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Goal: Every young person achieving their full potential
1. As well as the choice of an excellent secondary school, every student should, within their school, have excellent teaching that suits them, building on what they know, fitting them for what they aspire to, and helping them reach their full potential.
2. The conditions for learning must also be right in every school - with good behaviour, regular attendance and excellent partnerships between schools, parents and the community.
3. Teaching in secondary schools is improving. The number of failing schools has nearly halved; and results for 14 year olds, and at GCSE, are improving steadily.
4. Since 1998, schools with the highest levels of disadvantage have improved nearly three times faster at GCSE than those in more affluent areas - thanks in part to our successful Excellence in Cities programme.
5. Both behaviour and attendance are also improving - with fewer violent incidents and fewer days lost to truancy.
6. There are 24,000 more secondary school teachers and over 30,000 more support staff in schools than in 1997. The average number of computers used for teaching and learning in each secondary school has risen from 101 in 1998 to 193 in 2003.
7. Ofsted judges over three quarters of schools to have high quality leadership; and they say that this generation of newly-qualified teachers is the best ever.
Issues and Challenges
8. But there are still serious challenges that must be faced and overcome.
Too many children still find the transition from primary to secondary school difficult - some fall back in their learning as a result.
We are not doing enough to make sure each child reaches their full potential. It is not just the lowest-performing children that are being let-down - there are children at every level who are bored or frustrated. Schools can do more to tailor or personalise what is taught to get the most from each pupil, and particularly to help groups of children who have traditionally underperformed, and to stretch the most able.
There is also not enough variety and choice within the curriculum or in opportunities outside the school day - for example, clubs and societies, trips, visitors or visits - to make sure that every young person is excited by school and builds the confidence and skills they need.
At the extreme this leads to some young people playing truant, or behaving badly at school. Low level disruption is a real irritant and barrier to progress in some schools. Seriously disruptive or even threatening behaviour is much rarer, but still totally unacceptable. And there is a close correlation between poor attendance at school and crime and anti-social behaviour.
As children grow up, it can be harder for parents to stay involved with school - and some secondary schools do not do enough to work closely with parents in support of children's learning, or to see themselves as community resources.
9. In meeting these challenges, our offer to secondary pupils and parents will be:
Offer to pupils and parents
A smooth transition from primary to secondary school
Excellent teaching in every school based on real knowledge of individual pupils, helping all achieve their potential
More use of ICT to support good teaching and learning
Teachers who are masters of their subject, and who can enthuse and inspire, with excellent training for all
An interesting, broad and rich curriculum with more choice and a wider set of out-of-hours opportunities - including sports, clubs and residential activities through schools
Schools free of disruption, with better behaviour, and better management of excluded pupils
A step-change in school attendance, giving better chances to children but also reducing crime and anti-social behaviour, and improving communities
Secondary schools at the heart of communities, working well with parents, and forging good partnerships to support vulnerable pupils
What our offer means in practice
Personalisation of teaching and learning
10. A good secondary school has effective teaching at its core. Teaching is tailored to the needs of individual pupils, with progress regularly assessed. The National Curriculum is not regarded as a constraint or a straitjacket - it is the foundation for a wide range of curriculum options and for a variety of learning experiences and styles. Successful schools know that learning continues beyond the formal school day or week, with a wide choice of options and experiences beyond the classroom.
11. A great deal of work is underway to raise the quality of teaching and learning in secondary schools. Training and support for teachers in the early secondary years - modelled on the primary school literacy and numeracy strategies - has produced the best results ever at age 14 and at GCSE, but the pace of improvement now needs to be quickened in six key areas.
(i) Moving from primary to secondary school
12. The failure to make a good transition from primary school is one of the biggest causes of poor achievement in secondary school. Building on what the best schools do already, we will:
Introduce co-ordinated admission arrangements for all secondary schools from entry in September 2005 and for all primary schools from entry in September 2006. All local parents will fill in one application form and all will be sent their offers at the same time, with the Local Authority acting as a 'clearing house';
Make sure better information about pupils is consistently passed between primary and secondary schools. For the first time this year, marks from the end of primary school tests will be transferred electronically directly to secondary schools. This will mean they can plan earlier for the new group of children;
Promote new approaches to managing pupils' learning and welfare when moving into secondary school, including innovative approaches like 'schools-within-schools' and new-style 'house' systems, which can make large secondary schools feel more personal and intimate.
(ii) A new secondary strategy for teaching and learning
13. Secondly, we will develop the Key Stage 3 Strategy - designed to improve teaching for 11 to 14 year-olds - into a Secondary Strategy covering the whole 11-16 stage. The Strategy will help teachers give careful attention to pupils' individual learning needs, set challenging targets for them linked to high-quality assessment, and offer tools to teachers to make lessons pacy, challenging and enjoyable.
14. This new Secondary Strategy will put extra focus on the areas of learning that many pupils find most difficult - for example, writing and close reading skills in English, algebra in mathematics, and investigative work in science. This will help every single pupil achieve their potential even in difficult areas.
15. We will also give extra support to pupils who have not been well-served by the system in the past, including:
Gifted and talented students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Many schools lack the confidence to attend fully to the needs of able pupils and ensure that they achieve their highest potential. The new National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth is a centre of excellence advising teachers on the best way to teach gifted young people, and to encourage them to go on to university, offering summer schools and on-line learning for gifted and talented young people so that they can meet and work with other like-minded children and be given extra stretch and challenge;
Low achieving minority ethnic groups, by designing teaching strategies and materials more closely around their personal experiences and offering positive role models through academic mentors;
Pupils with special educational needs bydeveloping dedicated Strategy materials and training, including for Special Educational Needs co-ordinators, and key support staff who work with pupils with special educational needs.
16. We want to see a transformation in outcomes for looked-after children and young people over the next five years, with much greater stability in their lives. We expect local authorities to ensure more choice for looked-after children and young people about where they live, fewer out-of-authority placements and much less moving around between placements. Greater stability will lead to much better continuity in education: it will enable looked-after children to achieve more in school and will enable schools to do better for them. At the same time we want to see more personalised support and better access to activities and opportunities for looked after children and we will work to ensure that there are more, better trained, better rewarded foster carers.
(iii) ICT supporting personalised learning
17. Information and communication technology (ICT) is a powerful tool for learning, helping teachers explain difficult concepts, giving access to a huge range of examples and resources, and engaging pupils easily. It is also a vital tool for personalisation - giving the opportunity to tailor tasks to children without hours of extra work for teachers; and with the potential to do things like mark and analyse work automatically, picking out areas where a particular child has not understood, or where the whole class has missed and point and needs more explanation.
18. Since 1998 the Government has invested over £1 billion creating an ICT infrastructure in schools in England, connecting secondary schools using broadband, and training teachers. This investment has already had a dramatic effect but there is more to do both to equip all teachers to make the most of what is available and do develop better quality curriculum content and materials.
19. Electronic whiteboards, in the hands of competent and confident teachers, bring new dimensions to whole class teaching. Interactive slates hold the potential for learning that is both personalised and shared. Schools are increasingly investing in these types of technology, and we have provided £50 million over two years to accelerate this trend - enough for around 20,000 classrooms to be equipped with whiteboards. We will continue this programme of investment in ICT over the next five years.
(iv) Effective subject teaching
20. Secondary teachers are usually specialist teachers with a real love of their subject. The most inspiring lessons come from teachers being able to pass on their enthusiasm for the subject to their pupils; but too often this inspiration is lacking. We intend to develop more subject-specific support across the curriculum, to help teachers develop their subject knowledge and teach better.
21. We will appoint Chief Advisers for all the key subjects, to champion their subject and plan its improvement, including better subject-specific training for teachers, working in particular with outstanding heads of department in specialist schools, and with subject associations. The Chief Adviser for Mathematics will take forward our response to the Smith report Mathematics Counts, and oversee the development of a national maths centre.
Subject Specialism: Extra support for Mathematics
In our recent response to the Adrian Smith mathematics enquiry, recognising the particular importance of mathematics, we announced that we would:
Appoint a new Chief Adviser for Mathematics to oversee the implementation of the mathematics strategy
Raise the value of the teacher training bursary for mathematics graduates from £6,000 to £7,000 from September 2005, and increasing the value of the Golden Hello for new mathematics teachers from £4,000 to £5,000 for trainees entering PGCE courses from September 2005 onwards
Remove the cap on pay for mathematics Advanced Skills Teachers, currently just under £50,000, guaranteeing them a minimum salary of £40,000 (Subject to the statutory advice of the School Teachers' Review Body)
Establish a National Centre for Excellence in Mathematics Teaching to provide strategic direction and leadership
Develop guidance for a mathematics extension curriculum to stretch more able learners
(v) A richer secondary curriculum
22. The National Curriculum provides an entitlement to a broad, rich curriculum for every pupil. It needs to be kept under review, so that it fits young people for the changing demands of life and work in adulthood. Once Mike Tomlinson has reported on the 14-19 curriculum (which we discuss in more detail in the next Chapter), we will carry out a review to look again at what is studied by 11-14 year olds, and in particular at whether it offers good enough opportunities both for those at risk of disengagement, and for more able children who need to be stretched.
23. We will also widen opportunities beyond the classroom. Often, these provide some of the most memorable experiences at school - the school trip, the drama production, or playing in the school team. Our strategy for sport in particular will extend sporting opportunities for children in secondary school, building motivation and engagement as well as supporting health and fitness.
The PE, School Sport and Club Links Strategy
Over £1 billion is being invested by the Government to support PE and school sport. An ambitious target has been set for three quarters of 5-16 year olds to spend at least 2 hours each week on PE and school sport by 2006.
Spearheading action will be the massive expansion of the School Sport Partnerships - families of primary, special and secondary schools that come together to enhance sports opportunities for all. This includes competitive sports, with many partnerships setting up or joining sports leagues.
Specialist Sports Colleges act as 'hubs' for the partnerships, and show that sporting excellence supports high standards as well as health and fitness. Wright Robinson School is the largest high school in Manchester, serving an inner city area rated among poorest and most disadvantaged in the country. It has concentrated on making links with primary schools, increasing participation and achievement in all its pupils (both sporting and academic), and improving training for staff and other adults. It has increased the proportion of pupils getting five good GCSEs from 7% to 43% in sevenyears.
(vi) Improving behaviour and attendance
24. Good behaviour is essential to good learning and good citizenship. Although OFSTED say that behaviour is unsatisfactory overall in only 5% of secondary and 1% of primary schools, low level disruption is a problem affecting all schools to some extent. More extreme incidents of bad behaviour, though rare, have a big impact on staff and other pupils, and affect some schools disproportionately, imposing unacceptable burdens on teachers and damaging the education of other pupils.
25. School attendance is improving. 1,300 former truants are back in school every day compared to last year, and attendance rates have improved in 133 of the 150 Local Authorities. But this is only a start in eradicating a culture of truancy, much of it accepted or even encouraged by parents, particularly among older secondary pupils. Parents have a duty to see that their children attend school; schools and Local Authorities need consistent support as they seek to enforce this duty. In 2002/3 just over a quarter of pupils in schools with absence rates above 11% got five good GCSEs, compared with nearly three quarters in schools with absence rates below 6.5%. And poor attendance, if not addressed, can also lead rapidly to more thorough disengagement, anti-social behaviour and street crime. Better teaching, and a more interesting curriculum, have a part to play in engaging pupils more effectively, but we need to go further. We will:
expect every school to have a school uniform. School uniforms help to define the ethos of a school and the standards expected. They help give pupils pride in their school, and make them ambassadors for their school in the community. They can also be used as a visible sign of a new determination when re-starting a failing school.
expect every school to have clear rules and codes of conduct, and to subscribe to our anti-bullying charter - which requires the headteacher, staff and pupils to sign up to clear responsibilities in cracking down on bullying.
use Ofsted inspection, performance tables and our new school profile to improve attendance. We will, as headteachers have proposed, no longer focus just on absence that is 'unauthorised,' but look too at absolute levels of attendance at school.
use truancy sweeps to target areas where truancy is a particular problem. And we will continue our successful work through the Street Crime initiative to mobilise the police, social services, education welfare officers and others to identify and deal with the children with the worst behaviour and attendance problems.
support headteachers' decisions to remove from their school anyone - whether parent or pupil - who is behaving in an aggressive way. Pupils can already be permanently excluded for a one-off violent offence and we will support heads in taking immediate action. Our guidance to schools and Local Authorities makes clear that we would not expect governing bodies or appeal panels to reinstate pupils in these circumstances. Sentencing guidelines to magistrates also make it clear that assaults on teachers should attract severe sentencing.
defend teachers from false allegations, ensuring that teachers are not subjected to damaging delays where their integrity is in question, and that swift action can be taken against those who make false allegations. We will publish proposals later this year.
make sure disruptive pupils do not ruin learning for others - using learning mentors, learning support units, and, where necessary, joint arrangements with Pupil Referral Units to take them out of the classroom.
extend the use of Parenting Contracts to set out shared responsibilities with parents on behaviour and attendance, and help parents get the support they need (recognising that many parents may be struggling with similar behaviour difficulties at home and will welcome support).
confront the small group of parents who refuse to take their responsibilities seriously, with fixed penalty notices for parents of truants, prosecution for the worst offenders, and Parenting Orders imposed by the courts.
26. We will also address the issue of schools that are asked to take on large numbers of hard-to-place or disruptive pupils through theyear.
27. We will expect groups of schools and colleges, including Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) and special schools, to take collective responsibility for the education of young people in their area, through clear agreements which set out systems for managing excluded and seriously disruptive pupils. The agreements, reached through Admissions Forums, will set out:
A procedure for allocating hard to place pupils which balances the wishes of parents, the needs of the child and the circumstances of the school, so that no school is obliged to take an unmanageable number of disruptive pupils.
arrangements for collaboration among the schools on behaviour policy, taking more responsibility for the organisation and management of Pupil Referral Units and other out-of-school provision, ensuring that it meets the needs of each locality.
28. We will encourage Admissions Forums, schools and Local Authorities to secure the funding to support these agreements and to support the education of hard to place pupils - and will encourage Authorities to devolve funds to groups of schools to do this.
Case Study
Swale Project, Kent
Eight secondary schools (including a grammar school) in Swale are collaborating to manage behaviour and reduce exclusions. The group have been delegated £300,000 by the LEA to allocate across schools according to need. This has funded family liaison workers, counsellors, social work time and police, often shared across several schools. Headteachers are also now collectively responsible for the Pupil Referral Unit (PRU), and PRU places are shared out between schools, according to their needs, for preventive work. Headteachers have agreed to contribute £5,000 for each pupil they exclude permanently; but they are now often able to arrange managed moves between schools. There are clear indications of success - last year, there were 28 permanent exclusions from schools in the group; so far this year, there have been fewer than 10.
29. This Autumn, the Department will issue model agreements on the education of excluded and disruptive pupils drawn up in partnership with foundation and voluntary schools, Local Authorities and headteacher associations, and will also give advice on the process for reaching these agreements and making them work. There will be a strong expectation that every Admissions Forum will develop an agreement, and every school will sign up to one. We will seek legal powers so that where this does not happen, agreements can be required and enforced by the Secretary of State.
Partnership with parents and the community
30. Successful schools also have strong links to parents and the wider community, drawing strength from those links, and in turn helping to develop and strengthen their local community. At primary school, most parents and carers have a lot of contact with the teacher and the school. But parents can feel very distant from secondary schools; pupils begin to want more independence; and the teenage years can be difficult. As in primary schools, we will work intensively with schools to help them engage parents more effectively, with booklets for parents on helping with schoolwork, and practical advice for schools on how to work well with parents.
31. We will also make pupil and parent views part of school self-evaluation, so that every parent and every pupil has the opportunity to express their view on the quality of teaching and other school services as least once a year. We will promote standardised surveys of pupil and parent views to enable schools to compare themselves with others.
Example: Questions from standard pupil surveys as part of London Challenge
How often do the teachers praise you when you have tried hard?
How often do other pupils make fun of people who work hard?
How often do you behave badly at school?
How often are other pupils so noisy in lessons that you find it difficult to work?
Do you think that bullying is a particular problem at your school?
Do you think that the teachers deal effectively with bullying?
How often do you have a teaching assistant (other adult) helping the teacher in lessons?
How often do you do joint work (activities, lessons, projects) with pupils from other schools?
32. We will encourage schools to make more use of their websites for communicating with parents - for example, showing on a website what homework has been set, giving pupil timetables, and having a simple system for parents to email teachers.
Extended Schools
33. Partnership with parents and the community will also be supported by Extended Schools (which we discussed in Chapter 3). We want every secondary school to become an extended school, offering:
Study support activities, giving a wide range of things to do for pupils before and after school and in lunchtimes. This might include sports clubs, access to libraries and computer suites, and supervised breakfast and homework clubs.
Widespread community use of the school's facilities, including hiring out premises to voluntary or community groups, and use of specialist facilities like sports halls, art studios, school theatres or drama studios, and science and design technology labs.
Family learning provided through the school, including parenting classes if they are wanted.
34. Many secondary schools will go beyond this, offering comprehensive services including healthcare. There will be 240 "full service" Extended Schools by 2006.
Changing the system to deliver our offer
Better teaching through investing in the workforce
35. Central to improvements in teaching and learning is excellent professional development for all teachers - with more emphasis on classroom observation, practice, training, coaching and mentoring. To build up teachers' demand for high quality training, and encourage them to drive their own development, we will refocus teacher appraisals to become teaching and learning reviews. These will ensure teachers are:
focused on effective classroom practice, using assessment for learning effectively and using a range of teaching styles and strategies appropriately to promote personalised learning;
involved in the professional development that best matches the needs identified by the reviews; and are also offering coaching and mentoring to other teachers where they have the teaching and subject skills from which other teachers can benefit;
rewarded, and make progress in their careers, in ways that fairly reflect their classroom expertise and commitment to their continuing professional development (see box overleaf).
36. We will consult with our partners, including employers, trade unions and headteacher associations, about these proposals, and in due course will make formal submissions to the School Teachers' Review Body.
37. We believe that this better link between development and progression will help to make sure that there is strong demand from teachers and schools for high-quality development. We will also do more to make sure that there is a good supply of training and other professional development opportunities available to teachers, and have asked the Teacher Training Agency to take on a new role in co-ordinating their supply.
Teachers' TV
38. We will also launch, in early 2005, a new digital TV channel - Teachers' TV - which will be dedicated to sharing good practice, inspiring and giving insight, and helping professionals learn from each other. In a pilot of the channel, 90% of the test audience said they would watch the channel; 86% said that TV was better than any other medium for receiving training; and 88% said that the channel was effective at sharing best practice.
Workforce Reform
39. As well as improving teachers' training and development, we will continue to reform the workforce by building on our two national agreements with our employer and union workforce partners. The process of partnership and dialogue with employers and organisations representing teachers and support staff has resulted in a ground-breaking workforce agreement, and subsequent agreements on reforming the teachers' pay scale. We are committed to building on these strong relationships in taking forward our programme for workforce reform.
A New Teacher Professionalism
These changes will usher in a new professionalism for teachers, in which career progression and financial rewards will go to those who are making the biggest contributions to improving pupil attainment, those who are continually developing their own expertise, and those who help to develop expertise in other teachers. There are already four main stages in the career ladder for teachers, and we will build professional development into each one. We want to see:
Teachers on the main pay scale aiming to cross the pay 'threshold' by getting Senior Teacher status. Getting this status would depend on evidence, assessed independently by other professionals from other schools, that the teacher has developed their professional expertise in the classroom, has been open to and has benefited from coaching and mentoring, has added value in terms of pupils' rate of learning, and has taken independent action to develop themselves professionally, both in school and beyond it.
For senior teachers, pay progression on the upper pay scale will depend on demonstrating that they have both developed themselves professionally, and that they are providing regular coaching and mentoring to less expert teachers.
For our most experienced classroom teachers (who have reached the new point 3 of the upper pay scale), the chance to work towards Excellent Teacher Status. This would depend on showing that they have developed themselves professionally; provided regular coaching and mentoring of other teachers; and undertaken an appropriate programme ofaction research and development.
Beyond this, we hope to see more teachers coming forward to apply for the highly paid Advanced Skills Teacher posts, which will increasingly drive improvements in subject teaching across our school system.
Some teachers will progress more quickly than others up this career ladder.
40. The pay and workforce reforms are ensuring that classroom teachers get the right support from a more widely drawn school team, and are fairly rewarded for what they do. They are boosting recruitment to teaching while also bringing in tens of thousands of other highly skilled and trained adults. The reforms are ensuring a more personalised approach to pupils' learning, offering them extra enrichment activities, helping schools with marking and display, and supporting teachers so that they have more time to teach. There are more adults working beyond the classroom too, including in pastoral and administrative roles. In the next phase, schools will want to take the reforms even further, particularly as they pursue opportunities to become extended schools.
41. Our continuing work will include:
the growth of diverse routes into teaching, including a substantial increase in Graduate Teacher Programme numbers. This programme - currently supporting over 5,500 trainee teachers directly employed by schools - has extended the important role of school partnership and leadership in initial teacher training. This and other on-the-job programmes (like TeachFirst, the Overseas Trained Teacher Programme and the Registered Teacher Programme) put schools centre-stage in selecting, recruiting and training new teachers.
the extension of workforce remodelling to bring in a yet wider range of adults, working in and beyond the classroom, including where schools decide to take up extended school opportunities.
the increase of undergraduate volunteering, including through the growth of the Student Associate Scheme.
Leadership
42. The quality of school leadership remains acritical determinant of the success of each school in raising pupil attainment. The programmes of the National College for School Leadership are already helping to ensure that we have the best prepared, best developed, highest quality school leaders our system has ever had. Over 12,000 headteachers and aspiring headteachers have taken the new National Professional Qualification for Headship. There are nearly 2,000 subject leaders on the "Leading from the Middle" programme, and over 1,000 experienced headteachers on NCSL's Leadership Programme for Serving Headteachers. 1,100 bursars have been trained on the Certificate of School Business Management. Following the recent independent review, we will help the National College strengthen its position as a strategically focused, powerful hub of school leadership, supporting our overall strategy.
43. Chapter 9 sets out our overarching strategy for building the capacity of the workforce in education and children's services as a whole.
Timetable for Change
Taken together, our reforms mean that:
Now, in 2004:
Standards in secondary schools are continuing to rise
We will begin work to look at the curriculum for 11-13 year olds in the wake of Mike Tomlinson's report
School attendance is rising and truancy has fallen - 1,300 former truants are back in school every day since last year
98% of secondary schools have broadband
By 2008:
We will have met our target for 85% of 14year olds to achieve level 5 or above in English, maths and ICT, and 80 percent in science and sustained that performance
In all schools, at least 50 percent of pupils will reach that level in English, maths and science - so no school drops below this minimum
The review of the Key Stage 3 curriculum will have been completed, and be beginning to be implemented
All schools will be offering some extended services, and there will be at least 240 full service extended schools
There will have been noticeable reductions in the levels of poor behaviour in schools, in teachers' fear of attack and in the number of exclusions
School absence will be reduced by 8percent compared to 2003
Our Long Term Aim
Seamless transition from primary to secondary school
Secondary school standards continuing to rise, closing the gap as teachers improve their teaching to meet the needs of all
Behaviour in secondary schools no longer a concern for parents or teachers, and absence from school in term time other than for sickness exceptional
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