Why curriculum and resources hamper creativity and attainment

In 2015, I wrote my first article for LinkedIn about curriculum changes in the UK. Almost a decade later, I thought I would revisit - having spent time in the UAE, India, Kosovo, Saudi Arabia and China - and been through a 3 year pandemic. Time to reflect.

In September 2014, the government removed level descriptors from the National Curriculum in the UK. Although many teachers welcomed this change, one major question remained: how should schools now measure student progress in a way that can be demonstrated to inspectors, parents and students? Inspectors were speaking about consistency and testing that is benchmarked to record achievement, SATS, National tests etc.

Measuring progress

This provided the opportunity for schools to develop their own methods of measuring pupil progress. National Curriculum Levels were not very good at helping parents know how well the pupil is improving. With levels removed and the focus now on raising the achievement of every pupil, schools could choose whatever measure of pupil attainment and progress they feel is most appropriate.

An example of the confusion caused by levels -in English, students’ overall level was an aggregate of reading, writing, and speaking and listening. Because students could write for example an effective PEE (point, evidence, explanation) paragraph and deliver a persuasive speech, they could achieve a Level 5c although they may have very little grasp of their own syntax or sentence control. This provided challenges for teachers as the levels just didn’t accurately reflect on the students attainment. So many resources were developed to help teachers, and lesson plans, starter, middle and plenary for example.

Benchmarking

Whatever day-to-day assessment system schools opt for, there was a need for pupils to be tested against some form of benchmark during the course of each year. For example, IGCSE, A level, GL progress in Science, Maths, English, SATS ...

What have the students learned?

Schools needed to be able to demonstrate how well their pupils have learned and what progress they were making, ensuring that they are on track to meet expectations and schools need to have a strategy for intervention action if individual pupils are falling behind.

Thus the main rationale for reviewing assessment was:

To best support pupils’ progress, “enabling them to understand how well they are doing and what they need to do to improve.” (OFSTED)

Consistency

One of the biggest challenges that schools began to face was that assessment needed to be consistently delivered across all and within subjects in a common format and framework and that that the assessment was based upon whole-school and subject-specific criteria. It was also critical that any developed assessment policy feeds directly into the school’s tracking system and that additional support was given to the pupils that are identified.

So leadership became involved in strategies...

Any review of assessment strategy had to be agreed by the school senior leadership and taken on board by the school governance. The consultation phase involved middle leaders and learning leaders (pupils). Best practice was perhaps be driven by appointing for example an "assessment working party" to explore what is right for the school with the revised assessment model as an overarching concept - or assessment leaders - eventually teaching and learning leaders . This idea was that this allowed individual departments to take ownership and?encourage creativity and individual approaches using a common language & framework.

But still the curriculum was restrictive and not inclusive - and many students were left behind, particularly bilingual.

So what is the way forward and why do resources and consistency of curriculum delivery hamper student progress?

The first step for empowering creativity is for clarification of curriculum expectations for each year group, dividing each subject into key skill areas. This really needs to be compacted, so that it is understood buy all stakeholders.

These curriculum expectations can be developed into a ladder with 6 mini steps per year. ( curriculum goals - generic learning objectives )

Pupils could be issued with a simple a ‘ladder booklet’, which will enables them to clearly identify their next steps for each new unit of work using ‘I can…’ statements, linked to the chosen curriculum.

Pupils can then be empowered to creatively achieve these objectives, providing evidence of learning. They will be able to identify their progress and personal targets accurately allowing them to personally identify areas for improvement and?thus taking ownership for their own learning journey.

In this way, progress can be tracked on an individual basis.

Teachers will be able to access real-time assessment tracking information through the development of a school tracking system based on these ladders. Text books become a resource, with the students driving their learning. The use of standardised textbooks, exercises, tests act as a de-motivator as the author does not know the students an d in most cases, the exercised are identified as 'boring' by the students.

Indeed with this proposal, the progress can be shared with parents, by sharing real evidence of learning and they can add the missing link to motivation for learning.

Examples of individualised progress

The lower rungs on each ladder would show the school's expectations of pupils for example in year 1; the top rungs would indicate the expectations of pupils for example in year 13. Irrespective of curriculum origin, British, Cambridge, American.... It doesn't matter as it will be the learning that counts.

Thus lessons can be planned individually based on student start points on the ladder using different learning objectives and outcomes expected. In one class you will typically have students below, meeting and above expectations.

Pupil involvement in identifying?their start point is important in order to develop a clear understanding of their own learning journey

Tracking allows teachers to monitor achievements of all pupils and identify pupils working above or below expectations in any given area of the school curriculum.

As each pupil masters a skill outlined in a ladder, the achievement can be recorded on a school based tracking system.

So for example, if a pupil in year 5 has the skills or knowledge expected of a child in year 6, the teacher can plan appropriate learning objectives based on where the child is and the next step in learning.

Cohort planning within a class may mean that different individuals in the class could be working on 3, 4 or more learning objectives.

Expectations for year 6 can also be introduced for the more gifted pupils.

As progress on any learning journey is often non-linear, a child meeting or exceeding expectations in one key area may be working towards or meeting expectations in another.

Recording pupils' achievements in class

Pupils will have ladder booklets for each subject and skill area.

Thus the learning focus may be chunked into 6 weeks and in best practice personalised to each student.

• During a lesson, children can self-assess and peer-assess against the expectations and track progress in a student friendly format developed by the school / grade level.
• Mastery could perhaps result from an expectation self-assessed, peer assessed and the teachers signature one to three times, thus giving the teacher confidence the pupil can perform that skill unaided.
• This approach would also enable pupils to master curriculum content and monitor their own progress and set their own targets.

Benefits include?intrinsic motivation?as the pupil has explicit information on which area they are working on and moving towards in each area of the curriculum at any given point.

The pupils' ladders?do not relate to year levels, but levels of learning.

Benefits of tracking progress over time

The tracking data enables schools to review each pupil's progress every 6 weeks by looking that the proportion of age-related expectations that have been met in each area of the curriculum.

Thus for example a Primary curriculum expectation may be that students should make 6 mini steps progress per year, measure from the learning ladder start point.

This makes it easy to establish the proportion of pupils in each class who are 'working towards', 'meeting' or 'exceeding' age-related expectations in each area of the curriculum.

This also enables the leadership to make horizontal and vertical comparisons relate it to the quality of teaching and learning, and any intervention strategies that have been introduced, and their impact.

Sharing with parents

In addition schools will have the capability of providing each parent with a summative judgement on their child's progress indicating whether child is 'working towards', 'meeting' or 'exceeding' age-related expectations. The written report can perhaps outline each pupil’s major achievements and identify specific areas for development. At the end of the year, the school could provide each parent with a summative judgement on their child's progress over the whole year.

Parents are also able to support pupils' learning at home by sharing the learning ladders on the schools website.

Fewer assessments and more progress

Philosophically, this approach lends itself to fewer assessments, more progress as learning is continuous and at any time, a child, teacher or parent knows where the child is. And indeed it unleashes creativity.

Summative attainment assessments, which are standardised can be used as check points validating attainment against international benchmarks.

Planning for outstanding learning

In order to ensure that the ladder is not just a stepped linear approach, using Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy in the planning stages can provide a coherent whole-school language / framework for assessment.

Thus Blooms language can be incorporated into grade descriptors. Using a common hierarchy of thinking skills based on Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy and Bloom’s action words. The assessment strategy can identify assessment, common elements eg. Numeracy, literacy, language, cross-curricular with an assessment calendar.

So how does a learning ladder work?

Teachers construct learning ladders in the planning stages ensuring steps are objective driven, short, discrete, and qualitative, progressively challenging and contain a concrete description of what a pupil is expected to know and be able to do.

Learning ladders can then be used as a basis for creating differentiated success criteria and also planning interim formative assessments, periodic reviews of learning, summative assessments, and pupil choice in their learning by establishing where they are on the journey and also pupils developing their own snapshot their progress.

Pupils are able to refer to higher steps of the ladder to identify their next steps for progression via self-review, peer assessment, cooperative learning or teacher led activities.

Opportunities exist to share snapshots with parents/carers through reporting, subject evenings, email, text, online reporting and the school website.

Parents/carers know next steps & therefore how to support progress

Students monitoring their own progress

Using a different colour pen (green?), pupils can be asked as part of the teaching and learning process, to reflect on their work by engaging in an ongoing dialogue with peers and teacher on how to further improve work and make progress with the pen colour allowing easy identification of reflection to be tracked, It also allows strengths and improvements to be easily monitored.

Flexibility

• Ladders can be used for individual lessons (as success criteria),?interim formative assessment period reviews of learning and summative (end of topic) assessments
• Teachers can modify lessons and future ladders and planning according to progress made by pupils.
• They can specifically focus on one aspect/step with issues addressed by the whole class or individually.
• The ladders should offer the full range of steps to cater for the ability range of the group taught in the particular class thus should be inclusive.
• Each step should be achievable and ambitious in order to extend the child’s learning.
• The vertically arrangement of the ladders allows progression and vertical articulation for planners with each step become progressively more challenging.

Use of external data to identify progress potential and start points

Reasoning ability (CAT 4)

Used by more than 50 per cent of UK secondary schools, CAT4 measures the four main types of reasoning ability that are known to make a difference to learning and achievement.

The resulting data can be used to identify a pupil’s strengths, weaknesses and learning preferences, providing accurate and reliable information for teaching and learning, all benchmarked against the national averages and assists the teachers in establishing student start points and set realistic targets and setting achievable but challenging targets and identifying intervention strategies is progress is less than expected.

CAT4 results also include statistically reliable indicators for a pupil’s future results at the end of GCSE or A level.

Opportunity

This is now an opportunity for school leaders to replace levels with something that really works well for them and the pupils who attend their schools.

My experience

In my experience, where it has been used, students have been empowered, teaching has been focused on learning, and creativity on how to achieve mastery and high expectations is key.

There is no emphasis on testing but more on authentic evidence of learning.

The strategy was effective throughout the pandemic and for some students it was truly empowering.

With the onset of AI and improved technology - the only difference is that we have better software and students can access content and make it their own much quicker...

I would love to hear your thoughts on minimalising the use of textbooks and slavery towards curriculum

Dr. Tassos Anastasiades 2023