
change did not emerge as a clear issue. Whether
they made initial rapid development followed by
periods of consolidation or gradually and
incrementally improved, was not clearly evident from
the data. Identifying who benefited from any changes
that took place was difficult to establish with
confidence, though it is clear from the examples
reported that in some schools many students’
20
confidence was increased through the Student Voice
work, some teachers appeared to benefit from the
support and challenge and heads in particular, felt
that establishing better working relationships across
schools had been a significant force for change.
Key features in each of the three areas of the
programme can be identified as having contributed to
school and LA improvement.
4.2 Student Voice
It is perhaps in the area of Student Voice that there
were greatest differences between the rhetoric reported
and the action observed. The University team’s view is
that this is less because of deliberate misrepresentation
than due to the deep cultural changes needed in order
to support embedded student-led education and the
differences in understanding about the scale of change
that is required in order to bring about such deep
cultural shift.
Fielding (2004) proposed a typology to describe the
continuum of student engagement, from activities in
which the learner is largely passive to those in which
their voices are the initiating force. The evidence
from previous research suggests that as the
engagement of students becomes more active and
participatory, so the range and depth of learning for
both students and teachers increases. The four-fold
typology proposed by Fielding is as follows:
Table 4.1 Typology of Student Voice (adapted from Fielding, 2004)
1. Students as data source
Activities in this category are characterised by a real
teacher commitment to pay attention to Student Voice
through practical activities and targets. It is acknowledged
that for teaching and learning to improve, there is a need to
take more explicit account of relevant data about individual
students and class performance. Students are recipients of a
better informed pedagogy.
2. Students as active respondents
These activities are characterised by a teacher willingness to
move beyond the accumulation of passive data and a desire
to hear what students have to say about their own
experience in lessons and in school. Students are
discussants rather than recipients of current approaches to
teaching and learning.
3. Students as co-enquirers
This is much more of a partnership than the two previous
levels, whilst student and teacher roles are not equal, they
are moving strongly in that direction. Students move from
being discussants to being co-enquirers into matters of
agreed significance and importance. This change is matched
by more attentive listening by teachers.
4. Students as knowledge creators
At this level, the voice of the student takes a leadership or
initiating, not just a responsive role. It is students who
identify issues to be researched or investigated, undertake
the research with the support of staff and have responsibility
for making sense of the data, writing a report or presenting
their findings. Teachers, team / department or school
community are committed to respond in ways which are
respectful, attentive and committed to positive change.
21
This typology is helpful in understanding the context
in schools for the development of Student Voice.
Some previous research noted that schools that
claimed to have learner-led personalised learning
(level 4), sometimes were found to exhibit ‘students
as active respondents’ (level 2). The typology
highlights the importance of staff attitudes throughout
the school in moving towards more embedded
models of Student Voice.
Within the Student Voice strategy there were initially 5
separate themes which were:
• Encouraging and supporting student participation in
school governance, management and school
improvement;
• Helping students to give support to other students;
• Developing a listening culture within schools;
• Helping students to have more control over their
learning;
• Encouraging student involvement in the wider
community.
This was later simplified into two areas of activity.
These were:
• student involvement in decisions about learning;
• student involvement in decisions about school life.
There was inevitably considerable overlap between
the work on student involvement in decisions about
their learning and the AfL strand, but the work
continued distinctly because of the way in which the
AfL project had been set up. Nevertheless there
were constant attempts to make links between these
two areas.
In the mid-project evaluation interviews with selected
secondary and primary headteachers which took
place in 2004, it was apparent that secondary heads
in particular considered that the Student Voice work
was having a strong impact on schools. A number of
primary heads were less sure at that stage of
progress which was directly attributable to the
22
Student Voice strand of Portsmouth Learning
Community. Some felt that their schools had already
been doing a number of things in this area. And
there was a perception that in any case the culture
of primary schools is more conducive to listening to
students. Others, however, had already engaged
enthusiastically with this strand and were seeing very
real benefits.
4.2.1 Student involvement in decisions about
learning
The findings suggest that the role of staff in
developing Student Voice was critical. A number of
examples of ways in which responsibility for learning
transferred from teacher to student emerged. For
example, in one secondary school a member of staff
reported:
Recently I was writing essay questions for my Year
11s: ‘Why am I writing essay questions? Why can’t
they write essay questions?’ And I realised well
actually they can. They know the criteria, they know
what the themes are, they can write their own essay
questions.
And another teacher from the same school
commented:
It all started when I began wondering ‘Why am I
marking their work when they can be marking their
own work?’ It was from there that the voice started
happening. When I first started working with the
student council, one of the things that felt very wrong
for me was actually I led the meetings, I did a lot of
the work, a lot of the organisation, I was run ragged
trying to do it, and I thought ‘This doesn’t feel very
Student Voicey: I’m running round doing it all’. Part of
it is that as teachers we are control freaks.
Students at another secondary school expressed
their appreciation of how the school has developed
an increased sense of belonging, better discipline,
greater working together and more choice. A
student from the secondary school with the radio
project (see p.24) confirmed the effects of the
Student Voice work: It helps with confidence. I can
now speak out and make myself heard.
“ The extent to which young people are listened to and become
active in their learning depends heavily on the skills of staff ”
Secondary school teacher
The head of an infant school was struck by the
benefits of Student Voice work:
Pupil Voice is about realising how perceptive
children can be. It has been an important aspect of
the Portsmouth Learning Community. The children
have taken me by surprise by how perceptive they
actually are. They quite often see things in the
same way as adults. For example, regarding
problems at lunchtime, they identified the same
problems as we had identified. Yet for other things
it’s interesting to see it from their viewpoint,
because you lose track that children’s viewpoint
can be different.
A junior school teacher commented:
I do find that they question a lot more. And not just
question me, they question themselves and other
children. I’ve also found that the relationship between
me and the children has changed, compared to what it
was last year. I have felt as though the relationship has
become a lot closer. A lot less like I am the teacher, I’m
more of a sort of facilitator. I feel as though they like to
express their ideas much more and talk about the work
they’re doing as well.
The DVD What Makes Learning Fun? shows
how one junior school in Portsmouth used a
range of approaches to give students more
control over their learning.
23
Giving students greater responsibility and training to create, innovate and contribute to the quality of life and
education in the school was perhaps best illustrated by the radio project at a secondary school:
CASE STUDY: Secondary School: developing Student Voice
through the radio project
24
The project involved a range of students with the
intention of improving opportunities for Student Voice
activities. Radio was seen as a way of giving
students a new, exciting medium through which to
express themselves and communicate with staff and
each other. It involved purchasing equipment to
enable staff and students to produce and broadcast
radio programmes. The teachers involved gave their
views:
....the school has very much responded to the
external drivers but has had an intrinsic need to
develop a far more consensual way. The radio idea I
took from attending one of the Sussex things, from a
primary school that gave an input, as an innovative
way of doing Student Voice. We accessed the
funding through the Leading Edge budget. We’ve
done it as a collaborative project with [another school
name]. And we’ve got a good new partnership with
the people who’ve set up Express FM in the city. We
have trained an initial twelve DJs.....We’ve sat down
with them and devised the rules of broadcasting..,
very much led by them and their awareness of
sensitivities.... Someone from Original 106 came in to
do a technical session with them. Then we had
someone from Express FM do a session on listening
skills, non-verbal communication, interviewing, asking
good questions, all those sorts of things. We’ve not
had a day since we’ve had the training that we’ve not
had a broadcast because they’re so motivated. It’s in
its infancy. It is developing into an information thing.
Students are putting adverts on and reminders of
school events. … But they’re building in all the listening
and questioning skills. And the next plan is, now we
have the one raft of DJs set up, to use those to train
the next raft of DJs. So it’s pupil to pupil learning.
In a primary school, years 5 and 6 students led a
Futures programme to develop a new curriculum for
the school. This focused on what students thought
they needed to learn for the future. While the
concept of ‘future’ was challenging, students and
staff were energised by the process. Furthermore,
students spontaneously came up with their own
concerns regarding teaching and learning which
were not necessarily related to the Futures work but
which the school encouraged and incorporated into
the process of moving forward on the new
curriculum. Initially, a representative group of year 6
students volunteered to become a Students as
Researchers body to consider how best to pursue
the main issues arising from the student responses
to the Futures work and this was later taken over by
year 5 students.
The students confirmed the view that it was led by
them and resulted in increased confidence:
We’re able to choose what we want to do with it.
We’re able to choose what we want to say and who
we want to interview. And deal with different themes
and stuff that’s going on....First up, I wasn’t very
confident and when I got up there I couldn’t really
say much, because I was nervous. But when you do
it your confidence goes up. So it helps with
confidence. I can now speak out and make myself
heard, and I couldn’t before.
An exciting prospect for the future is the
development of pieces of ‘radio’ made by students
and teachers representing their work in subjects
across the curriculum, stored on the school’s
intranet. The crucial element throughout is that the
students decide the key issues.
There was a concern in many schools that the
school council should make a real contribution
rather than being tokenistic. A teacher from a
secondary school provided an example of a
contribution that had been made by the council:
Underlying the whole approach is the idea that we
are providing a service to the young people here.
Whereas when I started it seemed to be the other
way round: the teachers had a jug of knowledge
and the pupils were there to receive all the good
things the teachers were there to give, and if the
pupils didn’t do this, then clearly it was the pupils’
fault. [Chair of governor’s] idea is that we need
always to communicate with the students about
how best to provide the service. An example of
how this works was that RE was not being taught
in a way that was useful or engaging, so the
school council unpacked this, they took the issue
to the head of RE for consultation on how to plan
more engaging lessons…
This shows the significant role that researching
students played in providing their council
representatives with evidence of student opinion.
This was an excellent example of students learning
about democracy by working democratically and
rationally to investigate and propose changes that
should benefit members of the community: it is
citizenship in action and demonstrates levels 2-3 of
the typology.
Significant resources in terms of University staff time
were put into promoting self-managed learning as
an approach that has been shown elsewhere to be
successful in engaging different groups of students
(such as gifted and talented and disaffected
students) in more autonomous learning. However
this work has only been taken up in one school.
(See box.)
At one secondary school, where students had been
evaluating lessons before the Portsmouth Learning
Community began, the students who were
interviewed praised these observation lessons and
feedback sessions. This work was promoted
through Portsmouth Learning Community meetings
and other schools picked up on it and were
implementing it in their own settings. In another
secondary school, one pioneering teacher in the
history department was involving her students in
co-planning and reviewing how the curriculum was
delivered. This work was undertaken very
enthusiastically by students on a regular basis and
they felt that it had a positive effect on their lessons
CASE STUDY:
Self-managed learning
A project was set up with a group of 6 underachieving Year 10 students who, with the
support of an adviser, set their own learning
goals and ground rules for working together.
They used a variety of learning methods to
achieve their goals and at the end of the
project were able to report back to school
staff and parents on their achievements. The
students found the process highly valuable
and the school is looking to extend the use of
this approach. In the words of one
participating student:
“We’re not just kids from xxxxx School that do
nothing. We actually do want to do something
– we do want a career.”
25
and their work. Again, through Portsmouth Learning
Community meetings, this work was promoted and
disseminated and a number of schools showed
interest in developing such an approach.
The following extract from a report from the National
Innovation Unit shows how Admiral Lord Nelson
School is involving students in decisions about their
learning.
CASE STUDY: Personalising Learning
This year we have 3 small research projects taking
place within the school looking to find ways to
empower teachers and students to move towards
co-constructing the learning experience at our
school together. In English, students have been
trained to observe lessons and to provide effective
feedback to teachers. We have a project in
History where a Curriculum Panel has been
elected from year 8 students who are discussing
and evaluating their learning experiences in
History this year with the Leader in Learning for
History. They have identified an area of the year 7
scheme of work that they would like to redesign
together. The aim is to involve some of these
students in co-delivering some of the lessons they
4.2.2
Student involvement in decision-making about school life
A Local Authority interviewee noted that the Student
Voice work had developed different attitudes in the
schools towards students, in terms of what they are
capable of. This was reflected in more inclusive
practices and within COPS, he commented that it
was difficult to identify the students from pupil
referral units in terms of behaviour, aspirations or
respect, suggesting that Student Voice has been an
important vehicle for promoting inclusion.
Power differentials between the school council
students and other students was a significant factor
in some schools. For example, at one primary
school, the headteacher described school council
members as initially too restrained, but reported
that what they had learned through participating in
the student council were new forms of good
behaviour as defined and recognised by a
particularly (powerful) group of students.
26
have co-designed to next year’s year 7 students.
In Mathematics, the student curriculum group is
focussing on improving the level of dialogue
between students and teachers about how they
learn. There was some well-established practice in
Mathematics based around self-assessment,
review and target-setting but initial discussion with
the group identified that students needed further
empowerment by their Maths teacher to be able
to successfully reflect on their own learning. They
are working with the Leader in Learning for
Mathematics on finding a model for all Maths
teachers to use to help improve their self-review
and assessment skills in Mathematics.
Some of the schools involved had participated in a
group activity (known as the Bull’s Eye activity),
initiated by the University of Sussex team, in which
students were invited to depict the relationships of
people in the school by placing them into
concentric circles, the centre of which represented
key decisions in the school. In one school in
particular, students reported having a real
contribution to make to the life of the school and to
each other. The fact that they felt the school council
was correctly placed in the second ring of influence
(on the bull’s-eye target), underlined the impression
of security and maturity in their understanding of its
powerful role in the school though they had not
placed other students anywhere. Teachers were
placed in the outer ring, confirming the Assistant
Headteacher’s perception that there was a core of
senior leaders and students who embrace the
values and responsibilities that stem from Student
Voice, but that there was a gap between them and
the bulk of teachers and wider population of
students.
The situation vis-à-vis school councils varies widely
between schools with some schools having a
strongly representative structure with well developed
mechanisms for feeding back across the school
whilst in other schools the council operates in a
more tokenistic way with heads retaining control
over what is discussed and how any issues are
taken forward.
The fact that a survey on Student Voice and School
Councils carried out in May 2007 found that over
90% of schools which responded had a school
council in comparison with a figure of 40% in 2002
is indicative of how far things have progressed. The
challenge now is clearly how to make councils as
effective as possible. One issue for schools has
been the question of inclusivity to ensure that
councils do not only involve the high achieving and
articulate students but represent a cross section. A
teacher at a Student Voice Link Teachers’ meeting
in 2006 spoke of the non-representative nature of
students on some student councils. Again schools
differ widely in this respect.
EXTRACT FROM
WIMBORNE JUNIOR
SCHOOL CASE STUDY.
SEE APPENDIX 2
A particular success at Wimborne Junior has
been its determination to reach out to and
involve all students at the school in
developments. Structures and processes have
been established to ensure that the school
council feeds back to all children and that all
children can have their voice heard. This
inclusive approach has been of central
importance in improving the educational
experiences of all children and in creating a
positive climate at the school.
27
CASE STUDY: Inclusivity
Inclusivity has been a strong focus of the work of the
University of Sussex team. An early meeting with
colleagues from special schools explored ways of
ensuring that students from special schools and
centres would be able to participate in Student Voice
activities. This meeting produced a number of
proposals but uppermost was the request that
events such as COPS meetings and Student Voice
Days could be reported through the production of
some kind of visual record in addition to written
minutes to enable schools to make them accessible
to as wide a range of students as possible. As a
consequence of this discussion, powerpoint
presentations which included filmed extracts of
discussions, tape recordings of key points, photos of
those involved and pictures of flipchart sheets and
drawings illustrating different issues were produced
after each meeting. This has been valuable for
special schools and, in fact, a number of mainstream
schools are now using such multi-media powerpoint
minutes to report back to students. There is also
evidence that some schools are exploring other
ways of feeding back to students with one primary
school, for example, now producing a podcast of
their school council meetings which has proved
easily accessible and is much used across the
school.
The DVD COPS: The Story So Far documents
the background and progress of COPS and
includes a section about the visual minutes.
The Student Voice Day 2007 Poster is an
example of a resource that has been produced
for a wide audience.
The involvement of the student council in the
headteacher’s appointment, in candidates’
interviewing, combined with the cause of defending a
student’s right as an asylum seeker to stay at the
school, were crucial factors in establishing Student
Voice as something powerful and potent at one
secondary school. This might suggest that positive
experiences of Student Voice increase subsequent
commitment from the school community.
28
Good planning and effective communication
particularly with special schools and centres prior to
meetings and events were found to be essential in
ensuring that as wide a range of students as
possible could be involved and that activities would
be appropriate. As a result, attendance of students
from special schools and centres at COPS meetings
and Student Voice Days was generally high
throughout the project. It is recognised though that
there is more work that needs to be done to make
events and meetings genuinely inclusive.
COPS has become more aware of the issues
surrounding inclusivity. As an indication of this, the
student planning team for the 2007 Student Voice
Day, specifically requested, in the invitation letter to
heads, that a cross section of students was
represented at the event.
It has also been a concern to include students from
special schools and centres in the full range of
events that have been organised as part of
Portsmouth Learning Community. A particularly
poignant moment was when students from one
special school reported (in some cases with the use
of voice boxes) to the Headteachers’ Conference in
Poole in 2003.
Student Voice had been a main priority at a primary
school where the Student Council continued to
become more important in the running of the school,
including involvement in governor meetings once a
term, participating in developing the school
improvement plan, developing behaviour policies,
school uniform changes and other important
community concerns such as road safety.
At the Student Voice Link Teachers’ meeting in May
06 staff felt that more work needed to be done to
encourage senior leadership teams to invite comment
and feedback from students on a regular basis about
the value of Student Voice. It was felt that better
structures were needed within schools for dialogue
between students and staff.
A leaflet on What Makes a Listening School?
brings together the views of Portsmouth young
people on this theme.
Work has been done to introduce and support
Students as Researchers projects in Portsmouth. The
University team has worked with a small number of
schools to train students to carry out research
projects on an issue or issues which are of concern to
them. The findings have then been reported to senior
leadership teams and governing bodies with a view to
effecting change. Research topics have included
school reward schemes, provision of healthy food and
playground facilities and have all contributed to
positive change. In a recent survey (May 2007) 42%
of schools which responded reported having Students
as Researchers.
Students as Researchers: The Missing Link is a
game that has been produced in association
with Portsmouth students and staff to
introduce the process of involving young
people in researching issues of interest and
concern to them.
Much work has been done over the 5 years of the
Portsmouth Learning Community to support the
involvement of students on governing bodies. There
are a number of ways in which this can happen.
Students can be appointed as associate members of
the governing body and a small but growing number
of schools have taken this route. Other approaches
have included school council students reporting in
person or in writing to the governing body or
governors attending school council meetings. In the
Student Voice survey (May 2007), 32% of schools
which responded (including 8 out of 10 secondary
schools) reported student involvement on their
governing bodies and this figure is rising. This work is
being well supported by the Governor Services team
within the Local Authority which, with the support of
the University of Sussex team, has been very
proactive in this area.
Student Voice continues to develop in one
secondary school where students are now being
elected as associate members of the governing
body. There is strong and enthusiastic opinion
(shared by the active and well informed chair of
governors, senior leaders and significant members
of staff) in favour of taking students’ perceptions
into account regarding the running of the school
and lessons, with policies and projects to match;
these include students contributing to subject
reviews and students framing their own curriculum
activities and assessments. These examples begin
to illustrate level 4 of the typology.
The summary from our November 2006 to the LA
report stated:
Good progress in Student Voice work continues to
be made across the city – with a growing number of
schools committed to setting up or developing their
school councils, with the development of COPS and
the increasing involvement of students on school
governing bodies. Schools are increasingly
recognising the positive impact to be derived from
listening to and involving students in school decision
making….. Most progress however, is being made
in schools which recognise that Student Voice goes
beyond representation through school councils and
governing bodies to relationships within the
classroom and the ways in which learning take
place – every classroom and every relationship. The
challenge for this work is to move from an
understanding of Student Voice as being about
having effective means of representation (though
this is of course very important) to schools which
are characterised by a listening culture throughout.
This requires a change of culture and inevitably
takes time.
The DVD Student Involvement on the
Governing Body was made in collaboration
with Portsmouth Governor Services to outline
the process and benefits of involving students
on their school’s governing bodies.
29
4.3 Assessment for Learning
Different forms of Assessment for Learning (AfL)
emerged from the school visits, meetings and
activities over the five years. These approaches
could be described broadly by two types of AfL
which are referred to in Blanchard et al (2004) as
‘transparency’ and ‘interactivity’. In its early stages,
AfL makes learning and development more
‘transparent’ and given certain values and
circumstances, AfL can go on to promote
‘interactivity’ in learning and development. These
terms apply as much to institutional development as
they do to the evolution of innovative and responsive
practices in the classroom. Transparency maps
approximately on to ‘stages’ 1 and 2 of Fielding’s
Student Voice typology (2004), and interactivity on to
‘stages’ 3 and 4.
Transparent and interactive classrooms and
organisations are more responsive to learners and
employees, than prescriptive and autocratic ones.
Teachers guide learners when they make transparent
such things as purpose, method and criteria for
activities in lessons. Leaders and managers can
guide members of staff in the same way. Teachers
promote interactivity in lessons when they expect
and enable learners to play a part in deciding with
one another and for themselves such things as
purpose, method and criteria. Leaders and
managers promote interactivity in professional and
institutional development in the same way.
AfL activity in Portsmouth schools could be
understood broadly in relation to these two
categories. Those that could be described as
promoting interactivity in classrooms and institutions
were characterised by presenting themselves as
learners, as fallible, and as partners with the
teachers or students. Teachers who demonstrated
these characteristics adapted their ways of working
to reflect learners’ input to planning and their
feedback. Learners and staff displaying interactivity
have a sense of their own purpose and progress,
help and are helped by those around them, welcome
difficulty, trial and error and understand how they
can transfer and apply their learning.
30
Getting in the Habit is a pamphlet produced
in association with Portsmouth LA to support
teachers in the development of Assessment
for Learning.
Some schools had started on work in the
Assessment for Learning area before the Portsmouth
Learning Community began. Some teachers were
already familiar with Shirley Clarke’s conferences and
books (e.g. Clarke, 2001) or with the work of the
King’s College London University team (e.g. Black et
al., 2002), but how that translated into practice
appeared to vary greatly in design, intensity and
effect. It was acknowledged that activity in this area
had increased dramatically during the Portsmouth
Learning Community programme in some of the
schools and was now being led by Advanced Skills
Teachers for AfL, a role introduced only after the
Portsmouth Learning Community began. Schools
reported improved student outcomes from their work
on Assessment for Learning in two areas in
particular: increase in students’ confidence and
increase in skills in self assessment and in giving
feedback to each other.
Sometimes we do the draft and then Miss asks us
all what we have included and then we make the list
of success criteria to be used for the best piece
primary school student
When things are difficult you can talk to someone
else, or ask the teacher. You have to be stuck
sometimes because if everything was easy you
wouldn’t learn new things
primary school student
While only some of the schools can claim that
standards rose as reflected in test results during the
Portsmouth Learning Community, these broader
skills of confidence and self/peer assessment are
proxies for subsequent rises in test results and are
likely to be strong indicators of increased capacity
for lifelong learning.
Getting Good at Learning is a set of
postcards developed in response to requests
from Portsmouth staff for use in the
classroom to encourage learners to discuss
how to go about their work.
In every respect of AfL (using learners’ prior
knowledge, making intentions and criteria explicit,
fostering perseverance and flexibility, modelling
outcomes and styles of working, giving time and
support for improvement), we found a continuum
from the transparent to the interactive. This is well
illustrated through the example of ‘marking’, that is.
the provision of feedback to learners by teachers,
assistants, peers, and other observers of, or
witnesses to performance.
Marking was reported by teachers at one secondary
school to be much more effective when carried out
in the presence of the student, and this is being
promoted through increased peer assessment,
though there are problematical issues, which the
school is well placed to continue addressing, in
developing a classroom culture that enables
students to value one another’s views. They
continued:
what we’re trying to get them to do is more and
more peer assessment. … We use an extensive
questionnaire with the pupils to monitor how well it’s
going. There was a complete spectrum of
confidence with the pupils about their engagement
in this marking process: from some who could see
the merit and enjoyed it, and some who were not
confident about what their peers were saying. …The
main thing is the work they do afterwards in
analysing the strands: ‘Am I good at data analysis? If
not, what am I going to do about it? Am I good at
any particular segment, such as chemistry, have I a
problem there, and if so where am I going to go and
get help?’
At one primary school, peer assessment (talking
partners) was much more embedded across the
curriculum, after having been started in English and
maths, and students were ‘becoming very confident
assessors’. At an infant school, there was evidence
in the students’ exercise books of specific written
feedback from the teacher relating to criteria for the
task, for example, Great detail. Lots of information.
Well punctuated.
The same pattern of increased active participation
by learners is evident in relation to the planning of
lesson activities, topics and schemes of work.
Developing shared objectives with students was the
focus of AfL activity for many schools.
“ AfL is something you are,
not something you do ”
Junior school teacher
CASE STUDY
The AfL link teacher at one secondary school
described how following the AfL link teachers’
meeting, a presentation given by another
school, had inspired them to set up the
English coursework differently:
....we were about to start a piece of
coursework, so I ripped up what I was going
to do, took them down to the library, told
them ‘We’ve got to study a pre-1914 novel
and we’ve got to look at character and so on;
you go and find what you’re interested in’.
And we ended up with a room full of
books......And then we had three weeks of
people reading......And then we negotiated the
questions to work on…They were finding out
for themselves. Each one suggested a theme
to me and I helped them work out the
wording of the question. They emailed
introductions to me and got some immediate
feedback......I found it took me less
time......my input became more about theory,
we were able to move on to talk about
concepts that I perhaps would have struggled
to talk about before, because they were
lapping things up, they were interested…
31
There were suggestions that AfL was ‘patchy’ both
across schools and more commonly across
departments within schools. There was
considerable variation in the efforts made within
each school to encourage and support staff to
learn from the experiences of those teachers who
were involved on the AfL project. Some
interviewees suggested that ‘results’ would improve
through the ‘deep learning’ achievable through AfL,
but that this takes time:
“ I don’t want a teacher who influences me. I want a teacher who
teaches me not to be influenced! ” secondary school student
… the results haven’t improved significantly because
the kids are still being spoon-fed, they’re still sitting in
lessons like sponges rather than getting involved. And
the problem comes then when they go off on study
leave, they don’t do anything, they don’t know how to
do it. … These are soft skills, learning skills.
secondary school, AfL Lead Teacher
There was widespread acknowledgement from
headteachers, LA staff and members of the University
team in their notes of visits, that AfL is less a set of
techniques and more about underlying values and
beliefs. Implementation of AfL then requires a culture
change in many classrooms with a shift of
responsibility, similar to that noted in Student Voice,
from teacher to learner:
AfL is something you are, not something you do
junior school teacher
I don’t want a teacher who influences me. I want a
teacher who teaches me not to be influenced!
secondary school student
32
In general, interactive classrooms were more
responsive to learners’ perceptions and preferences
than transparent ones.
In summary, and as stated in our report to the Local
Authority in November 2006:
Excellent progress continues to be made in some
schools. There are some fine examples of interactive
classroom teaching and learning being sustained
and being newly developed. Furthermore, in some
schools there is exemplary leadership and
management by the Senior Leadership Team,
enabling teachers who have successfully trialled AfL
strategies to share their experience with
colleagues…… However nobody claims that they
have comprehensively embedded AfL practice
across their school, and in quite a number of
schools good AfL practice is only being developed
in one or two classrooms. Colleagues widely
acknowledge that it is a very long-term undertaking,
requiring fresh impetus from time to time, not least
because staffs and circumstances change.
4.4 School to School Learning
In interviews with headteachers it was reported that at
the start of the Portsmouth Learning Community the
10 secondary and 53 primary schools in Portsmouth
rarely worked together. By the summer of 2004
however, a number of heads were reporting significant
progress in this respect and recognising the benefits
of partnership, support and collaboration across the
city. But as the headteacher of one secondary school
acknowledged, collaboration between schools is
extraordinarily difficult:
.....it's actually the physical, logistical operational
barriers that stop something from working. That
means that any links that were up and running five
years ago were dependent on the individuals doing
that.....So what I've learned is that whatever
infrastructure I put in place or try to put in place or
encourage to be put in place by the LA for this won't
make it work; what makes it work are the relationships
and the links.
However, he acknowledged that where there is a
shared vision with clarity about a way forward,
schools can collaborate successfully.
At the beginning of the Portsmouth Learning
Community initiative the focus of School to School
Learning, at least in secondary schools, had been on
city-wide school closure days. The University team
was keen to move away from this towards
encouraging different ways in which schools can
share good practice and learn from each other. It was
difficult however, for a range of reasons, to attract
staff to events designed to discuss how such learning
can take place.
In our report to the LA in September 2005, it was
noted that although School to School Learning:
currently has a high profile on the national education
agenda it is difficult to convince people of its
importance. In common with Student Voice, it is not
considered a priority as it is not seen as making an
immediate contribution to raising standards.
Furthermore, a proliferation of different arrangements
for working across schools (eg LIG, Excellence cluster
groups etc), has meant that there is no single clear
agenda for School to School Learning.
One approach that has been taken up is the use of
Learning Visits between schools and these are being
used in a number of areas across the city. Such visits
involve staff visiting another school to look at a
particular area of practice which they can then
discuss and draw on with other colleagues involved
in the visit as well as giving non-judgmental
feedback. In one example in the north west of the
city, a number of schools are working together using
visits to each others’ schools to explore how they
can improve mathematics provision.
Many schools commented on the importance of the
contacts with other schools for various aspects of
mutual support. A senior manager from a secondary
school commented:
Through the Portsmouth Learning Community I think
we’ve found some kindred spirits. We’ve been quite
innovative, done things that are quite risky, but in our
Beacon school role we were meant to take risks on
behalf of others. And I’d like to think we’re still doing
it. I think what the Portsmouth Learning Community
enabled us to do was to find other schools with
similar passions to ours about Student Voice beyond
our own school boundary. That doesn’t negate the
fact that actually there is still variation within our own
school and faculties: some faculties are really into it
in a big way, and others are just coming to it.
This reference to kindred spirits is consistent with the
findings of the Fielding et al, (2005) research project
on transfer of learning, which concluded that ‘joint
practice development’ was a more accurate
description than ‘transfer of best practice’ of the
process by which ideas transferred across
individuals, schools and LAs. It was noted that
effective transfer was more likely to involve building
on existing relationships than imposing new ones.
33
As a consequence of the Portsmouth Learning
Community, staff at one secondary school reported
that the school informed others about its exciting
developments and is in turn, inspired and informed
by what other schools are doing. This school has
been a catalyst for change at another school with
regard to the running of the school council as a
result of students attending a city-wide School
Council development event where they met
students from other schools. Such events have
enabled students to hear of good practice
elsewhere in a range of areas and encouraged them
to take back ideas to their own schools.
School to School Learning seems to be happening
through Student Voice and AfL but also through
other aspects of schools’ work, for example in one
school a PGCE trainee had brought ideas from
another school. For special schools that undertake
outreach support of some of their students in
mainstream schools, it is difficult to draw a
distinction between the School to School Learning
and established outreach work.
Attributing the increase in School to School Learning
solely to the Portsmouth Learning Community is
problematic and the Community Improvement
Partnerships (CIPs) were acknowledged as key
drivers in this respect. The head of one secondary
school articulated how the CIPs and Portsmouth
Learning Community might have complemented one
another in bringing about change:
...whether that's the Portsmouth Learning
Community that allowed that to happen or ...whether
the PLC was the vanguard for that happening but it
was actually the CIPs that physically made that
happen, physically made people sit in the same room
as each other. Having said that, the CIPs would not
have worked as well as they have done had we not
had the Learning Community beforehand. Certainly
as chair of one of the CIPs, I was using all the tricks
I'd learned through two years of the School to
School Learning to make that happen. I wouldn't
have done things as I did without the experience of
the Learning Community and I'm sure that was
replicated elsewhere too.
34
CASE STUDY
Several schools reported specific initiatives
motivated by practice observed in other
Portsmouth schools. For example, one
primary drew on work at a special school in
setting up a system of student-led, weekly
target setting in mathematics based on self
assessment. The initiative was not
particularly successful due to its failure to
set up a process whereby targets were
genuinely set by the students. The school
then drew on practice at a junior school,
which itself had drawn on the work of the
Wroxham School in Hertfordshire to give
students the choice, lesson by lesson, of
what level of work they could do,
depending on their own perception of how
much they felt they had understood. As at
the junior school from which they had got
the ideas, this showed an immediate
success, in particular for students with low
self esteem some of whom chose harder
work and succeeded in it. This illustrates
the potential for cross-fertilisation of ideas
across schools, initiated through the
University team bringing into the
Portsmouth Learning Community, a
headteacher from another area who
described innovative and effective practice.
In summary and as reported to the LA in November
2006:
Much of the work to promote School to School
Learning has proceeded through Student Voice and
Assessment for Learning. There are a growing
number of examples of schools working together in
these areas and such collaboration is [reported by
schools to be] a valuable driver of positive change.
4.5 The three strands working together
Some of the schools that seemed to have made the
most progress had pulled the three strands together
and used them to provide greater coherence both
across the Portsmouth Learning Community activities
and beyond to take in other initiatives. Strong evidence
emerged of the complementarities of AfL and Student
Voice. Student-led learning was found to enhance self
assessment and vice versa, demonstrating how AfL and
Student Voice can support each other.
EXTRACT FROM WIMBORNE
JUNIOR SCHOOL CASE
STUDY. SEE APPENDIX 2
The two main thrusts that Wimborne Junior have
concentrated on in their approach to personalised
learning both involve a strong emphasis on Student
Voice. On the one hand they have developed an
effective School Council which has had
considerable impact on the curriculum, particularly
through its initiative on What Makes Learning Fun?
The Council has also been involved in writing the
School Improvement Plan and it works in formal
partnership with governors. On the other hand, the
school has placed emphasis on handing over dayto-day responsibility for each child’s learning to the
child him- or her- self through opening up avenues
of choice over what to learn and at what level. This
aspect of the work in particular has been supported
by the growing expertise of staff in formative
assessment. A succinct outline of all of this can best
be found on the DVD What Makes Learning Fun?
There was less, though still some, reference, to the role
of School to School Learning in the cross fertilisation of
ideas about Student Voice and AfL and in providing ongoing support and challenge across the schools to keep
the developments going.
Those schools which engaged actively with all
three strands, were schools in which members of
staff felt supported in risk taking and in developing
different approaches. Central to the success of
their work was the support of colleagues and of
senior leaders, the understanding of the
connections between the three strands and the
creation of opportunities for dialogue with other
staff within their schools. In all of the schools where
this happened, a key member of staff had been
appointed who was able to champion the Portsmouth
Learning Community and inspire colleagues within their
schools but who also was given time to attend
meetings with staff from other schools to share their
experiences and learn from the experiences of others.
EXTRACT FROM ST PAUL’S
PRIMARY SCHOOL CASE
STUDY. SEE APPENDIX 4
At St Paul’s Primary School, the three strands of
Portsmouth Learning Community - Student Voice,
Assessment for Learning and School to School
Learning - have been developed together “as a
threesome” .The connection between them was clearly
understood by the head who resisted their
compartmentalisation. She saw the three as integrated
and integral to each other and so by working on them
together they would support each other in becoming
embedded in the school’s practice. She also saw
dangers in initiative overload. Her aim was to take on
things that the school and the staff could grow with
and which would support staff development in terms of
“their scholarship, their understanding of learning and
their ability to provide stimulation to the children.”
“The development over the last five years has been the
penny dropping for many many teachers that Student
Voice and AfL are inextricably linked so that's been the
development - that you can't have one without the
other … The fact that people are openly discussing with
children what they might want to be studying - it's that
link between SV and AfL that's the key.”
Secondary school senior manager
The recognition that AfL and Student Voice were part of
the same agenda and could be strengthened and
enhanced through contact with other schools meant
that those schools which worked in all three areas
appeared to forge ahead.
35
5: MAIN FINDINGS 2: OTHER KEY ISSUES
5.1 Primary to secondary transition
In the mid project interviews with a sample of primary
and secondary heads which took place in 2004, one of
the points raised was that it was hoped that the
Portsmouth Learning Community project would lead to
primary and secondary schools working more closely
together. This is clearly a concern, particularly of primary
heads. There was evidence from staff at one secondary
school that their visit to a partner junior school was
challenging them to think about how the students from
the junior school would react when they get to the
secondary school, having been used to choosing their
own level of work and self assessment:
What worried me when we were at [School name]
Junior was that I had no idea that their AfL was so
advanced. They’ve got the three levels of challenge,
they’re using the traffic lights. WALT (we are
learning to) and WILF (what I’m looking for) are just
part of their everyday language; they come to
secondary school and it’s like going back five or six
years. Unless people realise that, the pupils are
going to get even more disillusioned, and that dip’s
going to get even bigger…
secondary school AfL lead teacher
Eight students were interviewed in year 6 and attempts
were made to interview them again in year 7, though
only three were available due to absence and having left
the area. From these three, all of whom had been on
the school council at primary school and gone on to
three different secondary schools, some important
messages emerged.
One student, despite her previous experience, did
not feel sure how to influence her secondary school
council because she was shy. She felt that year 11
did not really listen to year 7 and that teachers did
not listen either. Another student noted that
secondary school teachers are busier than those in
primary schools. The third student reported that the
school council in the secondary school was for
‘boffins and geeks’. It is inappropriate to attempt to
generalise within a case study involving such a
36
small sample of students but they highlight the lack
of continuity in three different secondary schools.
It had seemed likely that these students could have
become catalysts for change in their secondary
schools, though what little information is available on
this suggests that many were not able to continue with
the AfL and Student Voice at the level they had
experienced in primary school.
EXTRACT FROM MAYFIELD
SCHOOL CASE STUDY.
SEE APPENDIX 1
Some staff at the school have visited and
communicated with feeder schools on the
subject of AfL in order to understand the
prior experiences of their incoming Year 7
students in an attempt to ensure a degree of
continuity on transition to secondary school.
This is extremely important to avoid
disillusion and disengagement of students at
this stage. It is nevertheless a challenge as
many primary schools across the city are
making significant advances in their
approach to AfL and the work is less
developed in some secondary schools.
In a further example, the University team was aware of
an occasion on which a number of year 7 students who
had been active as student governors in year 6 at their
various primary schools, had been invited to report on
their experiences to a primary heads’ conference.
However, for a variety of reasons none was able to be
released from their secondary schools to speak at this
event. This was demotivating for the students
concerned and also a waste of their experience in that
they were unable to share it in an important and
influential forum.
5.2 The Masters Degree programme
Nine members of Portsmouth staff, some of whom
were headteachers, enrolled in a bespoke Masters
degree programme at the University of Sussex,
enabling the work they were undertaking for the
Portsmouth Learning Community to be accredited for
a higher degree. The head of a junior school looked at
the effects of AfL on her school, systematically
tracking student progress including self esteem,
attitudes to learning and perseverance. Her case
study involving 5 teachers and 75 students, found 4
of the 5 teachers consistently using AfL strategies,
one of them at an exceptional level. In this class,
students had made more than one level gain in the
previous year.
Another head investigated the barriers to collaboration
and found that lack of time and money for this
prevented it from happening as did lack of energy and
vision and heads having different priorities for their
schools. On the other hand, collaboration was
facilitated by strong relationships between people in
different schools, schools sharing purposes, funding
being available and someone ‘driving’ the
collaboration. The main finding relating to overcoming
barriers was that more time was needed to plan an
agenda that can be driven by all the parties involved.
Other MA projects included one which looked at the
differences in the attitudes, confidence and skills of
Teaching Assistants and Bilingual Assistants from the
Ethnic Minority Achievement Service and considered
how their roles could be enhanced. Another project
explored the opportunities which Circle Time offered
for the development of Student Voice and also looked
at student perceptions of COPS. However, of the
nine people who started on this programme five
dropped out, mainly citing pressure of work as the
reason.
5.3 Contributions of the various partners
The data provide some feedback on the role of the
University of Sussex team, the headteachers in the
schools, the Local Authority staff and the wider
community.
5.3.1
The role of the University of Sussex Team
Schools reflected on different ways of working with
other agencies and most schools saw the University
team as providing the impetus for change. Schools
valued the close engagement with the University
team over a sustained period of time. Several
schools referred to the challenge provided by the
team, to reconsider or look at examples elsewhere in
order to review their own practice. For example, the
University team was seen as causing one school to:
open up mentally, the fact that there were huge
possibilities, it has been a good thing for our school,
it has moved us tremendously
primary school headteacher
Some schools identified the University team’s
training of school students in democratic processes
and in research skills, as a key factor in the success
of Student Voice. Staff at one secondary school
expressed concerns that some exciting School to
School Learning might be lost when the University of
Sussex leaves the Learning Community.
The role of team members as a critical friend to the
school was commented upon favourably in several
schools. For example, a senior teacher from a
secondary school commented that:
Your role in tethering us to our principles - which
we totally agree with and knew were at the heart
of our thinking - ... I think we were in danger of
prescribing, and, although it was painful at the
time to be pulled back slightly, it was absolutely
right and we needed that. It was really valuable
and a much better model has come forward as a
result of that.
37
This senior teacher went on to note that it was the
independent, dispassionate view that members of
the research team provided that was so helpful.
Even for a school with well-developed selfevaluation processes, an outsider can bring further
clarity to staff understanding of what is happening
and how to move forwards. In particular, when an
outsider listens to students they are less likely than
staff just to hear ‘what they want to hear’.
One Local Authority interviewee regarded the nonjudgemental approach by the University team as a
key characteristic that increased engagement of
school staff:
....the fact that it was so non-judgmental, just
offering help and support. I think that really makes a
difference. People don’t feel I had better not do this
because I am not going to get it right. ....There was
always encouragement to give it a go and I think
that’s good for teachers because a lot of teachers
are reluctant to experiment or do something in case
they get it wrong and there are repercussions from
senior management. It was very much about
experimenting – well let’s see what we can do.
38
One respondent mentioned that the input from
University team members to school staff had on one
or two occasions provided muddled messages.
5.3.2
The role of the Local Authority
It is absolutely clear that in throwing its weight
behind the development of PLC the LA was at once
being brave, imaginative and forward-looking. Its
values and orientations blazed an important trail
only later developed nationally by a number of
initiatives and priorities that champion Student
Voice, AfL, and the benefits of School to School
Learning. However, the LA is inevitably required to
conduct its work within a national context in which
accountability is understood and expected through
a particular understanding of a ‘standards’ agenda
and the mandatory discipline of target-setting. This
latter dimension of the LA’s work was often seen by
respondents as dominating and sometimes
eclipsing the developmental agenda it had so
presciently pioneered in the wake of its 2000
OfSTED inspection.
One head felt that the Local Authority was too
concerned about accountability to act
unambiguously as a critical friend and partner in a
way that the University team could do so. Senior
managers at a secondary school suggested that the
Portsmouth Learning Community has played a role
in enabling colleagues to meet from schools across
the city to learn about and share less mechanical,
less dictated and more inspiring agendas than
those that the Local Authority were obliged to offer
on behalf of central government.
The Portsmouth Learning Community was set up
mainly by two senior managers in the school
improvement service. One difficulty has been how
far they were able to engage others in the Local
Authority to share the ownership of the programme.
One manager felt that not enough emphasis was
put on this in the earlier part of the programme
leading to wasted effort in, for example, putting on
events that were insufficiently well attended. It
would have been valuable if more work had been
done to develop LA staff in the three areas of the
programme and this might have increased the
spread of commitment to the project. On reflection
the University team should have pushed this more.
It was noted however by one LA interviewee that
the Local Authority staff had multiple roles of which
Portsmouth Learning Community related work was
only one area, making it difficult for them to allocate
the time needed. Staff turnover in the Local
Authority and temporary contracts leading to
insecurity and increasing turnover had exacerbated
this, though one Local Authority manager noted that
this had settled down more recently. Furthermore,
the respondent felt that insufficient effort was put
into inducting new staff so that they had a clear
understanding of the Portsmouth Learning
Community agenda.
However, the considerable progress made would
not have been possible without three key members
of Local Authority staff who ensured access to
resources, administrative support, communication
routes to schools and other LA personnel. They also
worked hard to integrate the three strands with
existing developments in the schools and LA.
5.3.3
The role of the headteachers
The headteachers were reported by staff in several
schools to be key facilitators in the developments,
through providing leadership and support,
protecting staff from initiative overload, using the
Portsmouth Learning Community to promote and
support ongoing activities that had been previously
identified or to challenge staff to consider new
possibilities. The headteacher’s leadership seems
crucial as it has done in other school improvement
research. Initiative overload could be counteracted
by cohesion created by leaders, for example by
using new initiatives to pursue changes that had
already been planned. One primary school
headteacher, noted that good leadership and
management involves significant elements of
delegation and acceptance that sometimes
mistakes are made.
In our report to the LA in September 2005 we noted
that:
Student Voice work can be found threatening by
some heads who are uncertain as to where it will
lead. This may well be a significant factor in
determining the extent to which schools engage
with the Student Voice work.
In the same report we highlighted the uneven
understanding of the centrality of Student Voice to
school improvement and to the Every Child Matters
agenda. In spite of continued efforts to highlight the
research on the benefits to schools of Student Voice
work, such concerns on the part of some heads
have undoubtedly affected the level of participation
of some schools.
An interesting question raised was whether the
different strands intentionally or unintentionally,
involved different levels of staff. One interviewee
suggested that:
School to School Learning was aimed at the heads.
And in some ways that shut a lot of doors. I don’t
think a lot of ordinary teachers in schools knew an
awful lot about it. I know there were a lot of
meetings but you didn’t see the outcomes to those
meetings to the same extent. It was more political.
39
This distinction is not explicit in any of the materials,
communications or previous reports but seems
unsurprising given that it is impractical for whole
school staff to network with another whole school
staff. In some schools, it was less the head than the
ASTs or other senior staff who undertook this role.
The implication seems to be to build in the
communication infrastructure back to and from
school staff or to adopt a ‘cadre’ or small, nonhierarchical school improvement team model as
described elsewhere in the school improvement
literature. This may overcome some of the difficulties
created by school infrastructures, in particular in
secondary schools, which seem only to provide
limited support for informal learning.
“ Citizenship isn’t just a lesson. Citizenship is everything ”
secondary school student
5.3.4 The role of the wider community
At the outset of the project the University team
believed that part of the work of the Portsmouth
Learning Community initiative was about involving
the wider community beyond schools and a range of
attempts were made to engage with different sectors
with varying degrees of success. Early meetings with
staff within the LA who were outside the School
Improvement Service did not lead to any
engagement with the work. Furthermore, a series of
Open Seminars designed to involve people beyond
the world of education in the work of Portsmouth
Learning Community were not well attended. Further
into the project, suggestions that we should be
working to engage with parents on the Portsmouth
Learning Community agenda were rejected on the
grounds that this was beyond the remit of the
University team.
The one area in which there was considerable
success was in working with governors. A number of
events were held specifically for governors and, due
to the support of the Governor Services team within
the Local Authority, developments within Portsmouth
Learning Community were regularly disseminated. A
40
number of school governors have, as a
consequence, been instrumental within their schools
in driving the Portsmouth Learning Community
agenda forward.
At the beginning of the project, students had
identified greater involvement with the local
community as a priority and some work was done to
support schools in this area. One school in particular
was doing some excellent collaborative work with
local community organisations and together a
member of staff and a member of the University team
wrote a case study of their approach which was
disseminated to other schools. However, once the
Local Authority was reorganised into five Community
Improvement Partnerships (CIPs), this work was
discontinued as it was seen as part of the agenda of
these partnerships.
Learning with the Community: a case study
from Springfield School by Julie Radice and
John Parry shows how one school community
plan, working within the spirit of Student
Voice, was put into operation.
5.4 Key facilitators
A number of facilitators for development were identified
by those interviewed. Strong leadership emerged in
many schools but management was less often
mentioned. Those schools where heads and/or senior
leaders were explicitly and actively supportive of the
Portsmouth Learning Community strands were
invariably the schools which made the most progress.
Embedded staff development (e.g. coaching), rather
than courses, was also identified by some schools as
being important since this had effects beyond an
individual teacher’s learning:
Coaching also seems to help resolve the apparent
conflict between AfL’s needing confident risk-taking, on
the one hand, and senior leadership’s requiring the use
of systematic monitoring, on the other.
secondary school AfL lead teacher
Changes were facilitated by staff who were committed
to making the school experience stimulating, had an
open mind and were willing to engage with professional
development. One primary school head commented on
the need for staff to have high expectations:
If we’re doing this, let’s do it well. The children may be
disadvantaged because of the area they live in, but
they’re not going to be disadvantaged because of
coming to [school name]’
At this primary school it was acknowledged that, by
introducing initiatives in ways that did not panic
staff, they were more likely to support positive
change as this was non-threatening and also helped
to develop depth of understanding.
Good communication systems were highlighted as
important to the success of the work, with teachers
needing to keep in touch with one another regularly
as well as having regular contact with the University
team. Communication from headteachers or link
teachers to the rest of the school maximised
commitment of the whole school to the initiatives.
Furthermore, communication between school staff
and LA staff and between the University team and
LA staff was important in reiterating the vision of the
Portsmouth Learning Community and the priority
that needed to be given to it.
The University team’s capacity to link to interesting
research and development practices outside
Portsmouth was also a strength of the partnership
and led to the development of a number of
initiatives.
5.5 Key barriers
While not a barrier to school or LA development, we
acknowledge the limitation of these data in being able
to attribute change to the Portsmouth Learning
Community. For example, staff reported that a primary
school had changed over 12 years but how do we
identify which bit of that change might be attributed to
the last 5 years in general, and to the Portsmouth
Learning Community in particular?
Barriers to development mentioned by schools
included turnover of staff and the danger of initiative
overload. A further barrier was the tendency within
initiatives towards ‘compartmentalisation’, staff
reporting that Assessment for Learning was
compartmentalised away from Student Voice which
was sometimes seen as something completely
different, and School to School Learning was
something different again. This suggests that both the
University team and the LA staff might have done more
to make explicit the links between the three themes.
Unhelpfully, each of these strands could themselves be
seen as optional extras, rather than an expression of
the underlying values of the school.
41
The greatest barrier in the view of one Local Authority
manager has been lack of understanding of AfL by
subject leaders who see it as a set of techniques rather
than an underlying approach to pedagogy and
practice. As reported in many studies in relation to
innovations, uneven understanding both within and
across schools of AfL and Student Voice was a
challenge. This was paralleled by differing views of
their importance, despite strong messages in the Every
Child Matters developments about listening to children
and young people.
Schools felt that specific support for some students
could not be adequately planned because of the
fluctuations in funding for support initiatives (e.g. influx
of ethnic minorities, EMASS funding not expanded).
The initial setting up of the Portsmouth Learning
Community had involved consultation with secondary
heads but not with those from primary schools.
Secondary and special schools identified a link teacher
for each strand whereas the primary schools did this
later. The COPS involves secondary and special school
students: moves to set up a Junior COPS came later.
The reason for these differences was that the
programme was funded initially through Diversity
Pathfinders which was a secondary initiative. This
meant that the Portsmouth Learning Community was
regarded initially by primary schools as having a
secondary bias and as being led by secondary
schools. Even though considerable resource was put in
at an early stage to meetings with primary colleagues
and identifying ways forward that suited the primary
agenda, it was problematic that primary schools were
not consulted from the start and this had ongoing
implications.
The Portsmouth Learning Community required
extensive communication between all the partners
involved and this provided a significant challenge.
Communication within schools was poor in many
cases. One interviewee noted the difficulties of getting
information to the right people in schools and in getting
schools to respond to letters and phone calls. In many
primary schools for example, the head was the only
person who was informed about developments
regarding the Portsmouth Learning Community and
this information was not always shared with other
colleagues. There were also cases where link teachers
who took on this role were not properly briefed about
their responsibility to keep colleagues abreast of
developments.
42
Time was also a problem - for staff, for students and
for local authority colleagues. Steering group members
and link teachers frequently had to miss meetings
because of pressures in school. High staff absence,
lack of cover and other unforeseen circumstances
often conspired to prevent people being released for
meetings. Sometimes it was felt by colleagues that their
release was declined by senior staff who did not see
the work as a priority. As often as not however there
were practical reasons why attendance was not
possible. As far as students were concerned, there
were often difficulties in arranging their attendance at
meetings due to lack of staff to accompany them, lack
of transport, or general lack of planning meaning that
parental permission had not been obtained. Arranging
meetings with Local Authority colleagues also proved
challenging on many occasions. Their overstretched
schedules and multiple responsibilities could make it
difficult to find time to meet. These are the realities of
the education system and are not necessarily indicative
of a lack of support for the project, although inevitably
this was true in some cases. It was a perennial problem
however which often hampered progress. Furthermore,
the ground breaking nature of the work required time to
reflect on developments and difficulties and such time
could not often be found.
The standards agenda was often reported by
school staff to contradict effective teaching, in itself
likely to contribute to raising standards over the longer
term. So for example, one teacher at a secondary
school commented:
I’m under pressure to be efficient, but I’m not under
pressure to be interesting. They’re not going to do
history if it’s not interesting. That’s why I did the
subject, that’s why I wanted to teach history, because
it’s a fascinating subject. [The headteacher] never says
to me ‘James, are you being interesting? Are they
fascinated?’ I’ve never been asked that question ever.
In a school like this, it’s things like ‘Will the residuals be
nil this year? Will you reach the predicted A to C rate of
XX%?’
While ‘being interesting’ seems likely to influence
teaching effectiveness and subsequently standards, the
impact is less obvious on conventionally measurable
outcomes, creating pressure on staff to see the two
aspirations - standards and effective teaching - as in
conflict, rather than ‘effective teaching’ as a more
immediate proxy for ‘raising standards’. Some argue
that it is partly the timescale of the effects which
increases the tension here. Others take the view that
what is at issue is the way effects are urgently
sought by a number of key players for whom end-ofkey-stage test results are accorded pre-eminent
significance.
The view that there were limits to what the school
could do without making drastic changes was
sometimes related to the context in Portsmouth whose
characteristics can be said to include for example, low
parental expectations and the difficult backgrounds of
many students. Staff at one primary school felt that
some students have low expectations of
themselves. However, some interviewees felt that
while the Portsmouth Learning Community could
contribute to improvement in standards, the stepchange needed in their schools could only be achieved
through longer-term cultural change. A teacher at a
secondary school commented:
There’s a general feeling in the school that if we’re
going to jump up from where we are: we made an
improvement last year, results went above 30% for the
first time ever; if we’re ever going to get to 50% we’re
going to have to do something really radical to get
there. You’re not going to change the catchment area,
we’re not going to manage to change the community
overnight, so we’ve got to change the ethos in the
school…
In 4.7 the facilitating effect of seeing new initiatives as
part of current activity was acknowledged. The
converse was reported in terms of barriers. Schools
seeing the Portsmouth Learning Community work as
additional and in conflict with the standards agenda
were more likely to regard this as a barrier. Better
communication and vision from the outset of how it
fitted into the standards agenda might have avoided
this problem.
5.6 Capacity building
The focus of the University team’s work in Portsmouth
was on a capacity- building basis, to ensure that the
work would be able to continue once the contract had
ended. As the project drew to a conclusion, this
emphasis intensified. Every aspect of the work
involved skilling up people in the city so that they
would be able, not only to take forward the work with
which they were involved, but would also be able to
support others in developing these approaches. As
examples of this:
• time was put into training staff to support Students
as Researchers projects
• schools involved in the Personalising Learning
through Student Voice project were encouraged to
disseminate and support others in using this
approach within their schools
• staff who had engaged with the Assessment for
Learning project were encouraged to support others
either within their own school or in different schools
as critical friends
• a number of schools with effective school councils
agreed to act as mentors for other schools wishing
to develop their work in this area.
• effort was put into working with Governor Services to
ensure that they would continue to encourage
schools to involve students on their governing bodies
• a wide range of resources were created over the
final two years of the project, to support staff in
further developing their work. These are listed in
Appendix 5.
• efforts were made to inform Local Authority advisers
about the value of Student Voice, Assessment for
Learning and School to School Learning to support
them in encouraging further developments
• the role of the University team in co-planning events
became more of a backseat one as time progressed.
A teacher at one secondary school noted that
recruiting, training and retaining energetic staff has
been crucial to the school’s development, and that this
was facilitated in respect of being able to take on
graduate trainees by the school’s coming out of
special measures.
It was suggested that in some cases the interschool learning had been greater than the intraschool learning. This has meant that capacity
within the schools has not been developed as
much as it could have been.
43
Effort was put into engaging with Advanced Skills
Teachers, with the School Centred Initial Teacher
Training programme and with the Newly Qualified
Teacher programme and each of these is an important
plank in terms of building capacity.
Crucial to schools’ effective engagement with the
Portsmouth Learning Community appear to have been
senior leaders’ capacity to:
• aspire to empower members of the community
rather than merely consult them
• pursue the realisation of a vision which brings energy
and coherence to what some people think of as
separate initiatives
• see that what applies to students’ classroom
learning is true equally for adults’ learning in their
professional and institutional development
• persevere and play the long game.
Where any of these qualities was lacking, progress
was thinner, slower or patchier.
5.7 Sustainability
Retention and development of staff seems to be
one of the most important factors in facilitating
sustainability in both the Local Authority and the
schools. In one school, the successful work on self
target setting stopped when the tutor group was
passed on to another member of staff. In another a
key teacher being promoted elsewhere resulted in
the abandoning of the initiative on giving students
choice of levels of work. Sustainability could be
equally vulnerable however if there was no staff
turnover, since remaining in a school for too long
may be accompanied by loss of enthusiasm and
motivation.
Local Authority senior managers reported that over
the 5 year period recruitment and retention in both
schools and the local authority had improved
creating greater stability. The quality of people
attracted to Portsmouth was higher and more staff
from outside the City were applying to both schools
and the LA. However, recruiting staff into the
secondary LA school improvement service remains
difficult given the salary differentials between
headteachers and LA staff.
44
5.7.1
Timing
The specific timing of the start of the Portsmouth
Learning Community in relation to each school’s
state may have facilitated or inhibited sustainability
of any changes introduced. For example, when a
school had just been inspected and was developing
an action plan or when high staff turnover had been
taking place, the impetus and support provided by
the Portsmouth Learning Community may have
enabled changes to be sustained for longer. One
secondary school had emerged from ‘special
measures’ with an Ofsted inspection report which
identified AfL as a priority for improvement, factors
which combined to promote conditions in which
change was needed and sustainability would be a
priority. In some instances, the head was able to
use the Portsmouth Learning Community as an
opportunity or additional support to undertake
activities or make changes that had been needed
anyway.
Recognising the length of time taken to achieve
deep change, such as is required in long term
sustainability of AfL or Student Voice, was apparent
from the schools’ development trajectories.
It can’t happen overnight. There are new members
of staff, and there are learning support assistants
who have not had the benefit of courses or special
training, and they need opportunities to learn more
about the school’s aims and ways of working. The
development process takes time, not least because
at different times teachers may need just to cope or
to consolidate.
primary school teacher
“
An important thing about this school is that the adults here
see themselves as learners, wanting to improve themselves.
We develop adults here as much as the children. ”
In relation to the Portsmouth Learning Community
programme overall, one interviewee noted that
patience on the part of a member of the University
team had assisted development:
It is a lot of work to get people involved in a
project like that and you can’t hurry people. You
can’t get them to go faster than they want to.
And keeping people on board is very difficult. I
think the fact that he, (University team member)
had so many people engaged and kept them
there and was able to follow up and get them to
agree to the interviews, I think, was remarkable.
5.7.2
Culture
The culture of reflection and evaluation that has been
developed amongst the staff directly parallels the
culture that senior leaders and teachers want to see
amongst the pupils .
secondary school teacher
In schools that reported significant success through
their engagement with the Portsmouth Learning
Community, there was a commitment to making
professional and institutional development a
coherent and collaborative whole, explicitly focused
on learners’ well-being and learning. As one infant
school deputy headteacher reported:
Possibly the biggest driver for development in
the school has been giving the children the
best we can, on all sorts of levels, not only in
teaching and learning, but encouraging their
overall development. Underpinning the
children’s learning is their well-being, their
welfare. We started our children having a voice
before it came on to the government’s agenda.
....We have had to be courageous to say no to
some things. We are now tougher and more
concentrated, and in control of how we
develop. We have to have a deeply embedded
philosophy to decide what we allow in and
what we keep out.
45
Allied to this felt need to bring coherence to
development was a conviction that change takes
time, and complex and profound change takes a very
long time. Indeed, the most confident colleagues,
aware that their schools had made significant
progress, argued powerfully that the challenge is
ongoing. Over and over again, colleagues who drew
benefit from the Portsmouth Learning Community
emphasised the essential contribution that talking and
listening to one another has to make: talk between
adults and children and young people; talk between
young learners; and talk between adults.
These schools seemed to have key colleagues, both
senior leaders and teachers, who were assertive and
prepared to avow and defend their own judgements.
They speak as confident agents, conscious of their
responsibility to serve their catchment area. One
infant school teacher, for example, said in interview:
“
I believe in not sticking rigidly to rules. There’s no
one individual model of a normal child. All have
different needs. To meet those needs you have to be
flexible… Helping them co-operate and be
independent is stuff I’m doing all the time.
Perhaps the most fundamental characteristic of
these schools was that key colleagues made explicit
links between the learning they wished to promote
amongst the students and their own learning. An
infant school headteacher put it like this:
An important thing about this school is that the
adults here see themselves as learners, wanting to
improve themselves. We develop adults here as
much as the children.
Over and over again, colleagues who drew benefit from the
Portsmouth Learning Community, emphasised the essential
contribution made by talking and listening to one another: talk
between adults and children and young people; talk between
young learners; and talk between adults. ”
46
6: CONCLUSIONS
6.1 Establishing ownership
The primary schools were not consulted at the outset
and there remained a problem for some of them in lack
of ‘ownership’ of the Portsmouth Learning Community
programme. While link teachers for School to School
Learning, AfL and Student Voice were identified early
on in secondary schools, the delay gave primary staff a
different message about their role. This was hard to
change and limited the participation of some schools. It
would, furthermore, have been beneficial to invest more
energy in engaging with LA advisory staff at the
beginning of the project.
6.2 The role of headteachers
It was the headteachers in almost all schools who
determined the level of involvement of the students and
school staff in the Portsmouth Learning Community.
Those heads who were fully supportive and who
encouraged the participation of their staff and
students reaped the most benefits for their schools.
On the other hand, headteachers who were not
supportive of the project in effect disenfranchised their
whole school communities by not engaging with the
work, by not disseminating information and by not
allowing students or staff out of school to attend
events. The success of the work within each school
has thus been very significantly affected by the level of
commitment of the headteacher.
6.3 Standards and other outcomes: contradiction or complementarity?
A number of staff from schools involved in the
programme felt there was a contradiction between
standards and affective outcomes/effective teaching and
that the strong national focus on performance limited the
developments they could undertake in the programme.
However, most school and LA staff acknowledged
that while pressure from tests and performance
tables were apparent, the work on Student Voice
and AfL supported by School to School Learning,
was assisting them to raise standards as well as
achieving many other outcomes. In many schools,
increases in attendance rates, decreases in exclusions
and improvements in teaching were accepted as
‘proxies’ for raising standards in the longer term and
school staff were encouraged by these shorter term
outcomes. However, it was reported by senior LA
managers that the national agencies - Ofsted and
DCSF - were not consistently recognising this. This
suggests the need to articulate and celebrate these
achievements both at LA level and nationally.
47
6.4 The role of the ‘outsider’ facilitator
The schools in the Portsmouth Learning Community
programme appear to have valued the role of the
University researcher as a facilitator: as an observer,
feeding back observations from an independent,
‘dispassionate’ viewpoint and as someone to challenge
them drawing on research evidence, professional
experience and lessons learned from other schools.
These functions do not have to reside in a University
team of researchers - they might equally be provided
through local resources. However, the same challenge
and support offered by staff from the LA is likely to be
perceived differently in the current climate in which the
LA is ‘accountable’ for schools to central government.
These different versions of ‘challenge’ seem to have
emerged which reflect the changing role of the LA.
The most successful progress seemed to occur when
relationships developed through more extended
contact, again involving practice development, rather
than falling into the trap of being looked to as a CPD
‘provider’. From that perspective ‘facilitators’ seem also
to have been vulnerable to change and impermanence.
Given that the resources that were once located in
the Local Authority to support schools through more
intensive contact have long since been devolved to
schools, the possibilities for schools providing some
of this support for one another might be further
explored. It was reported by a senior LA manager
that the weakness in the current practice in this area,
was in heads not sufficiently challenging one another.
The Local Authority School Improvement Partner (SIP)
might work with a group of schools who are also
supporting one another. The examples reported here
of schools learning from one another within
Portsmouth suggests this could work. Recognising
that the job of school improvement is never done, the
evidence in this report suggests that the long-term
sustainability of an on-going self-review and
improvement process will be dependent on schools
having ‘an outsider view’ that they can use as an
observer, facilitator, supporter, challenger and
mediator (bringing research, practice from other
schools, etc).
6.5 Primary to secondary school transition
Overall, this did not emerge as a strength in the
evidence of outcomes from the programme. More
dialogue is needed between infant/junior, primary/junior
and secondary schools so that there is some continuity
of experience for young people moving on. There was
some evidence suggesting that students had positive
experiences of Student Voice and AfL in year 6 and
when they went on to year 7, these values were not
apparent in their experience and teachers appeared
unaware of how they had been working in year 6.
6.6 Kindred spirits, champions and enthusiasts
There were many examples of staff in schools identifying
‘kindred spirits’ in other schools, and, in a few cases
outside Portsmouth. There were other examples of
‘champions’, ‘enthusiasts’ or leaders not necessarily in
the most senior posts, who inspired others to
48
experiment, take risks, try out new ideas or find out
from students what might be done. As ever, there were
concerns or observations that when these individuals
went elsewhere the progress would, and sometimes did
stop. Furthermore there were synergies between the
Portsmouth Learning Community programme and other
initiatives within the LA such as Healthy Schools and the
PSHE programme which supported this work.
The research on transfer of ‘good practice’ illustrates
the critical importance of building on existing
relationships rather than imposing new ones, when the
aim is for knowledge or practice transfer to occur. Yet
the usual practices and new policy initiatives continue to
imply that ‘best practice’ can be identified in one setting
and transported to another ‘where it is needed’ with no
account taken of these existing relationships. The
implications of this need drawing out at both LA and
national level if the capacity to develop and sustainability
of progress are to be increased.
6.7 Competing initiatives in the Local Authority
The Local Authority staff had to handle competing
demands on their time and on the initiatives that were
supported in schools during the Portsmouth Learning
Community programme. There could have been more
focus from the LA and the University team on assisting
schools to connect the three strands of AfL, Student
Voice and School to School Learning and how these
might contribute to addressing other problems that
they were experiencing such as boys’
underachievement, end of key stage test results and
primary to secondary transition. Instead, these were
sometimes seen as separate issues, exacerbating the
perceptions of school staff of initiative overload.
Perhaps greater selectivity of initiatives, more priority
given to the three strands over the 5-year period and
more use made of them to address identified problems,
might have increased the success.
49
7: RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Explore how best to encourage mutually
supportive relationships between schools to
develop the critical friend role of providing mutual
support and challenge.
5. Develop relationships with other schools beyond
Portsmouth and other Local Authorities which are
engaged in similar work to extend potential of
challenge from practice elsewhere.
2. Arrange an ongoing programme of events to
ensure the continuation of the programme, to
develop understanding of the three strands, to
keep the issues alive and to bring more school
and LA staff on board. Student Voice, Assessment
for Learning and School to School Learning are
likely to remain at the heart of national policy for
some years to come.
6. Streamline and reduce the number of initiatives;
seek links between initiatives; see AfL, Student
Voice and School to School Learning as integral to
all developments.
3. Ensure that communications to schools about the
programme are widely distributed and not just to
headteachers.
4. Explore how best to encourage cross-phase
communication and developments to ensure the
continuity of educational experience for young
people at transfer.
50
7. Endeavour to engage all LA advisory staff in the
programme.
8. Review CPD arrangements to take account of the
research on joint practice development which
emphasises the importance and benefits of inter
school and intra school learning.
9. Recognise and celebrate shorter term
achievements that may contribute to, but are not
yet reflected in longer term test results, such as
affective outcomes, reduction in exclusions,
increases in attendance etc.
References
Blanchard, J., Collins, F. and Thorp, J. (2004)
Developing Assessment for Learning: in Portsmouth
City Primary Schools 2003-04 Portsmouth: Dame
Judith Professional Development Centre
Fielding, M. (2004) ‘New Wave’ Student Voice & the
Renewal of Civic Society
London Review of Education, 2, 197-217
Fielding et al (2005) Factors Influencing the Transfer of
Good Practice: Nottingham, DfES publications
Hardingham, N (2007) Next Practice in Resourcing
Aspects of Personalisation: Co constructing Learning
with Students. London; National Innovations Unit
51
Appendix 1
MAYFIELD SCHOOL CASE STUDY
When the University of Sussex team first visited
Mayfield School in 2003 it had just come out of
special measures. Student Voice was not a stated
priority at the school at the time although the intention
was to include it in the Development Plan. There was
no school council and the students that we
interviewed felt that they had little or no say in school
life generally and hardly any say in lessons. The
students identified bullying as a big problem and
examples of this were witnessed by the team on this
first visit. Furthermore students felt that it was hard to
get teachers to address this problem. Assessment for
Learning had not been developed although the
intention was to include this in the School
Development Plan also. There was no explicit focus
on School to School Learning at that time.
Over the five years of the Portsmouth Learning
Community project Mayfield has engaged with all
three areas on which the University team was
working: Student Voice, Assessment for Learning and
School to School Learning.
STUDENT VOICE
“I think Student Voice and the student council are
absolutely brilliant. They [the students] are the
customers .... and they are the ones we should be
listening to.”
John Browning, Chair of Governors
“It is a process. I wouldn’t say we have got absolutely
everyone on board. But there is the capacity to
improve given the Student Voice and the spirit of
communication and co-operation.”
Siôn Reynolds, Student Voice Link Teacher
School Council
An effective school council has been established and it
is recognised by students and teachers alike that this
makes a valuable contribution to the school. An early
success was the campaign by students to put pressure
on the immigration authorities to allow a student at the
school who was at risk of being deported to remain in
the UK. The success of this campaign helped students
to understand the difference that they could make
through their involvement and action. There is ongoing
communication between the school council and the
head as to what the school council wants and what the
head will allow.
52
In developing the school council the school has
learned from practices at other schools through
School Council Development Days and has in turn
contributed to the development process in other
schools. There is one particular example where
another secondary school which thought that it
already had an effective council heard about the way
in which Mayfield’s council was run and took lessons
from this back to their own school which contributed
to their own council becoming more robust. Over
2006-7 Mayfield students have contributed to a
number of events to explore ways of supporting other
school councils through a variety of means (including
mentoring) and in the production of materials for
schools to use.
COPS
Mayfield students have been active on the Council of
Portsmouth Students since its inception, attending
regularly and taking a leading role in discussions. A
number of Mayfield students have been elected to the
Executive Committee of COPS and have made a
significant contribution to its development.
Students as Researchers
who are associate members on their governing body.
Training to run Students as Researchers projects has
been available to all Portsmouth schools over the
course of the Portsmouth Learning Community
initiative but has been embraced most successfully at
Mayfield. A number of Students as Researchers
projects have been run at the school, for example
focussing on the issue of rewards and also on the
provision of healthier food at lunchtime - both of
which are issues which have been identified at
Student Voice days as being of concern to
Portsmouth students generally. Both of these projects
have contributed to changes at the school and
students who were interviewed during research visits
welcomed the changes that this work has
precipitated. Students, with the support of
enthusiastic and committed members of staff, have
planned their projects, collected data, written reports
and fed back to senior leaders with a view to
encouraging change. Two members of staff have
developed expertise in this area and continue to
facilitate such projects. They have also volunteered to
support other interested Portsmouth teachers in
developing this work.
The work to develop Students as Researchers has
had an impact beyond Mayfield and indeed beyond
Portsmouth. Some Mayfield students gave a
presentation about their project at a national Student
Voice conference at the Barbican in London in 2006.
In addition to this, a report of one of the projects has
been accepted for inclusion in a Student Voice
training resource which is being developed by the
Specialist Schools and Academies Trust. Furthermore
the University of Sussex team, working in conjunction
with Mayfield students and staff, has produced a
game to support teachers wishing to introduce
Students as Researchers approaches to their
students and there are plans for this to be
disseminated nationally. More locally, Mayfield
students have presented their work at a number of
different events in Portsmouth with a view to
encouraging other schools to adopt this approach.
One Year 7 student who has been elected as an
associate member had had direct experience of this
role having been a student governor at his primary
school. It is important that students who have had a
participative experience of education during Key
Stages 1 and 2 can continue their involvement at
secondary school.
Students as Governors
A number of events to encourage Student involvement
on the Governing Body have been held in Portsmouth
over the course of the Portsmouth Learning
Community project, some of which have been
attended by Mayfield staff, students and governors. As
a result of this involvement Mayfield now has students
Student involvement in decisions about their
learning
Exploring ways to involve students in decisions about
their learning has been a particular focus of the
Student Voice work in Portsmouth and a range of
events and visits have been arranged to explore
different ways in which this can be achieved. One
example in Portsmouth (which predated the
University’s involvement) was where a history teacher
at City of Portsmouth Girls’ School involved students
in curriculum planning and feedback about lessons.
One of the history teachers at Mayfield, Siôn
Reynolds, learned about this work at a city-wide
Student Voice event and was impressed by it. He has
subsequently developed a similar project at the
school, which is called the Time Team. As part of this
project students work with the teacher to plan lessons
and suggest ways in which these could most
successfully be organised in order to maximise
student participation.
Radio Project
Mayfield’s relationship with City of Portsmouth Girls’
School has given rise to collaboration on a radio
project whereby a radio programme has been set up
and is being run by students for students, giving them
the opportunity to reflect and comment on issues
which are of concern to them in their school life. This
project was developed following on from a visit to a
primary school in Hertfordshire where a very
successful radio project had been set up. An early
theme which was chosen for discussion was that of
respect. This is an issue that has consistently been
raised at COPS meetings and city-wide Student Voice
Days as needing to be worked on in schools and it is
encouraging that City Girls and Mayfield students
have taken it on. It is hoped that opportunities will be
found for them to feed back to COPS and to future
Student Voice events.
53
Student Voice Link Teachers
A network of secondary teachers who have
responsibility for Student Voice within their schools
has been set up and has met termly (for the most
part) throughout the duration of the Portsmouth
Learning Community project. The purpose of this
group is to share good practice between schools and
facilitate learning from each other. Siôn Reynolds from
Mayfield has been a key member of this group.
ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING
Mayfield has been an active participant in the
Assessment for Learning project. At secondary level
this work has been developed mainly through the
Assessment for Learning Link Teachers’ Network to
which Austen Hindman contributed. The network
facilitated link teachers’ leadership and co-ordination
of action research and development in their schools.
As a result of Austen’s listening to a colleague from
another school, he experimented himself and opened
a significant avenue of change in his own and then his
department’s practice.
There is a recognition at Mayfield on the part of key
teachers and senior leaders, that AfL is about bringing
Student Voice into the curriculum. This means that
AfL and Student Voice are not seen as two separate
initiatives but as one and the same. Students need to
be involved in decision making about all aspects of
their school life - decisions about their learning as well
as how the school is run. Collaboration between
teachers who have responsibility for Student Voice
and for AfL has strengthened the work on both fronts.
54
the activities rather than more broadly about the
learning. However, as time has progressed, there
has been more emphasis on longer term goals and
where the school is heading.
Students are increasingly involved in sharing their
perceptions of lessons with staff. The use of email
has begun to facilitate personalised communication
between teachers and students.
Some staff at the school have visited and
communicated with partner schools on the subject
of AfL in order to understand the prior experiences
of their incoming Year 7 students in an attempt to
ensure a degree of continuity on transition to
secondary school. This is extremely important to
avoid disillusion and disengagement of students at
this stage. It is nevertheless a challenge as many
primary schools across the city are making
significant advances in their approach to AfL and the
work is less developed in some secondary schools.
Over the course of the project common practices
have been introduced at the school, such as the
writing up of learning objectives at the start of lessons
to ensure that students are clear about what they are
doing and why. The purpose of this is to ensure that
there is continuity of experience for students.
Inevitably there are lapses when such things do not
happen - but the move towards a school-wide
recognition that classroom development hinges on
student participation in thinking about objectives and
in contributing to assessment has led to significant
progress.
It is understood by senior leaders at the school that
changing classroom practice takes time and involves
individual teachers in thinking through what they are
trying to achieve and what risks they are able to
take. Key leaders and teachers are aware that they
need to try radical alternatives to conventional
educational practice if they are to build on the
improvements the school has already made and take
a leap forward in GCSE results. Resources are being
put into innovative ways of planning a fresh structure
for the Year 7 curriculum. Topics and themes are
being introduced to bring coherence and continuity
in place of conventionally taught subjects which can
fragment and separate areas of learning.
At the beginning this tended to result in a focus on
short term planning. Teachers were thinking about
A major benefit is the school’s commitment to
school-based initial teacher training. This has the
result that a significant proportion of newly qualified
teachers in the school were trained there. Andrew
Tite, a GTP graduate and newly qualified teacher,
said about AfL:
“Perhaps because I’m recently trained, a lot of it
seems quite intuitive to me:
• make level criteria clear and explicit
• make models available and observe
performances
• identify good quality elements with reasons
• identify areas for improvement, with methods tied
to the criteria for the level that’s aimed for.
… We’re trying to let them find their own way. If
they know their strengths and weaknesses in their
own work, they know there’s things they can do
about it. I can give them scaffolding to help them
get there, but it doesn’t mean I’m being didactic;
it’s more self-awareness… If it comes from them
it’s not as judgemental.”
Mayfield students reported on their AfL work to the
residential Head teachers’ conference in Poole in
November 2006. The evaluations of this session
showed that it was well received by heads.
CONCLUSION
Mayfield has made significant advances in all three
areas of Portsmouth Learning Community. Their
collaboration with other schools has been integral to
their developments in Student Voice and
Assessment for Learning. Much progress been
made in creating a sense of community and in
developing social capability within the student body.
Staff members have referred to a shifting of the
balance of power, a clarification of responsibilities
and a strengthening of the role of the learner as
being instrumental in this change. There is strong
and enthusiastic support from the chair of
governors, senior leaders and a significant number
of teachers for taking students’ perceptions into
account regarding the running of the school and in
lessons and this is matched with policies and
projects. During the visit to Mayfield in Year 3 of the
project the university researchers had felt that the
challenge at that time was to extend the growing
confidence and initiative-taking to the classroom
setting. End of project research visits found
examples of students contributing to subject
reviews as well as framing their own curriculum
activities and assessments. The growing focus on
AfL has contributed strongly to these developments.
Students expressed their appreciation of how the
school has developed citing an increased sense of
belonging, better discipline, greater working
together and more choice.
Throughout this case study there have been a
number of examples of occasions where Mayfield
has learned from or contributed to the learning of
other schools. There is a feeling amongst staff at
the school who have been involved that this active
collaborative approach can be more valuable than
more passive INSET events.
Since the school came out of special measures it
has attracted a number of younger and newly
qualified staff and has been able to have an input
into their development to ensure that they are
putting into practice Student Voice and AfL
approaches. The efforts put into recruiting, training
and retaining young and enthusiastic staff has
played an important role in helping the school to
move forward.
There is a recognition by senior leaders at the
school that the community and the catchment area
is not going to change and so in order to raise all
round attainment there needs to be a focus on
changing the ethos of the school to meet the needs
of students. Through the work on Student Voice,
Assessment for Learning and School to School
Learning, the school is in the process of doing just
this.
55
Appendix 2
WIMBORNE JUNIOR SCHOOL CASE STUDY
Wimborne Junior School’s involvement in the
Portsmouth Learning Community project has
combined Student Voice and Assessment for
Learning approaches from the early stages. The
school has worked hard to increase student
engagement in their learning as well as involve
students in school decision-making and the two
have been seen as two sides of the same coin.
Their work was given impetus by the visit of a
senior member of staff to The Wroxham School in
Hertfordshire which prioritises Student Voice.
Wimborne Junior School has subsequently been
supported in developing their work in a range of
ways by the University of Sussex team. In particular,
their involvement in the Personalising Learning
Through Student Voice initiative (which was led by
Nick Brown and involved 5 Portsmouth schools) has
helped the school to make significant advances.
This work at the school is a model of how
transferability can be effectively managed, especially
when enthusiastically advocated and pro-actively
developed by a Senior Manager. As work has
progressed the school has shared their
developments and insights with staff and students
across Portsmouth in a range of ways.
STUDENT VOICE
The two main thrusts that Wimborne have
concentrated on in their approach to personalised
learning both involve a strong emphasis on Student
Voice. On the one hand they have developed an
effective School Council which has had
considerable impact on the curriculum, particularly
through its initiative on What Makes Learning Fun?
The Council has also been involved in writing the
School Improvement Plan and it works in formal
partnership with governors. On the other hand, the
school has placed emphasis on handing over dayto-day responsibility for each child’s learning to the
child him- or her- self through opening up avenues
of choice over what to learn and at what level. This
aspect of the work in particular has been supported
by the growing expertise of staff in formative
assessment. A succinct outline of all of this can
best be found on the DVD What Makes Learning
Fun?
It is clear that the work at Wimborne Junior richly
fulfils the fundamental categories outlined in the
introduction to the Personalising Learning through
Student Voice project:
56
• To make sure that every child felt that he or she
mattered in school
• To help students understand how to improve their
own learning
• To enable students to contribute to the school
improvement agenda
• To develop teaching and learning strategies that
were engaging and participatory
• To promote opportunities for choice, relevance
and ownership
• To build positive and collaborative teacher/student
and student/student relationships.
There were two main stages of the project’s
support. In the first year, the choice by students of
their level of work was piloted in two Year 5 classes
by the Deputy Head and a colleague. It seemed
important to research from the students’ point of
view what was working successfully and what less
so in order to refine the approach these two
pioneering teachers were adopting to the perceived
needs of the students before embarking on the
second stage. The second stage was to involve a
scaling up of the project to all year groups based on
the successes of the pilot. From the Project’s point
of view, this necessitated wider research amongst
the students of all year groups on the various
successes and problems encountered, reporting
this back to staff who were then in a position to
discuss ways forward in the light of those findings.
The first set of interviews from Stage 1 involved
three groups of Year 5 students in March 2006. The
areas these conversations set out to explore were
as follows:
• How do children feel about being able to choose
their own level of work?
• How did they find this process at the beginning?
Is there anything teachers could have done to
help?
• Would children appreciate choosing who they sit
next to when working?
• Do children feel comfortable or confident about
changing work part way through if they find what
they have chosen is too easy or hard?
• Are children challenging themselves? Are they
being lazy?
• Are children able to make the right choices?
The responses to these questions make it clear that
the students were both enthusiastic about the
system and felt confident in handling it.
Encouragingly, there was little evidence of students
opting for the easy life; if anything, the reverse was
the case with most students relishing the
opportunity to choose when and how to extend
themselves. Students appreciated the flexibility the
approach afforded them and readily accepted the
freedom that the responsibility for their own learning
brought with it.
For the second stage, after all teachers had had a
term to experiment with the new approach,
interviews were carried out with students from each
of Years 3, 4, 5 and 6, both in groups and
individually. In all cases, groups and individuals were
chosen by staff in the school and the questions
similarly were provided by teachers who were
interested in exploring their students’ perceptions of
how effective the spread of the choice of level of
work throughout all classes within the school had
been. In summary, these interviews emphasised the
ease with which students took to the approach and
the universal popularity it had achieved with them.
The success of this project appears to be built on a
number of interrelated factors:
• The commitment and vision of a Senior Manager
prepared to take the key lead role
• A fully supportive head
• An overt philosophy of actively involving and
engaging all students concerned at every stage
and allowing that involvement to shape the project
• A staff prepared to experiment and take risks
• A successful pilot for staff to build on
• The care taken over enlisting the support and
understanding of parents and governors
It is worth adding that, on the strength of this work,
Wimborne Junior was chosen as one of twelve
schools to act as case studies for a DfES research
report into approaches to personalised learning.
References to the work in this wider context can be
found in the report and it is hoped that a separate
case study of the school will be published at a later
date.
ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING
Alongside the Personalising Learning through Student
Voice project the school has been involved in the
primary Assessment for Learning project. Two members
of staff belonged to the 2005 phase of training and
development run by the University of Sussex team, and
subsequently led their staff in furthering their action
research in AfL.
These staff members have been successful in sharing
their learning within the school and in encouraging and
supporting colleagues to develop their practice in this
area. This work has fitted well with the focus on Student
Voice and has equipped staff throughout the school
with the skills needed to make real the aspiration to give
students a greater say in their learning.
57
In interview with the two AfL lead teachers a pattern
was identified in the planning of learning, activity,
assessment and improvement:
• state a learning objective
• analyse performance to identify the essential
features that make it good (e.g. why is this report
a good report; why is this two-sided argument a
fair presentation of a contentious issue?)
• suggest some success criteria for the task in hand
and finalise those with the pupils’ involvement, or
ask the pupils to create their own and explain
them
• pupils colour code each of the success criteria
• carry out the activity
• peer pupil, pupil her/him self and/or teacher
marks the work, using the colour coding, e.g.
underlining sections in orange that fulfil the orange
success criterion
• peer pupil, pupil her/him self and/or teacher
prompts improvement in terms of one or more of
the success criteria
• pupils have time and support if appropriate to
improve their performance.
As one of the teachers said:
“AfL has proved useful, so colleagues are using it,
whereas they bin other initiatives. The more I work
with this the more it becomes owned by the children.
For example, if I’m having a bad day and I get to the
end of a lesson, they say to me ‘Excuse me; let’s just
self-assess this’, or ‘We are going to mark it, aren’t
we?’ The pupils want to know how well they’ve done.
My practice is evolving through a greater sense of
self assessment and peer assessment.”
When some of the Year 6 pupils were asked if they
thought the teachers in the secondary schools they
would be going to would make use of the kinds of
approaches they were used to at Wimborne Junior,
they replied:
“Probably not. We could explain it to them, and
what’s important about it, because it helps us learn
more, and it helps you understand the work more.
Like What the teacher Is Looking For (WILF), the
things they’re going to mark. And What I’m Looking
For when I do the work. We could give them reasons
why we need a WILF. Cos actually we’re helping
them as well.”
SCHOOL TO SCHOOL LEARNING
Wimborne Junior School has been active in
collaborating with other schools and sharing its
work. Staff and students have contributed to a
number of events on school council development,
explaining its own way of working and answering
questions. It has offered to support other schools
wishing to make their councils more effective.
Wimborne students have also contributed to a
range of events on the theme of involving students
on the governing body. They spoke about how they
do this at an evening event for governors and have
also contributed to a development event for other
schools. A DVD made by the University of Sussex
team to support Portsmouth schools in the process
of involving students on their governing bodies
features Wimborne students.
58
The school engaged enthusiastically with a city-wide
initiative to address bullying. Children from the
school attended an event to share good practice
and explore ways forward. Following on from this
event, they worked with students from St Paul’s
Primary School to develop an indicator to help
schools to assess the level of bullying in their own
settings. This work involved hosting a visit by St
Paul’s students and also visiting their school. The
process of working together was captured in a
leaflet which has been distributed locally and
nationally to support other schools in developing
Student Voice work.
Carina Jacobs, Deputy Head of Wimborne Junior
has been the driving force behind the Student Voice
initiative and has actively contributed to a number of
events to disseminate the school’s work including
primary Student Voice network meetings, an INSET
event for Portsmouth staff and a national Student
Voice conference. A DVD, referred to earlier, entitled
What Makes Learning Fun? has been distributed to
all Portsmouth primary schools and further afield.
The contribution by staff and students to School to
School Learning has taken different forms including giving talks, mentoring, being involved in
question and answer sessions; contributing to
witness events and visits to other schools. Students
were involved in a presentation to the 2006
Headteachers’ conference in Poole where their
contribution was very well received. They have also
been involved in the production of a number of
different resources for dissemination to schools both
within and beyond Portsmouth.
CONCLUSION
A particular success at Wimborne Junior has been
its determination to reach out to and involve all
students at the school in developments. Structures
and processes have been established to ensure that
the school council feeds back to all children and
that all children can have their voices heard. This
inclusive approach has been of central importance
in improving the educational experiences of all
children and in creating a positive climate at the
school.
59
Appendix 3
ADMIRAL LORD NELSON SCHOOL CASE STUDY
The former head of Admiral Lord Nelson School (ALNS),
Di Smith, was one of the architects of the Portsmouth
Learning Community project. She had been instrumental
in securing the support of secondary heads for the
Portsmouth Learning Community agenda. Her
enthusiasm for collaboration between secondary schools
and her recognition of the importance of student
involvement was crucial in getting this initiative off the
ground. It is not surprising therefore that ALNS has played
a leading role within Portsmouth Learning Community. It
has actively embraced each of the three strands - Student
Voice, Assessment for Learning and School to School
Learning and is at the forefront of developments in the city
- and further afield - in each of these areas.
The current head, Steve Labedz, was appointed in 2006
and has accelerated the school’s work in these three
areas. Under his leadership, the school has moved
towards democratisation, and the structure has shifted
from a hierarchical base to a networked approach. Part of
the reasoning behind this has been the recognition that
one person per role is no longer appropriate because
what is needed is that all members of the Leadership
Team have an understanding of each others’ roles.
One outcome of this restructuring has been the
development of a ‘personalisation’ strand. Over the five
years of the Portsmouth Learning Community project
school staff have realised that Student Voice and
Assessment for Learning are inextricably linked and that
you cannot have one without the other. By bringing
them together in the personalisation strand the school
aims to give young people a more personalised
educational experience and is seeking to overcome the
compartmentalisation and lack of ‘joined-upness’ that
can result from pursuing a number of different initiatives.
STUDENT VOICE
In a visit to the school at the beginning of the
Portsmouth Learning Community project in 2003,
the University of Sussex researcher found that there
was already a culture in which students felt listened
to. This was particularly the case with older
students but younger students also felt that they
had a say. Staff who were interviewed at that time
said that there was a child-centred ethos at the
school and that they encouraged informal ways in
which students could approach teachers. There
was already an effective school council. However
there was apparently almost no documentation that
referred to Student Voice and it did not appear to
be structurally embedded. The school has made
significant advances since that time – some of
which are outlined below.
60
Student involvement in decisions about their
learning
Student Voice work is focussed on helping young
people to develop a sense of ownership about their
learning. In the head’s view the school has made a
huge leap forward in terms of understanding what
this means and in putting it into practice.
Each department now discusses how they integrate
Student Voice into their work. The aim is that staff
review their departmental development plan and
agree on where and how students can have an
input. Students are being trained to feed back to
teachers about their lessons – and the school is
working to create a culture where this is acceptable
to staff. Mentoring is recognised as being a key tool
in tailoring learning to the needs of the individual
child and the school is currently involved in the
process of identifying student needs through
mentoring and then putting in place suitable
interventions across the curriculum. Structures for
keeping everyone (including parents) informed are
being developed.
It is hoped that this project has introduced ways of
involving students in decisions about their learning
that can be applied in different ways across the
school.
The school has been involved in the Personalising
Learning through Student Voice project led by Nick
Brown at the University of Sussex and as its focus,
this work has involved looking at attitudes and
approaches to homework in Year 7 with a view to
identifying a range of personalised approaches to
the skills that pupils require and to develop these
through peer mentoring, involving Year 9 pupils, and
appropriate interventions in PSHE time.
ALNS was one of the first schools in Portsmouth to
include school students as Associate Members of
the school’s governing body. This started several
years ago with one student governor and the
number has now been increased to two.
When the project started this was very much a live
topic both for students and teachers as the school,
which, faced with the kind of complaints about
homework that will be familiar to many schools, had
responded with what they termed 'enrichment
cards'. The aim of these cards was to move away
from the 'Subject-X--sets-half-hour-homeworksevery-Tuesday-and-Thursday' style, to an approach
that relied more on flexibility and open-endedness
and where assignments were carefully thought
through in a planned and structured way by
departments so as to be of real value and interest
to students. Assignments for each term were
printed on stylishly produced cards so that, on the
one hand, there was no ambiguity for either student
or parent as to exactly what had been set and what
was required and on the other hand a much greater
freedom of opportunity became available to
students as to exactly what could be done, in what
form and in what time-frame. In many ways this
introduced for younger students the kind of coursework approach to homework already familiar to
those studying for GCSE.
Students as Governors
The Chair of Governors has been very supportive of
student involvement. Generally speaking, studentfriendly issues are discussed in the first hour of
governor meetings, when the student governors
attend. A system of buddying has been set up so
that student governors are mentored and supported
by an experienced governor.
The school has contributed to a number of city wide
events on student governors to inform and support
other schools going down this path.
Student Council
The student council has been re-launched at the
school and is working more effectively than hitherto,
although it is felt that there is still room for
improvement as more work needs to be done to
develop young people’s skills to participate. The aim
is for the council to be autonomous and to arrange
its own meetings, with support from staff where
needed. There are generally around 50
representatives at meetings and agenda items are
brought forward by representatives from the
different year groups. The meetings are usually
attended by the head.
COPS
Part of the project involved enabling students to
drive the evaluation and revision of the programme.
For, despite the very real work and thought that had
gone into enrichment cards from all departments in
the school, it was clear that the scheme was
unpopular with some students. The project is
continuing and has led to the development and
improvement of enrichment cards.
ALNS students have been active members of COPS
from the outset, attending regularly and contributing
enthusiastically at meetings.
61
ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING
The school has always been committed to
Assessment for Learning – even prior to the
Portsmouth Learning Community project,
recognising that AfL is essentially about good
learning and teaching. However, because of staff
turnover, its centrality at the school had dipped. The
Portsmouth Learning Community project therefore
provided the opportunity to re-engage with AfL
approaches.
There are many ways in which the school’s
profound and extensive commitment to
collaborative action research has been evident.
These include:
• the school’s AfL link teachers, Emma West then
Amanda Hillyard, regularly attended and
contributed to the secondary school AfL network
• a pair of teachers from the school belonged to the
first few secondary staff to join primary school
colleagues on AfL training days and ‘critical friend’
visits, indicating recognition of the issue of
transition and transfer
• the school pioneered the use and sharing of film
clips of classroom practice illustrating AfL
strategies such as peer marking and success
criteria
• Amanda Hillyard, in her role as Advanced Skills
Teacher, has made visits to other schools, both
primary and secondary, to support and promote
AfL development in the classroom and across the
whole school, thereby supporting the ‘phased’
year-long training and development cohorts of
pairs of teachers.
This range of coherent, principled and practical
activities has depended on clear-sighted, wellinformed and energetic leadership. Steve Labedz
illustrated this when he said:
“the development over the last five years has been
the penny dropping for many many teachers that
Student Voice and AfL are inextricably linked so
that's been the development - that you can't have
one without the other … The fact that people are
openly discussing with children what they might
want to be studying - it's that link between Student
Voice and AfL that's the key.”
The school’s interest and initiative in developing
personalised learning as well as a coursework-like
approach to homework accord perfectly with the
most advanced principles and practices of AfL.
SCHOOL TO SCHOOL LEARNING
The school’s keenness to collaborate with other
schools has developed over the course of the project.
However, understanding of what that might mean and
how collaboration happens has increased as the
project has progressed alongside the realisation of
how difficult it is to actually make it work. There is a
growing recognition that regardless of infrastructure it
is the relationships that are important and it is
therefore important that staff are motivated to work
together with others in a focussed way.
It has become increasingly common for staff at the
school to develop relationships with people in other
62
schools to explore how they collaboratively address
specific issues. It has become an embedded part of
how the school operates.
The Community Improvement Partnerships have
been a vehicle for school to school collaboration in
that they have created a framework for cooperation. As Chair of one of the CIPS the Head of
ALNS acknowledges that he has drawn on his
learning as part of the Portsmouth Learning
Community project in the development of the
Partnership.
ALNS staff have been active members of both the
Student Voice Link Teachers’ network and the AfL
Link Teachers’ network – attending meetings on a
regular basis, sharing developments at their own
school and learning from what others have to say.
The school’s Student Voice Link teacher, Matt
Hutton has been a key member of the Student
Voice Link teachers’ network, challenging
colleagues to think deeply about how Student Voice
work can be integrated into whole school
developments. He also contributed to a session for
LA advisers on Student Voice which contributed
significantly to their understanding of the nature and
challenges of Student Voice work and which was
well received.
CONCLUSION
The focus at ALNS has particularly been on
developing professional engagement with the
Portsmouth Learning Community project strands as
staff are recognised as being central in the drive to
improve the educational experiences of young
people. Structures such as the Student Council and
COPS are seen as important. However the extent to
which young people are listened to and become
active in their learning depends heavily on the skills
of staff and so this has been a major focus of the
school’s work. Developing a culture of listening and
responding to young people in all aspects of school
life, but particularly with regard to their learning is
seen as crucial in moving the school forward. Over
the course of the project the school has made
impressive progress in this.
63
Appendix 4
ST PAUL’S PRIMARY SCHOOL CASE STUDY
At St Paul’s Primary School, the three strands of
Portsmouth Learning Community - Student Voice,
Assessment for Learning and School to School
Learning - have been developed together “as a
threesome” .The connection between them was
clearly understood by the head who resisted their
compartmentalisation. She saw the three as
integrated and integral to each other and so by
working on them together they would support each
other in becoming embedded in the school’s practice.
She also saw dangers in initiative overload. Her aim
was to take on things that the school and the staff
could grow with and which would support staff
development in terms of “their scholarship, their
understanding of learning and their ability to provide
stimulation to the children.”
STUDENT VOICE
“The children are much more vocal, to the point that
they now make decisions for me .... obviously within the
parameters of what’s acceptable”
Fran Chapman, Head teacher
The development of Student Voice has been a main
priority and the school is seen locally as being at the
forefront of Student Voice developments. The students
have become increasingly vocal and the head feels that
there are no areas where they do not have influence.
When interviewed, students also said that the School
Council has considerable influence, although they
expressed concern about a range of issues that have
not yet been resolved.
Much effort has been put into the development of the
School Council. In the early days of Sussex University’s
involvement in Portsmouth, a member of the University
team worked closely with the school to help them make
their Council as effective as possible. Five years down the
line it is an example of good practice with all students in
the school able to input into the work of the Council. The
school is supporting other schools wishing to develop
their own councils and students from the school have
contributed to city-wide School Council development
events and helped in the production of resources.
The School Council has become increasingly important
in the running of the school and is involved in Governor
64
meetings on a termly basis. The Chair of Governors also
attends every other School Council meeting. The
School Council interviewed the candidates for the
deputy headship and made their views known to the
governors, who congratulated them on the high quality
of their questioning. The Council has played a role in
developing the School Improvement Plan, in developing
behaviour policies and in the introduction of school
uniform changes. The steps proposed by students for
addressing negative behaviour and for rewarding wellbehaved students are recognised by students and staff
as having had a positive effect. Road safety is another
issue which has been addressed by the Council and
this has involved researching local residents’ views. The
school now has Junior Road Safety Officers and they
have had discussions with the Local Authority and local
councillors over road safety issues.
The perception of staff is that the School Council has
enhanced the life of the school, built mutual respect and
encouraged team working.
The school has been involved in the Pupil Oscars and
last year school students were invited to participate as
judges.
Student Voice has been supported by a highly
committed member of staff, Rosie Miller, who has been
recognised nationally for her work.
ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING
The school has engaged with the Portsmouth
Assessment for Learning project with members of
staff participating in the early phases. Following on
from this involvement there has been a push to
develop AfL practices across the school.
Peer assessment has been introduced, starting in
English and maths and later in other subjects. It is
now well established throughout the school with
children in Key Stage 1 working with an adult when
assessing their own and others’ work and by Key
Stage 2 having become “very confident assessors”.
Talking Partners is being used in a fluid way, with
students working with different people at different
times. There is a big focus on speaking and
listening, particularly in the early years, as these are
areas that many children find challenging on their
arrival at the school as the intake area has a high
social deprivation index, and there has been an
influx of immigrants and refugees with English as a
second language.
Children in Year 6 are involved in setting their own
targets in consultation with their teachers through
class conferencing or individual interviews. As a
consequence, staff have noted that students seem
more focused on their learning and on achieving
their targets. The plan is to introduce this in other
years in order to give all students greater ownership
of their learning and to increase the focus on
individualised learning.
Students in a focus group interview knew all about
success criteria and peer assessment and felt that
these approaches were helpful to them.
An important development in AfL relates to the
school’s involvement in a local nursery. Development
of nursery staff with a strong AfL focus has meant
that children arriving at St Paul’s from the nursery
now have better language and social skills. This
intervention in the nursery school has, in a short
space of time, had a very positive effect on teaching
practice there.
Teaching at St Paul’s is organised around topics to
encourage interdisciplinary learning and develop the
all-round learner. On one project in particular
children have been encouraged to keep a diary
based on their work and this provides valuable
evidence of learning. Staff members recognise the
advantages in terms of formative assessment and
supporting learning.
One member of staff has attended the primary AfL
network meetings and these are seen as very useful
for sharing good practice. Overall, as this member
of staff put it, there has been a realisation that, far
from being separate initiatives, Assessment for
Learning and Student Voice “are very, very
integrated and integral, and they feed off each other
then”.
SCHOOL TO SCHOOL LEARNING
The school was already involved in a range of other
initiatives before Portsmouth Learning Community was
established and staff had prior experience of acting as
ambassadors in disseminating their practice - so
collaboration with other schools was not a new
development. However the head described the school’s
involvement in Portsmouth Learning Community as
having a big effect in terms of making the school more
outward-looking. As a result of engagement with the
University team she said that the school had “opened
up mentally; the fact that there were huge possibilities. It
has been a good thing for our school; it has moved us
tremendously.”
65
As one example of collaboration, the school has taken
part in a philosophy for children project Ask It and this
has been valuable in linking AfL, Student Voice and
higher order thinking, speaking and listening. As a pilot
school they have been asked to share their experiences
with other schools both within Portsmouth and further
afield. Involvement in other national projects such as
Grow It- Cook It have provided further opportunities for
School to School Learning.
The school has been involved in the development of
the North West Community Improvement
Partnership in Portsmouth and the links between
schools in this partnership are growing. Teachers
have had the opportunity to visit other schools and
observe practice. The value of planning and
moderating together is seen as important for raising
standards and raising teachers’ expectations.
Learning Walks or Learning Visits is a School to
School Learning approach which was introduced by
the University of Sussex team. St Paul’s has
participated in a local project on maths and this has
involved working with a number of schools, visiting
each other, observing practice and giving nonjudgemental feedback. The visit to St Paul’s by
colleagues from other schools, known as a “SEF
walk” or “ethos walk”, produced some helpful
feedback. After the second walk, the improvement
in the findings was markedly better and helped
them to see how embedded the AfL principles are
across the school. These visits have encouraged
openness, seeing the school as a whole and
encouraging staff to work together as a team.
The school engaged enthusiastically with a city-wide
initiative to address bullying. Children from the
school attended an event to share good practice
and explore ways forward. Following on from this
event, they worked with students from Wimborne
Junior to develop an indicator to help schools to
assess the level of bullying in their own settings.
This work involved hosting a visit by Wimborne
Junior students and also visiting their school. The
process of working together was captured in a
leaflet which has been distributed locally and
nationally to support other schools in developing
Student Voice work.
CONCLUSION
The introduction of new practices at the school has
been concerned with developing the depth of
understanding of staff and has been managed in a
way that has aimed to be non-threatening. The
intention has been to move forward in such a way
that when key members of staff leave, the
developments can continue.
The commitment and determination of key members
of staff have been crucial in their belief that children
should have excellent opportunities and that the
curriculum has to be stimulating. Staff are willing to
engage with professional development and have high
expectations of the students - both of which are seen
as contributing to developments. There is a sense that
St Paul’s is a school that does not necessarily toe the
government line completely because “children are not
there to be made into sausage shapes and sent off in
different directions cloned”.
66
The Catholic ethos is central to the development of a
culture which respects, values and listens to young
people. The school prioritises initiatives which fit with
the school ethos.
Over the course of the project the Head feels that
achievement has risen and is keen to build on the
progress made to date because of the significant
benefits to the children.
“If we are doing this, let’s do it well. The children may
be disadvantaged because of the area they live in but
they are not going to be disadvantaged because of
coming to the school.”
Fran Chapman, Head teacher
RESOURCES
from the University of Sussex
COPS: The Story So Far *– DVD about the
development of the Council of Portsmouth Students
(COPS) which has been set up as a city-wide
representative body for school students. The
Council has a commitment to inclusive ways of
working and this focus is captured on the DVD.
Developing Assessment for Learning in
Portsmouth City primary Schools 2003-4 –
Interim Report of the Portsmouth AFL project
Developing a Listening Culture within Schools –
DVD and notes for school staff to support Student
Voice in their school.
Getting Good at Learning – Postcards to support
learners in discussing how to go about their work.
Available from Mike Johns Portsmouth City Council.
Getting in the Habit – Assessment for Learning: An
Action Guide for teachers – Pamphlet for school
staff to support the use of AfL approaches.
Available from Mike Johns, Portsmouth City Council.
Learning from the Community: A Case Study
from Springfield School –Example of one school’s
efforts to involve the local community in the life of
the school
Peer Support: Learning Together – Briefing paper
bringing together examples of different kinds of peer
support
School Council Role Cards – A set of cards for
use by School Councils outlining the different roles
on the School Council and the skills required.
Student Involvement on the Governing Body* –
DVD showing how several Portsmouth schools
involve students in different ways on their governing
bodies.
Student Voice in Action* – Leaflet demonstrating
a process of working with students on an issue of
concern to them, taking bullying as its theme.
Students as Researchers – Publication with CD
Rom to introduce schools to the benefits and
process of engaging students as researchers.
Available from Pearson Publishing
email [email protected]
Students in Control of their Learning – Briefing
paper bringing together examples of different
schools and projects in the UK and further afield
where there is a particular focus on student
involvement in decisions about their learning.
Student Voice Handbook – Folder bringing
together different aspects of the Portsmouth
Learning Community Student Voice work to support
staff in taking this work forward.
Student Voice Day 2007 Poster – A3 poster for
schools showing the outcomes of this event and
encouraging schools to take forward the issues that
were discussed.
The Missing R* – Game for school staff to use to
prepare students to engage in Students as
Researchers projects within their school.
What Makes a Listening School? – Leaflet
showing children’s views about what schools can
do to make sure that they listen and respond to
young people.
What Makes Learning Fun?* – DVD about the
practices of one primary school teacher to put
students at the heart of decisions about their
learning, and her efforts to scale these approaches
up to involve the whole school.
All resources (except where listed otherwise) are
available from the School of Education at the
University of Sussex. For more details or to place an
order contact Elena Dennison on 01273 678464,
email [email protected]
* These resources have been developed with funding from the
Carnegie UK Trust.
67
University of Sussex Team
Working in Partnership with Portsmouth City Council
Dr John Blanchard (Visiting Fellow)
• Author of Teaching and Targets: Self Evaluation
and School Improvement (Routledge Falmer 2002),
now a freelance consultant, previously LEA adviser
and English teacher, with particular expertise in
assessment and learning, literacy and SEN.
Nick Brown (Visiting Fellow)
• National research and development work on
Student Voice. Was involved on DfES-funded
project on Personalised Learning run by Professor
Jean Rudduck. Formerly Deputy head teacher
and Acting head in Cambridgeshire.
Fiona Carnie (Visiting Fellow)
• Formerly national co-ordinator of Human Scale
Education, author of Alternative Approaches to
Education (Routledge Falmer 2002), project
manager of the CEI Portsmouth Learning
Community initiative.
Dr Barbara Crossouard (Research Fellow)
• Researcher on the EU-funded project on Internet
Based Assessment. Interested in the
conceptualisation of formative assessment within
sociocultural learning theory.
Professor Ian Cunningham (Visiting Fellow)
• National and international consultant in both
public and private sectors, currently working with
large public sector organisations e.g. Birmingham
City Council and private sector companies e.g.
Sainsburys, Shell, Exxon, Royal Bank of Scotland;
pioneer of new approaches to Action Learning.
Professor Michael Fielding
(Institute of Education, University of London formerly
Director of the Centre for Educational Innovation,
University of Sussex)
• National and international research and
development work in organisational / interorganisational learning, international leader in new
developments in Student Voice work.
68
Derry Hannam (Visiting Fellow)
• National and international consultant on Student
Voice, adviser to Bernard Crick on citizenship in
the National Curriculum, consultant and author
with School Councils UK, OFSTED inspector.
Perpetua Kirby (Visiting Fellow)
• National and international consultant in the fields
of evaluation and young people. Portfolio includes
Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Save the Children
Fund, and the Children & Young People’s Unit.
Dr John Parry (Researcher)
• Citizenship tutor at the University of Sussex
School of Education, substantial experience as a
senior teacher in special needs schools and a
leading figure in environmental education research
and development work.
Professor Judy Sebba (Professor of Education)
• Formerly in charge of the DfES Research Strategy.
Leading national and international expert in the
development of evidence-based practice,
assessment for learning and inclusion.
Directors of Work on the Portsmouth Learning
Community Strands
1 Assessment for Learning
Dr John Blanchard
2 Student Voice
Fiona Carnie
3 School to School Learning Professor Michael
Fielding
4 Project Manager
Fiona Carnie
Portsmouth Learning Community
Copies of this publication can be obtained from The University of Sussex, School of Education,
Arts D202, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QQ Tel 01273 678464 Email. [email protected]