The Scottish Government

« Previous | Contents | Next »

Listen

PERSONAL LEARNING PLAN PROGRAMME: 2002-2004
EVALUATION REPORT

5 THE ' SKILLS FOR LIVING' PHASE

All ten schools involved in this phase of the programme took part in the evaluation. Four were visited and the remaining six took part in telephone interviews. The rationale for the development for this phase of the project is described in section 1.3 of this report and the accompanying templates supporting the PLP process are appended (Appendix C). Separate templates were produced for mid-primary, upper-primary and secondary (S1 - S3) stages.

5.1 The ' Skills for Living' Personal Learning Plan

The first page is entitled 'About Me' with space for the pupil to enter name, address and names of parents or carers. It also requires the pupil to enter attendance percentages for each term and to identify 'the most important thing that I want to achieve at school this year ….' This is followed by a space for 'the most important thing that the school can do for me this year ….' The subsequent introductory page emphasises the whole-of-life relevance of Skills for Living planning. It stresses school, home and community life; and the ideas of identifying, collating and reviewing evidence that demonstrates achievement. Areas where help and further effort are needed are also mentioned.

It is suggested that pupils use a traffic-lighting system to evaluate their skill development :

The five sections about Skills for Living are:

• Personal and learning skills
• Literacy skills
• Numeracy skills
• Coordination and movement skills
• Communication and interpersonal skills.

Each of these main areas is broken down into between three and eight statements against which pupils self-evaluate, using the traffic-lighting system, on a termly basis. These statements are often have several sub-divisions, for example, in the area of literacy the fifth statement is

'I can get ideas across by talking clearly and putting them in a sensible order, or by writing in sections or paragraphs, choosing the best words for my purpose and audience. I can also give an overall opinion or conclusion.'

Pupils are also asked to identify 'things I've done or achieved at school, at home, in clubs or hobbies, or in the community that help' in each of these five areas. A second part of each section has places for teachers to record comments identifying strengths and development needs.

Each section concludes with space for

• Action points agreed between teacher and pupil
• Parent's or carer's comments.

Additionally, for each subject, there is a template to be completed each term that requires up to five learning outcomes to be entered; and progress to be evaluated against these. Next steps are also required. This is followed by a scaled response, identifying good to poor progress, with space for both pupil and teacher to respond. Again, teacher and pupil agree action points and there is a space for parental/carer comment.

The last page of the plan is a note to parents that reiterates several of the introductory messages to pupils. The note recommends that parents or carers should review, discuss and record comment on the document and its action plan to 'ensure that you as a parent have an active involvement in this.'

At the launch of the Skills for Living model in September 2003, staff from participating schools were provided with template plans and they discussed a detailed, step by step guide to implementation produced by the development officers.

5.2 Early Response

As part of an earlier consultation development process with schools, local authorities and higher institutions, a paper identifying cross cutting skills was distributed to a number of officers and academic staff. This had been prepared by an educational consultant, commissioned by the Executive. The rationale for this work was an attempt to streamline the framework for PLPs, removing the repetition, overlap and detail resulting from a subject-based approach:

'An alternative approach is to look across curriculum guidelines for those skills which appear in several aspects of the curriculum and are 'cross-cutting'. This allows pupils and parents as well as teachers of different subjects or teachers who are considering learning in different curriculum areas to think about progress in a more consistent way.' (Draft: Cross-cutting skills for personal learning plans, SEED September 2003)

The derivation of cross-cutting skills drew largely on the 5-14 curriculum, with reference to other frameworks, such as the Key Competences defined by the OECD (2003).

The responses made available to the evaluator include the following critiques.

• Attempts to make the PLP procedure and process more manageable are welcomed.
• The terminology of cross-cutting skills is confusing for pupils, staff and parents. 'Core skills' is a more familiar term. The identification of generic skills should be based on the recognised pre-school curriculum and developed, from here, for the other sectors.
• Development work around the assessment of core skills will be necessary.
• The importance of good practice in learning and teaching, with particular reference to the principles of formative assessment, should provide a secure context for the implementation.
• Any personal learning planning process should include a considerable volume of discussion with young people, to allow them to understand the concepts of core, or cross-cutting, skills; and to enable them to evaluate their achievement.
• The suggested categorisation of skills may not be the most coherent or useful, for example
  • Health education and targets are underemphasised
  • The importance of ICT is underplayed, regardless of whether it is seen as a permeating or separate skill set
  • Literacy is seen as an integral part of 'communication'
  • Creativity, problem-solving and thinking skills are underemphasised.
• The derivation of the skill-set from the 5-14 curriculum may have led to an 'over-compartmentalisation of skills' (Local authority officer). The detail in the different categories seems inconsistent, for example, numeracy appears over-complex for the document's purpose.
• Consideration needs to be given to the links between personal learning planning and other forms of formal planning for teachers - yearly, termly and weekly.
• The use of personal learning plans for children with additional support needs requires particular attention to prevent duplication, overlap, and possibly inconsistency.
• The relationship between PLP and reporting to parents needs consideration.
• Further work is required on language tone and level to make it as appropriate as possible for pupils and parents.
• The potential for charting of development milestones and progression from 2-19 is welcomed.
• There is a need for greater clarity about the role of other agency staff, such as educational psychologists in the personal planning process.
• One local authority advisor considered that the cross-cutting skills approach was helpful in increasing pupil-centred approaches:

  '….it has become clear that we have been driven by 5-14 throughout all of this and not by the needs of the pupil! We have been concentrating on the product and not the individual!.

  I think I am now convinced that the cross-curricular core skills approach is not only more manageable but also addresses all the aspects that we want to cover in a PLP. I can see how it can work for primaries, which was not the case before!'

These comments, largely welcoming, stood in contrast to comment from a group of academics. Their main criticisms related to

'…..such competencies, …lend themselves more to procedures holding teachers accountable for their teaching, rather than being a mechanism to promote learning.'
(Cope et al, 2003)

A perceived competence-based approach, they argued, prevents 'a focus on the holistic needs of each pupil.' Such an approach can lead to functional or instrumental teaching within a PLP, 'reduced to little more than a tick list.' PLPs like this may constrain learning. They contend that teachers would teach directly to the competencies laid out in the document. Such an approach would discourage 'styles of teaching which are often professional responses to social contingencies and heterogeneity.'

This argument serves to highlight deficits which could occur with many models of personal learning planning. These were also stressed by practitioners, both in phase 1 (in which school staff devised their own approaches) and in the more prescriptive phase 2. This critique suggests pitfalls of which many practitioners were aware, or which they discovered in practice and took steps to avoid. The importance of critical but supportive feedback in learning is fundamental; and dialogue between teachers and learners is crucial. These processes were built into the personal learning process by many practitioners in phase 2 and are exemplified in the following commentary.

5.3 Implementation and Management

All ten schools (seven primaries and three secondaries) involved in this phase of development found aspects of their work valuable and interesting. Like the local authority officers, most practitioners welcomed an emphasis on generic skill development and associated planning for progress.

Two major difficulties, however, had been noted by most participating staff. Firstly, the timescale (less than six months) for testing the Skills for Living model had troubled teachers. This was most pronounced in secondary schools, particularly because of wider and demanding developments within the teaching profession. Especially time-consuming for school managers were negotiations related to a new pay and staffing structure (following the 'McCrone' Report of 2000) and major changes within the system of pastoral care.

This difficulty was compounded by the perceived need, from all stages and sectors, to modify, and particularly to reduce, the coverage of the plan:

'….there were too many sub skills within the one skill. This resulted in there being too much for the children to think about at one point, so that is why she (teacher) broke it down. In fact, there were too many skills overall and there is no way a younger child could cope with reflecting on them and evaluating, or even discussing where they were with them all.'
(Headteacher referring to pilot work with primary 3 children)

Several of the primary schools had extracted from the plan a limited set of skills that seemed most apposite for the stage of children they were working with; and for the particular curriculum goals being covered in class. For this group of schools, a summary of work in Atlantic and Pacific primary schools is illustrative.

To test and explore the Skills for Living model in Atlantic PS, eight Primary 3 pupils were selected - 'a mixed ability group' (Headteacher). Both class teacher and headteacher had been involved in developing personal learning planning approaches over the last four years, or so.

The children were extracted from the class and work began with considerable introduction and discussion about concepts of 'skill' and its variety and development:

'She (class teacher) would explain to them what was going to be involved and discuss with them basically what skills were needed in different ranges of activities, in and out of the school. From that she would select a few very important skills that they would focus on.' (Atlantic Headteacher)

Instead of keeping a learning log, or diary, children used 'draw and write' methods and also Dictaphones to record their activities and responses to them.

From the numerous statements under the heading 'Personal and learning skills', six were selected through discussion with children, over a series of meetings. Likewise, with the other skill categories, a limited number of statements was chosen in collaboration with the children.

Subject sheets were not used, as the ' Skills for Living' approach was seen as complementary to the school's established personal learning plan.

The headteacher traces the process of development over four or so weeks

HT: The first week she did the discussion and how they know they are practicing these skills. The second week each child was highlighting the skills. She introduced the personal learning plan document and they found these skills and highlighted it.

Interviewer: Did they use the same template that we have in front of us?

HT: Yes they have it all filled in but they have done a highlighting on words. That was why we focused on a small group. Doing something like this in a whole class would be awful. We have gone through it in a small group and it worked quite well.
……..

Interviewer: Would you say it worked well for children of all the abilities in the group?

Highlighting these things, yes because they actually traffic lighted how they were coping after that…... They have all highlighted the same areas. One child here on the numeracy skills …has differentiated …. "I can add, subtract numbers up to ten (not 100) and he has not put multiply." There is slight difference depending on where the children are in their learning development.

Interviewer: Would you have thought of extracting these, deleting all the stuff you didn't want?

HT Yes that would be a way you could manage that. We didn't do that for the project but it certainly could be a way that would make it more manageable.

She built it up over the weeks and they highlighted and then in week three she actually asked them each to give evidence of how they knew they were using these skills. This is when she used the Dictaphone. They were actually talking about what they were doing.

Interviewer: Can you give me an example of what they might be saying

Concentrating - "at maths I was being quiet, I got my work finished and got it all correct"

"I concentrated when I was playing golf and I managed to hit the ball"

In maths they can do that and then concentrate in another area.

"I concentrate when I am riding my bike, it is a big one and I stayed on, I didn't fall off."
…..

The teacher has written down things from the Dictaphone which were quite helpful and interesting.
…..

Interviewer: Can I go back to the point where the teacher discussed with the children what skills they were using on a day to day basis. Can you tell me a bit more about the nitty gritty of doing that?

HT: …..at what was common to their life basically, including what they did in language, maths, topic, going to brownies, gym club etc. They identified the common skills - concentration, the ability to use the different tools or implements, to share and listen, taking turns, working with each other, asking for help, speak to each other and use their bodies in the correct way.

The discussion took place to start them thinking about how they knew they were developing their skills. How did they know that these skills were getting better? The next again week the children were given out the personal learning plan and they talked about what skills they had identified the previous week and then they had to draw and talk about something they had done really well that week. They had to talk about what skill it was they used or developed to ensure that they were doing this well. This was when the Dictaphone was used to record how they expressed themselves and how they were improving.

Interviewer: It seems quite sophisticated for primary 3. Would they have been involved in any other kind of self assessment or self reflection prior to this?

HT:With them already having used the PLP they are used to having targets set for different subject areas from primary 1. They are used to talking. They always have a personal challenge within their PLP and they are used to saying this term or this block of time I am going to try very hard to do whatever it is. ….

…..The basic element is self evaluation; I would not say they are efficient at it in any way. They are aware that we are questioning them quite often about why they did something or how could you do this to make it better.

On week 4 when they had discussed that they looked at the traffic lighting system and would say whether they felt they were good at that skill or whether they needed more practice at it or whether they weren't getting good at it at all. In general I think (class teacher) felt there were a lot of good results from that. Some of the children looked as though they were really thinking about each skill and going on to what you said about the early stages of self evaluation. Others appeared not to take much time, they just coloured in what they thought should be coloured in and some of the children coloured in many greens - they were fine! While others were giving quite a true reflection and really thinking about what they should do.

In Pacific Primary school staff similarly edited the Skills for Living template to be appropriate for primary 6:

'We have taken six of the Skills for Living, because of the timeframe that we had, and out of those six skills, we have developed 13 learning outcomes. Each skill for living that we have, we have about two learning outcomes - ….two from literacy, two from numeracy and two from communication and personal skills.' (Teacher, Pacific Primary School)

Again, as in Atlantic, a small group of pupils was selected to take part in this pilot work, five from each of the two primary 6 classes. One of these groups was 'of a higher ability' (class teacher) and the other consisted of 'children of a much lower ability but also included in that group is a child with dyslexia, a child with muscular dystrophy and a child with behavioural and emotional difficulties or problems.' (Class teacher)

The process of self-evaluation was carried out in two stages, the first relating to specific teaching outcomes and the second to the more generic skill statements of the Plan. For literacy skills, for example, the two (multi-faceted) statements had been highlighted:

• I can find information from different sources, and I can decide whether or not a piece of information is useful for the task I am working on. (Literacy skill 8)
• I can produce work in my own handwriting, or by using a computer, using the right punctuation and spelling words correctly. (Literacy skill 13)

One of the class teachers commented:

'We picked out the first targets 8 and 13 that we were going to be working on over the next few weeks. From that we have taken our lesson targets, which were different again. That's the ones we've been sharing with the children. They have been traffic lighting and at the end of the two- week block, we will come back to this page and they will traffic light for targets 8 and 13. …..today our target was "I am able to find and select information required from a number of different sources." The language I used was slightly easier and it was a different level, so it was slightly simpler.' (Primary 6 teacher)

Her colleague made the point that, within the environmental studies context, her pupils were working at a lower 5-14 level, 'so my target was "I am able to find specific information from information and reference books".' (Primary 6 teacher)

Work in Pacific consistently incorporated the approach where generic skills were translated to be applicable to the curriculum being taught. This enabled both teachers and children to develop a more concrete understanding of the skills in the template plan:

'The statements are quite far reaching, in a way they are vague. Therefore you have to take from them what you can and put your teaching context into these.' (Primary 6 teacher)

This process of cross-referencing the Plan's skills to the learning outcomes used in the teaching situation was time consuming and demanding:

'….we forward plan for about six to eight weeks at a time. (Class Teacher) had already done her forward planning. We haven't had to stretch or modify any of our forward planning for this. Our forward planning is all based on 5-14 anyway, but it took us a long time to match it across. Everything did match. ….it took us a long time to do all the planning. I think it took us …..two hours to match across the six Skills for Living that we chose….this format is very broad statements. Looking at each of these skills, you are thinking what it that actually relating to in the curriculum and you have to break them down into what you are actually covering.' (Primary 6 teacher)

In turn, translating children's self-evaluation against specific lesson or topic outcomes to the generic statements of the plan was also challenging:

'The thing that took us the longest wasn't the traffic lighting. That was quite simple to go over again, what the learning outcome was and we do traffic lighting anyway in the class. That was quite simple. It was crossing it over into the actual PLP and discussing with each child their strengths, discussing their needs and then discussing with them what they were going to need to work on. That took about ten minutes. If you were doing it properly to get the children to really understand the language that you were using, it took about ten minutes per child. You really have to work at getting them to understand the language. You can't just skip over that bit. Maybe with time, if they get more familiar with the language, it will become easier, but I can't see it becoming too much less time.' (Primary 6 teacher)

Staff in yet another primary school selected strands from the template that readily matched with existing numeracy and literacy work for the 15 P5 children with whom they were working. This repetitive approach contrasted with the strategy in Pacific and Atlantic schools, where Skills for Living was seen as complementary to an existing more subject-based set out of outcomes; and was perceived more positively. As in other schools, however, the concepts and language of the plan were seen to require a great deal of explanation and mediation. Overall, it is noticeable that where this took place, and where the template was used selectively to address appropriate outcomes from each strand, the Skills for Living approach, was seen as useful.

When teachers had taken particular time to explain the traffic-lighting technique, it worked well. With the above evidence, this demonstrates the necessity for teachers to engage pupils fully, to ensure they understand concepts, language and process.

Many schools linked the PLP process to learning logs or diaries. These were generally seen as useful in providing a record of pupils' self-evaluation of learning activities. This focus on the pupils' particular experience formed a valuable bridge to the generic skills of the template.

Implementation in the three secondary schools had been problematic for several reasons, mainly the perceived short timescale and the contemporaneous high priority demands of restructuring school staffing and working conditions. An assistant head in one school identified a range of issues that had interfered with involvement in the project:

• Reluctance to introduce a new model when the school already had a fairly successful pre-existing system, running fairly well, but not yet fully established.
• The required substantial involvement of a large number of subject teachers.
• The sensitivity of workload issues at a time of national restructuring of staffing patterns and working conditions.
• The introduction of new duties for form/register teachers in relation to new staffing duties.

In Torrfield HS , work had eventually gone ahead with a small group of first year students. At these preliminary stages, the involvement of subject teachers had largely been limited to the Art Department whose staff have provided five learning outcomes against which these pupils would self-evaluate. At the time of writing, the involvement of other departments was under negotiation. Additionally, the Social Education teacher had been working with these pupils to complete several of the five categories of Skills for Living:

'(I) found it challenging. My feeling is that the wording is probably too difficult for that particular class. ….too difficult in terms of structure of the language. A number of these pupils have learning difficulties. ….I read through the boxes with them and went over the explanations with them ….I wanted to try and do some work with the subject teachers first so I would have their responses ....and be able to put those in.' (Social Education teacher)

The discussion of strengths and development needs had not been completed, as the Social Education teacher wished to discuss these for each pupil with some of their subject teachers:

'I thought it would be good for the subject teachers to come into my social education class and would find time for them to do that and to discuss with the pupils on a one-to-one basis, related to the traffic lights that they filled in on the opposite page ….when it comes to things like literacy skills and numeracy skills you've got to …..to bring in the specialists because they know the pupils in that context better than the Social Education teacher. Then you've got problems in how do you do that. One of the problems is I'm going to do it with one class. If you were doing it as a personal learning plan with the whole year group it's a different ball game ….it would be touching every first year teacher if you did it that way.' (Social Education teacher)

In conclusion, the school manager in charge of implementation thought that over the next month he would consider the incorporation of key elements of the Skills for Living model into further development of the school's pre-existing plan. Also a priority was the further development of the school's approaches to formative assessment, especially the articulation of learning outcomes and the involvement of pupils in negotiating the next steps in their learning.

In Ryeland High School, the Skills for Living pilot was in its early stages, at the time of writing. A first year practical section (16 pupils) had been chosen to take part in the exercise. The headteacher initially had reservations about the apparent complexity of the template and believed that:

'It was like a snapshot in time - it didn't build in the kind of progression in skills that you would want in a personal learning plan from year to year, so it wouldn't change.' (Headteacher)

This criticism is linked to the fact that there is no clear pathway of skills development suggested within each of the three templates. However, practice was yet to develop in the schools on how students and teachers would respond to the traffic lighting of the multi-faceted skills statements.

As in Torrfield, concepts of skill, self-assessment, traffic lighting and target setting were introduced to pupils as part of their social education class:

'Initially, one period of 50 minutes with them as a class and ….a further two or three sessions of 40 minutes …..really to review progress and pick up questions. I think the lesson there would be that I would have two 50 minute sessions with them back-to-back very early on so that any problems would be picked up very quickly.

It was more of a briefing session rather than an individual negotiation. They would do their negotiating with the teaching but I am not sure how individual that was either ….I get the impression that the teacher provided the learning outcomes but maybe negotiated with one or two of them a couple of extras. That is a crucial time - the time that has to be spent on doing that.'

Earlier the headteacher had commented

'I think this whole area is fraught with difficulties - pupils need to be trained in how to think about learning outcomes, self-evaluation, progress and how they are working towards their learning outcomes ….it is fine setting targets but if you don't teach kids how to overtake targets you're going to have a sterile exercise.' (Secondary headteacher)

These introductory sessions were carried out on a group basis in both secondary schools. There had been little individual dialogue with pupils about their self-evaluation responses, strengths, development needs and next steps.

Pupils were expected to complete class log books for each subject and draw on these in completing self-assessment against both Skills for Living and subject-based learning outcomes. The Ryeland headteacher identified issues shared by a number of other secondary school managers, in relation to the management of PLPs. These relate firstly to the need for discussion with pupils about the purpose and nature of the entire review and planning process; and secondly to organisational issues for both the school and individual pupils:

'The first issue is access to the pupils - how often do you take them out of class to discuss it with them? I took them out several times - I had to leave a lying time to allow them to develop their diaries, their log books. They asked what they had to put in the log book, they needed clarification. I am still not sure they all understood ….

'The second issue here is the practical management of it. Some forgot it, some left it at home, some took it more seriously than others and I am not sure that the ownership issue was really properly resolved. Some of them did it very well, one or two of them, because their personal organisation ….is not great ….they started to fall by the wayside.' (Headteacher)

In secondary schools, the pilot exercise had been constrained by extraneous factors, mainly to do with the management of schools. Also of considerable concern were difficulties in incorporating the perspectives of subject teachers. School managers were concerned about the potential workload implications for staff and also about their commitment in general to the PLP process:

'….I think this whole process ….the trick is to make that this is a fundamental part of their everyday planning, teaching, recording, assessing, reporting, reviewing. If it is not part of that cycle it will not work. Teachers have to see this as part of their job and is nothing different from setting learning outcomes ….or targets for their class ….I think if PLPs ….can be part of that process, nobody will see it as a cosmetic exercise or a bolt-on ….' (Headteacher)

The matter of time concerned teachers in both primary and secondary sectors and most interviewed believe that the scaling up of the pilot work to full classes and year groups would not be feasible. While they recognised that time devoted to their own preparatory work might diminish as any system became established, the time required for briefing of pupils, and most particularly, for crucial dialogue with pupils would remain constant. Across the ten schools, it was amongst primary schools that more systematic and extended discussion with individual pupils took place. It was here that teachers were more able to quantify the time required per child:

'It is really hard to see how it can (be done) in its present form. Logistics are difficult to be able to do with a full class. It has taken, for every two weeks for five children, an hour an a half in class and maybe an hour on top of that out of class, setting all their strengths and that's just with five children'. (Primary 6 teacher)

Several practitioners and headteachers believed that the usefulness of the Skills for Living model would be enhanced by further sub-divisions beyond middle primary, upper primary and secondary:

'We felt ….that this was a very good document to have but it would be one that you would have to gradually introduce ….that would go with children, be developed, the children will develop these skills from primary 1 up to primary 5. What they have there would take them five years, as it were, to develop.' (Primary headteacher)

This view was endorsed by a secondary headteacher who also believed that the monitoring of progress would be enhanced by a more differentiated approach to the presentation of skills and the process of self-evaluation.

A related issue concerns differentiation at the individual level. Primary school staff found that in implementing the plan with pupils, differentiated approaches were required to accommodate varying levels of achievement and rates of progress:

'….I take the second bottom maths set ….the less able children ….when it came to literacy ….all those children aren't level C ….. One boy who I couldn't do the target with today because he has not even got level A in reading so I couldn't do a level C target. I was going to have to do a whole different set of targets for him. I didn't think about that happening till today so it didn't really work out ….

That's the problem of doing it with a whole class. You have a whole range of abilities and it must be very difficult to manage from that point of view.' (Primary 6 teacher)

One primary headteacher thought that areas of skill and personal development could be more closely related to broader conceptions of the curriculum and rationalisation made between generic skill development and specific subject based learning outcomes:

'Starting earlier in primary 1 ….it would be a set of skills that we could possibly develop ….incorporated within a personal and social development or health programme. ….and used to develop their self-evaluation skills, their knowledge about what it is that they have to improve, whether it be concentration skills, whatever.

….we would really need to sit down and look at it as a programme of development I think - how would it be incorporated within the personal and social and health educational programme?' (Primary headteacher)

In terms of procedures, both primary and secondary staff found it helpful to contribute to the completion of basic information and plans, for example, typing-in learning outcomes for groups or individuals with learning difficulties. Otherwise, these aspects of the plan's completion could take undue amounts of time better used for more substantial elements, such as discussion of achievement and progress with individual pupils. As always, there were concerns particularly in secondary schools, about the storage and security of paper-based materials and about possible loss.

5.4 Benefits for Pupils, Teachers and Parents

As with schools' own models, one of the most positive outcomes has been the perceived increase in quality and volume of dialogue between pupils and teachers. This was particularly marked in primary schools, where work was generally more advanced and cycles of teaching, self-evaluation, negotiations of strengths and weaknesses with teachers and agreement of next steps had been completed. Teachers gave examples of pupils who had benefited from knowing specifically what was required of them. While the extract below relates to an able pupil, practitioners held the view that, because the process of review and negotiation happened on an individual basis, it benefited pupils at all levels of achievement:

'When I was doing one of the sex education lessons last week and it was communication and interpersonal skills ….I overheard them saying "we are going to have to start talking about this to each other" (They used the word communicate with each other.) One said "oh but we are." (Another said) "no, no, we are not communicating about what we were meant to be communicating about. We have got to do it like this to get the outcome." They really do focus ….much more focused on what the whole point of the lesson is.' (Primary 6 teacher)

The teacher of a group of lower-achieving children believed that they were more purposeful and confident:

'….one of the children ….wasn't settling to the task at all and she was having a good chat with her friend. ….she just thought the aim of the learning outcome was that as long as you get on with the people in your group ….whereas obviously the learning outcome was to be able to discuss the information properly. When I pointed this out as she was about to traffic-light green and I said you know you weren't talking about what you were meant to be talking about, we looked at the outcome again and the next time when we carried on with that lesson ….she got down to it straight away. I don't know ….whether she had really come to understand the lesson, the learning outcome …. (but) ….it certainly made her more focused.' (Primary 6 teacher)

One primary headteacher summed up:

'….it allowed the children to think more about the skills that they were going to have to learn or adapt, both in and out of school, that went together. ….it allowed the children to begin the stages of self-evaluation and also to gather evidence to show why they were doing this, why it was necessary to learn the skills. …..

(primary teacher colleague) has written that it provides a useful reference document for class teachers in relation to children's personal targets. It could give us a developmental programme where we could say this is where this child is on their development stage of learning their life skills - their Skills for Living.' (Primary headteacher)

In secondary schools, staff were more reserved about possible benefits for young people, largely due to the preliminary and incomplete nature of the work. All secondary staff did comment, however, on the initial enthusiasm of young people.

Young people themselves were interviewed in a limited number of schools and came up with comments very similar to that for schools' own models of PLPs.

For teachers, benefits again were very similar to those derived from implementing the school-devised models. Teachers frequently spoke about being 'more focused.' Several teachers mentioned the productive relationship between work on PLPs and specific techniques developed as part of wider involvement in the Assessment is for Learning Programme:

'We have got a lot of good out of it. It has made us more focused to the children's learning and both of us have started putting learning outcomes on the board for every lesson and traffic lighting every lesson with the whole class ….something we only did here and there before, mainly for maths ….. That has been really successful ….because it's affecting our weekly planning ….if the majority traffic light red then ….we can go back and see that we have to do more work on that. It has made us much more focused.' (Primary 6 teacher)

Teachers also commented frequently on the necessity of developing approaches to formative assessment on a wide basis as a pre-cursor to supporting the PLP process.

At the time of writing, parental involvement was at a preliminary stage. Where parents had seen their children's personal learning plans, response had been favourable, again along the lines of commentary for schools' own models.

« Previous | Contents | Next »