The Cambridge Primary Review Trust

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The call of the wild

So at last what many of us have instinctively understood is backed by evidence from England’s largest outdoor learning project. The weight of evidence is compelling. A hefty 95 percent of children surveyed said outdoor learning makes lessons more enjoyable, 90 percent said they felt happier and 72 percent said that they got on better with others.

These findings are from the four year Natural Connections Demonstration project to help over 40,000 primary and secondary school children – particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds – from 125 urban and rural schools to experience the benefits of the natural environment by empowering teachers, who often lack confidence in teaching outside, to use the outdoors to support everyday learning.

93 percent of schools said outdoor learning improves pupils’ social skills, 92 percent said it improves pupils’ health and wellbeing and engages them with learning, and 82 percent saw a positive impact on behaviour.

The evidence for teachers is impressive too. 79 percent of teachers surveyed said outdoor learning had a positive impact on their teaching practice, 69 percent said it had a positive impact on their professional development, 72 percent said outdoor learning improved their health and wellbeing and 69 percent said it had a positive impact on their job satisfaction.

But with evidence from the Monitoring of Engagement with Natural Environment (MENE) survey that only 8 percent of children (aged 6-15) in England visited the natural environment with their schools in an average month during 2013-2015, there is a real need to change perceptions about the value of outdoor learning. A blog from Natural England’s Principal Adviser for Outdoor Learning, Jim Burt, on Busting the myths on outdoor learning in schools goes a long way towards removing the barriers. For me, it’s the final myth ‘unless we can show outdoor learning has an impact on exam results we won’t be able to convince schools’ that will have the most traction with school leaders. Jim Burt writes

Obviously attainment is critical. Even in the relatively short time frame of the project, nearly 57 per cent of schools reported a positive impact on attainment that they felt was attributable to outdoor learning. Much higher percentages of teachers reported positive impacts on the other areas such as a child’s engagement and their motivation to learn, commenting that these underpinned academic performance. This reflects a growing body of evidence highlighting the important contribution that personal attributes such as resilience, self-esteem and self-efficacy make to a child’s overall performance.

These findings chime well with the CPRT aims relating to those individual qualities and capacities which schools should foster and build upon in every child, and which infuse the work of some of CPRT’s alliance schools. Making the most of outdoor learning opportunities, children from The Spinney Primary School, Cambridge, regularly enjoy play based learning in their little Wild Wood whilst children from Shrubland Street Primary School, Leamington Spa make the most of their playground whilst also regularly visiting their local green spaces.

The Natural Connections Demonstration Project enabled the participating teachers and their schools to make the most of their local outdoors. Environment Minister Rory Stewart said

What’s clever about this project is it listens to teachers, it works with the grain of an individual school, and it works out how to get children into the outdoors while improving their curriculum experience.

All teachers and school leaders can benefit from the project’s learning. Published this week, a teacher’s guide Transforming Outdoor Learning in Schools-Lessons from the Natural Connections Demonstration Project features teachers and pupils across the project talking about the benefits the project brought to their school, alongside practical advice on how teachers can successfully embed outdoor learning in their school.

Speaking at Wallscourt Farm Academy, Bristol, at the launch of the project’s findings, Natural England’s Chairman, Andrew Sells said

The Natural Connections project has empowered teachers to make the most of what’s right on their doorstep and helped children experience the joy of the natural environment. It’s brought a real culture change into schools, making learning in the outdoors a regular part of school life – and it’s inspiring to see children more engaged with learning and happier and healthier as a result.

With such a mandate as educators, and particularly at this time when primary schools in England are spending increasing time and energy on preparing their children to meet the new standards in reading, writing and mathematics, let’s consider the importance with which some countries with high ranking education systems treat outdoor learning. See Jim Burt’s blog yesterday Are we at the turning point for outdoor learning? With such a groundswell of evidence, how can one afford to resist the call of the wild?

For other CPRT blogs by Marianne Cutler click here.

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Life after levels

Since September 2015, national curriculum levels are no longer being used for statutory assessments in schools in England. Schools are now required to develop new approaches to their own in-school assessment and this provides welcome opportunities for evolving purposeful assessment. But for many schools, gearing up for life after levels involves a step change in approach, and the challenges should not be underestimated.

The final report of the Commission on Assessment without Levels (September 2015)  reminds us of the principles and purposes of assessment: (i) in-school formative assessment, (ii) in-school summative assessment and (iii) nationally standardised summative assessment. The report provides helpful guidance on writing school assessment policies, and raises important questions for teachers and school leaders when they consider data collection and reporting – what uses the assessments are intended to support, the quality of the assessment information, the frequency for collecting and reporting, and the time required to record the information – noting that much of teachers’ time that could be better spent in classrooms is unnecessarily taken up with data management systems. I am sure we could all agree with that.

Of course for many schools, meaningful assessment has been a priority for a long time. Iain Erskine, principal at Fulbridge Academy, a CPRT alliance school, provided some detail on their approaches to assessment in his February blog  and vice principal, Ben Erskine, has expanded on this for their approach to science:

Children pursue and investigate projects each term that are linked to the topic theme they are studying. Each project has realistic and creative links that allow for opportunities to apply their learning in a real sense, learn the science involved, use their enquiry skills, as well as having some kind of design and technology element. At Fulbridge we teach science and technology as one lesson twice a week. Each term has either a biology, chemistry or physics focus and within this focus, the scientific enquiry and the design and technology curriculum areas are taught. Children are then assessed each term against the areas of science (and technology) that has been covered and their confident use of scientific and technical language.

The approach at Fulbridge chimes with the Nuffield Foundation’s Developing policy, principles and practice in primary school science assessment report in 2012, which was led by Professor Wynne Harlen and sets out a proposed framework for the assessment of science in primary schools. The framework (illustrated as a pyramid model on page 21) describes how evidence of pupils’ attainment should be collected, recorded, communicated and used. The report details how assessment data can be optimised for different uses and outlines the support needed to implement the procedures.

So what could this look like in practice? A follow-on initiative, the Teacher Assessment in Primary Science (TAPS) project is taking place from 2013 – 2016. TAPS is funded by the Primary Science Teaching Trust (PSTT) and is based at Bath Spa University, which co-hosts CPRT’s south-west regional network. This initiative has developed the pyramid model for the flow of assessment information through a school and operationalised it into a whole school self-evaluation tool to support schools in identifying strengths and weaknesses in their assessment systems, and to provide an exemplified model of good practice.

Sarah Earle, TAPS project lead, comments:

Schools working with the TAPS team have stepped back from tracking systems to look at what would make a difference to children’s learning. They have explored a wide range of ways to elicit, focus and record children’s ideas to develop more valid assessments, and have taken part in moderating discussions to support reliability of teacher assessment. These discussions need to continue to support a shared understanding across the school, with both a new curriculum and new assessment guidance – in the form of the interim teacher assessment framework for 2015-16 at the end of Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. Most subject leaders are endeavouring to maintain a focus on working scientifically and on assessment for learning rather than being driven by tracking systems.

Sarah shared some case studies from this project in an article ‘An exploration of whole-school assessment systems’ published in the January/February edition of Primary Science. The case studies described different approaches to assessment but identified a shared number of features of good practice: assessment is embedded in the planning process; children are encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning; assessment is ongoing; and there is a clear understanding of ‘what good science looks like’ across the school.

For example, a key focus for assessment at Northbury Primary School is the elicitation of children’s ideas. Units of work are in outline form, each beginning and ending with a thought shower which allows both children and teachers to see progress at the end of the unit, but perhaps more importantly this gives the teacher a starting point for planning. Detailed plans are not completed in advance which allows lessons to take into account initial questions raised by the children and their starting points. This is particularly important as pupil mobility is high.

Assistant Northbury headteacher and science co-ordinator, Kulvinder Johal, comments:

The TAPS pyramid model has been useful from its inception. The first draft, which I was privy too, helped me to gauge what we were doing well and where our gaps were. The gaps will vary from school to school as we are all strong in different areas. Our gap was in identifying next steps in learning. Coupled with some of the key messages from the Ofsted Maintaining curiosity: science education in schools 2013 report , I realised we needed to set science targets for our pupils, much as we did and do in literacy and numeracy. Now our pupils have science targets that they work towards and that they assess themselves against. Having made progress in this area, we then returned to the TAPS pyramid to see where our focus should be and we realised we needed to do more moderating of science work and so we are beginning to address this issue. The TAPS pyramid leads us to better practice, improvements and new challenges, and is a really useful working document.

Shaw CE Primary School has also used the TAPS pyramid model as a focus for improving their approach to assessment as Carol Sampey, Deputy Head and Fellow of the PSTT, notes:

It has been good to be one of the 12 schools who have worked together with Bath Spa to help develop this tool. In my school, we have discussed what good assessment for learning looks like and last year we used the TAPS pyramid as a generic teaching and learning tool when doing lesson observations. Our view was that if teachers were aware of and then incorporating the ongoing formative assessment strategies in all of their teaching, learning would improve across the board.  Teachers found this helpful and these strategies became a focus of performance management last year. Practice has improved as a result. It has also been helpful in making our teachers more aware of how to involve the pupils in self – assessment. A next step is to begin to use the TAPS pyramid as a resource tool – to try out focus assessment tasks and to look at what other schools have been doing. I am also going to introduce the TAPS pyramid to other schools in our science cluster.

This is an encouraging picture, and for these schools there certainly is life after levels, and not just for science. Since the TAPS pyramid is based on good practice in formative assessment, then many of the examples, such as peer assessment, are relevant across the primary curriculum. The structure could be used for any system of teacher assessment where validity is supported by using a range of information from the classroom and reliability is supported by moderating discussions.

There will be many different approaches to assessment by primary schools across the country in making the most of the opportunities presented by the removal of levels. Sharing ideas, plans and best practice at this time is particularly helpful, and I invite you to share these through CPRT and elsewhere.

Marianne Cutler is Co-Director of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust and Director of Curriculum Innovation at the Association for Science Education.

Assessment reform is one of CPRT’s eight priorities.  CPRT encourages approaches to assessment ‘that enhance learning as well as test it, that support rather than distort the curriculum and that pursue standards and quality in all areas of learning, not just the core subjects.’

See also CPRT’s research report and briefing Assessment, Standards and Quality of Learning in Primary Education by Wynne Harlen (2014)

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Primary science: the poor relation?

We are reminded by Ofsted of the qualities of an effective science education in their 2013 report Maintaining Curiosity, where the best science teaching observed

  • was driven by determined subject leadership that put scientific enquiry at the heart of science teaching and coupled it with substantial expertise in how pupils learn science
  • set out to sustain pupils’ natural curiosity, so that they were eager to learn the subject content as well as develop the necessary investigative skills
  • was informed by accurate and timely assessment of how well pupils were developing their understanding of science concepts, and their skills in analysis and interpretation so that teaching could respond to and extend pupils’ learning.

But regrettably not all primary schools, and probably not even the majority, are offering this quality of experience to their children regularly. The reasons are well documented in the Wellcome Trust’s 2014 report Primary Science: is it missing out?, and the CBI’s Tomorrow’s World: inspiring primary scientists in 2015. At the heart of this lie issues of leadership and accountability. Taking the pressure off science by the removal of statutory tests at the end of primary education in England in 2009 was a move generally welcomed by the science community to address concerns that science teaching had become defined and restricted by those tests. But it resulted in leaders taking broadly two different approaches to science.

Some enthusiastically embraced the new opportunities and freedom to enrich their pupils’ science experience, particularly through practical, enquiry-led teaching.

Others – often those in leadership positions – disappointingly perceived science as less important than the other core subjects of English and mathematics; a tendency noted in the Cambridge Primary Review’s final report. This situation continues today in many schools. In over half the schools visited in Ofsted’s 2013 review, the leaders ‘no longer saw science as a priority’ and its status has declined visibly. In those schools, science has become the poor relation.

This results in an all too familiar picture in these schools: a lack of planning for learning, unclear ideas about what achievement looks like that can be shared and understood by children, inadequate monitoring of the quality of science teaching and a lack of time and resources allocated to it, and little commitment to subject-focused professional development.

Whilst whole school priorities as a focus for professional development are important, research in 2014 by the Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education indicates that pupils are more likely to benefit from subject focused professional development because it changes teachers’ practices by making links between professional learning and pupil learning explicit. This is particularly relevant to primary science where teachers frequently report that they lack confidence in their science subject knowledge to be able to provide their children with the inspirational experience that they seek. The number of primary teachers who may describe themselves in this way is potentially very large – estimates from the Campaign for Science and Engineering in 2015 indicate that only 5% of primary teachers have a science related degree – and for these teachers (in post and in initial teacher education), opportunities to engage with subject-focused professional development will be particularly important and valued. This is especially significant while the new curriculum in England is being implemented, with its increased emphasis on working scientifically, and on different types of enquiry with which teachers are not yet familiar.

This is not a time to be complacent. Putting efforts into planning an effective, rich and actively engaging primary science curriculum that embraces working scientifically – with opportunities to develop, use and apply children’s mathematical and literacy knowledge and skills at its core – will pay dividends. Research by King’s College London’s Aspires project reported in 2013 that by the time young people reach secondary school, they may already have disengaged with science.

But let’s not forget that science is in a strong position, with a vibrant community that offers a vast range of opportunities for leaders and teachers to take charge of their own professional learning journey and to make the most of primary science in their schools. More than any other subject, science has supporters in industry, charitable foundations and learned societies, all keen to help teachers to make primary science a stimulating and rewarding experience for all children. These opportunities include enrichment initiatives from the Royal Society partnership grants and the British Science Association, membership of the Association for Science Education (ASE), professional development through the National Science Learning Network, recognition of one’s own achievements through Chartered Science Teacher (CSciTeach) or the Primary Science Teacher Awards, and the achievements of your school through Primary Science Quality Mark (PSQM).

Taking advantage of these opportunities, there are numerous examples of inspirational science taking place across the country, commonly supported and championed by strong and insightful leaders who recognise the value of reflective professional development and the opportunities to learn from, and contribute to, the many thriving networks of those who are passionate about primary science – including members of CPRT’s Schools Alliance – and who understand the important contribution of science to wider school priorities, culture and ethos.

Cathy Dean, assistant headteacher at Queen Edith Primary School in Cambridge, a member of CPRT’s Schools Alliance with Gold PSQM, comments

‘Queen Edith was motivated to work towards PSQM because of the range of science already being completed in school and we felt that this should be celebrated. The year we completed the PSQM coincided with a Science and Technology Learning Saturday. For this event a working group helped to recruit members of the local community (including parents, university staff and other professionals) to come in and run workshops throughout the day for children and their parents.

We had a very positive response from children, parents and volunteers, and have then used some of those links to enrich our curriculum for future teaching. Completing the PSQM allowed the science subject leader to dedicate time to think about resources and teaching of science in the school and how this could be enhanced. Resources were reorganised and distributed, allowing science lessons to be practical and exciting. Staff meeting time was also dedicated to enhancing the science curriculum. It allowed the science subject leader to work closely with science leaders from other schools, enabling them to share ideas, resources and contacts.’

For this school, and many others, science is certainly not the poor relation.

Marianne Cutler is Co-Director of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust and  Director of Curriculum Innovation at the Association for Science Education.

We’d like to hear from you about the place of science education in your school. Has the new curriculum fostered a different approach? Have you taken advantage of some of the opportunities mentioned here (or any others) to develop your school’s expertise in science education? Please let us know your experience by commenting below.

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Cambridge Primary Review Trust - Email: administrator@cprtrust.org.uk