School Improvement Priorities

School improvement priorities

Following the school’s Ofsted grading of Requires improvement in the Spring term of 2023 and a new leadership team being in place from September 2023, a two year school improvement plan to cover the academic years 2023-2025 has been put into place. This improvement plan includes four school improvement priorities as detailed below:

1) To promote and develop high levels of progress and attainment in phonics, early reading, reading throughout the school and vocabulary development

It is our mission to ensure that every child at Swallow Dell becomes a fluent and successful reader.

Rationale

There is a huge raft of research that shows the impact that success in early reading can have in future life – particularly as a predictor of future academic success and as a building block for social mobility. This is widely discussed in the DfE’s July 2021, Teaching the foundations of literacy, Reading Framework.

To teach word reading and spelling successfully, teachers need to understand the principles underpinning the teaching of word reading (decoding) and spelling (encoding). This should include understanding how the alphabetic code of English represents the sounds (phonemes) of the language with single letters and groups of letters (graphemes). These principles underpin phonics teaching and from September 2021 there was an expectation that schools should have a full systematic, synthetic phonics programme implemented. This programme should:

Be sequential and match or exceed the aims of the national curriculum.
Run from the start of reception
Provide reading books for children to practice reading that are sequenced and show a cumulative progression in phonics knowledge. Staff should use these books in a way that allows children sufficient time to read and re-read books that match the grapheme-phoneme correspondences they know.

Although there are no set expectations on which SSP programme a school can use, the DfE provide a list of approved SSP programmes which meet the expectations. From September 2023, children at Swallow Dell will be taught phonics and early reading through one of these approved SSP programmes – Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised.

The effective implementation of this programme, in order to develop progress for children in phonics and early reading, is of the highest priority for the school. This will form stage one of this priority. The second stage is a focus on developing the wider reading curriculum for all children. This is to include a focus on ensuring stories, poems, rhymes and non-fiction are chosen for reading to develop pupils’ vocabulary, language comprehension and love of reading.

Success Criteria

Stage one

All staff and the school as a whole are determined that every pupil will learn to read, regardless of background or starting points and there is an expectation that all pupils, including the weakest readers, make sufficient progress to meet or exceed age-related expectations.
All staff have sufficient expertise in the teaching of phonics and reading through high quality CPD.
Resources to teach the school’s chosen SSP programme (Little Wandle) have been appropriately selected, prepared and organised to support implementation of the programme.
The school’s chosen SSP programme (Little Wandle) is fully implemented in line with its intent.
Outcomes in year 1 phonics screening check are above national expectations.
Ongoing assessment of phonics progress is sufficiently frequent and:
Any child who is falling behind the learning in the programme is identified. When this happens, targeted support is immediately given (keep up).
any child who is significantly behind the learning in the programme is identified. Intensive and targeted support is immediately given (catch up or SEND support).

Stage two

A long-term curriculum overview for reading maps out the progression in key learning for all year groups. This also maps out the stories, poems and non-fiction used in teaching reading for every year group.
Stories, poems and non-fiction used in teaching reading for every year group are carefully selected based on exposure to a diverse range of text types, content and authors.
Reading areas in classrooms are appealing and support children’s interest in reading.
Children are given regular opportunity to enjoy reading for pleasure.
Ongoing assessment of reading progress is sufficiently frequent throughout the school and children who are falling behind are identified and targeted support given. This includes a focus on reading fluency.
Outcomes in year 6 reading are above national expectations.

2) To ensure that the intent of the school curriculum is ambitious in its expectations and that it clearly maps out progression in knowledge, skills and vocabulary for all subjects and learning from Nursery through to year 6

Rationale

Swallow Dell’s most recent Ofsted inspection from March 2023 identified that “In most subjects, the curriculum does not set out the order and detail of the content to be learned. Consequently, the curriculum pupils experience does not build towards proficiency in these subjects. Leaders need to identify and sequence the important information that pupils will learn.”

In addition, this report also identified that “opportunities to develop independence and confidence in learning are not maximised. The Early Years is not as effective as it should be in preparing children for KS1”

Both of these areas of improvement come back to their being a need for a detailed schema that maps the key learning out from the moment children start Swallow Dell in Nursery until the moment children leave at the end of year 6. This starts with building on the national curriculum and a significant amount of “mapping” out of subjects in order to ensure that all children enjoy depth and breadth of learning in all subjects during their time at Swallow Dell.

The school and all staff are now highly ambitious in what children can achieve and updates to the school curriculum will help to match this ambition and will help to ensure that the school moves on from another of Ofsted’s findings – “Pupils do not learn as well as they could because leaders’ ambition for them is not high enough.”

Success Criteria

All school staff are ambitious and have high expectations of what children can achieve.
Learning across year groups is clearly mapped out in long term curriculum overviews which lay out the content of sequential learning from nursery through to year 6.
The learning in these long term curriculum overviews matches up to National Curriculum expectations.
Knowledge and skills learning sequences are broken down in these long term curriculum overviews so it is clear what is being learned in each year group
In these long term curriculum overviews there is clear sequencing of vocabulary, knowledge and skills between year groups.
In these overviews, connections to prior and next learning are clear
It is clear how assessment is used to support learning in these overviews.
It is clear how learning for those who are falling behind (including SEND) is supported.
Wider curriculum enrichment opportunities are included in long term overviews (these may include external visitors, visits, artefacts and other resources).
Parents know how to support children in learning for the subject and tools exist for this (e.g. website links)

3) To ensure that the implementation of the school curriculum is of a consistently high standard, including the use of small steps teaching and effective assessment from Nursery through to year 6 across all subjects.

Rationale

School improvement priority two relates very much to curriculum intent and curriculum plans. This school improvement priority relates to effective high quality implementation of those plans.

In the most recent Ofsted inspection it was identified that this was not delivered at a high enough standard:

“Teachers do not all have the confidence or subject knowledge to deliver the curriculum effectively. As a result, some teaching does not help pupils to understand and remember. Some pupils do not make the progress that they could. Leaders must provide teachers with the training and support they need to teach the curriculum well” and “Assessment processes are not consistent. This means that leaders do not have an accurate view of how well the curriculum is supporting pupils to know and remember the intended knowledge. Leaders should develop assessment systems that help them identify how effectively the curriculum is being implemented so that they know how well the children are learning and can identify where changes may be required”.

There is a wealth of research that details the impact of high quality teaching for children. One such review (Hanushek and Rivkin, 2010) suggests that if we divided teachers into quartiles (i.e. four equal-sized batches) of quality, then pupils taught by the most effective 25 per cent of teachers would make more than twice as much progress each year than those taught by the least effective 25 per cent. High-quality teaching has a long-term positive effect on pupils’ life chances, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

A key element of the schools approach to implementation will be built around The Multi-store Theory of Memory (Atkinson and Shiffrin,1968) and a small steps approach to teaching and learning. This ties closely into the belief that “learning can be defined as an alteration in long-term memory. If nothing has altered in long-term memory, nothing has been learned” (Ofsted 2019).

In addressing both the intent and implementation there will be a starting point from which children can make sustained, long lasting learning.

Success Criteria

There are CPD opportunities for staff to develop their skills and subject knowledge for the subject (including support staff where necessary).
All children have access to the curriculum and quality first teaching is the aim for all children.
Lessons are taught according to expectations (e.g. weekly, twice weekly etc.)
Teachers “teach what is on the plans”
Teachers make use of resources that support learning.
Small steps are taken within lessons to break the learning of skills and knowledge down into small chunks. This is supported by high level questioning.
All learners are supported – scaffolding and opportunities for depth of learning are used when required.
Work that children complete supports the ambitions of the curriculum
Recording of learning promotes basic skills learning (core reading, writing and maths skills) and presentation is of a high standard.
Teachers use assessment of learning (e.g. marking and lesson reflections) to adapt overviews and sequences of lessons.
Marking follows the school policy.
Teachers make robust assessments of children’s learning and use this to identify gaps and inform next steps.
Adaptations are used to support children who find it most difficult to learn (e.g. SEND) to be successful.
Assessment as learning is used throughout teaching and learning process (e.g. quizzes)
Children make good or better progress from their starting points across the curriculum.
Attainment in national assessments (Early years GLD, Year 1 phonics, Year 4 MTC and Year 6 SATs) is at least in line with national expectations.

4) To regularly review school systems in order to support and reduce unnecessary teacher and staff workload

Rationale

The working Lives of Teachers report (DfE, 2023), details that the average full time teacher in England works for 51.9 hours a week. On average, the number of teaching hours was a week was only 22.4 hours. In this report, two-thirds of teachers (66%) reported that they spent over half of their working time on tasks other than teaching. Around half of all teachers also said that data recording, inputting, and analysis, behaviour and incident follow up, individual lesson planning, and marking took up ‘too much’ of their time.

It is clear from this and in the current contextual challenge of both recruiting and retaining high quality staff that workload for staff should be a high priority for Swallow Dell. This is particularly relevant given the need for school improvement changes in order for the school to make progress following its “requires improvement” Ofsted grading.

School improvement and particularly changes to school curriculum can cause increased workload for staff – especially for those with leadership roles including subject leadership. With this in mind, all school improvement actions will consider the model below. With the aim that actions fall into the lower right segment – high impact for low time/effort.

Success Criteria

Staff feel valued and have their voices heard
School improvement actions do not create unnecessary workload for staff.
School systems are regularly reviewed and any areas which have low impact on children but high time/energy output from staff are improved and/or amended.
The school’s marking policy and other assessment systems are efficient and do not create an unnecessary workload.
Expectations on amount of learning laid out as curriculum intent is realistic and the school timetable supports delivery of this.
Key tasks and deadlines for staff are communicated well in advance and the school year is organised to a high degree.
Lines of communication are open and clear between all layers of school staff.