Raising Standards - Setting Targets Primary Schools Support Pack

Raising Standards - Setting Targets

Primary Schools Support Pack
Taking a closer look at 5-14 attainment in primary schools

Preface

In 1996, HM Inspectors of Schools published How good is our school?: Self-evaluation using performance indicators. This presents a set of thirty-three performance indicators (PIs) for teachers to use when evaluating standards and quality in their schools. When looking at the attainment of pupils, the information provided by measures such as 5-14 attainment levels is particularly important. It is also central to the national initiative Raising Standards - Setting Targets which aims to improve the attainment of pupils in schools across Scotland.

Taking a closer look at 5-14 attainment in primary schools suggests ways in which class teachers and promoted staff can use information about attainment in reading, writing and mathematics to identify areas for improvement at individual, class and school level.

The publication considers how you might:

analyse information relating to pupils' attainment in reading, writing and mathematics
reflect on what it suggests about the overall quality of pupils' learning within the school, and the strengths and needs of groups and individuals
identify strengths and areas for improvement
use the advice given in recent reports by HM Inspectors of Schools to plan strategies for achieving the targets you have agreed.

Raising standards requires a broad and balanced curriculum. Attainment in reading, writing and mathematics depends on, and in turn helps, attainment in other areas. Pupils need to understand their environment and have opportunities to develop their creative skills. They need to learn in a supportive context and be rewarded for their achievements. Many such factors contribute to attainment and will feature in your school's plan.

Reviewing standards and setting targets have always been important aspects of development planning, providing the essential link between audit and action. These activities both promote and depend on an ethos of achievement which is one of the pre-requisites for real improvement in the attainment of individual pupils and in the overall performance of our schools.

Acknowledgements

The Audit Unit, HM Inspectors of Schools would like to thank education officers, advisers and teachers from the following councils who offered valuable comments and advice at the draft publication stage: Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Argyll and Bute, City of Edinburgh and Orkney Islands.

Introduction

Taking a closer look at 5-14 attainment in primary schools is for teachers, promoted staff, education officers and advisers. It suggests how you can use information about pupils' attainment in reading, writing and mathematics to evaluate standards and to make plans for improvement for:

individual pupils
specific groups
individual classes
the whole school.

The publication suggests practical activities to help you identify areas where you can make a real difference to pupils' learning. It is designed to be used alongside How good is our school? and uses the same questions as the basis of its structure.

Part 1:	How are we doing?	emphasises why it is important to evaluate the attainment of pupils

Part 2:	How do we know?	suggests how you might analyse the information available in your school

Part 3:	What are we going to do now?	looks at ways of using what you have found to make plans for improvement

Part 4:	Going further: staff development activities	presents practical examples to adapt for your own circumstances

It should be used alongside publications such as:

5-14 Guidelines: English Language and Mathematics
Improving Mathematics Education 5-14
Improving Reading at the Early Stages 5-14
Taking a Closer Look: Key Ideas in Diagnostic Assessment (series).

These publications provide advice about the curriculum and learning and teaching which will help you to answer the third question, What are we going to do now?. For help in ensuring that assessment is accurate, that it is based on a range of evidence and is a positive help to pupils' learning, refer to:

Assessment 5-14: Staff Development Pack
The Framework for National Testing
A Teachers' Guide to National Testing in Primary Schools

Part 1: How are we doing?

How good is our school?: Self-evaluation using performance indicators encourages you to ask questions about the attainment of pupils in order to find out if they are doing as well as they might and what could be done to improve their performance. Evaluating attainment involves looking at the quality of pupils' experience and the learning and teaching needed for further progress.

Teachers and pupils have been setting individual and group targets for some time now. A target gives something concrete to strive for. You might aim, for instance:

for James to know his tables up to 10 by Christmas
for the Blue group to attain Level D in mathematics by the end of session.

The identification of Next Steps in learning is an important element of 5-14. Next Steps help pupils feel a sense of pride in, and responsibility for, their progress. Setting Targets - Raising Standards encourages you to extend this process to the school as a whole.

How are we doing in relation to national attainment levels?

PI 2.2 Attainment in national targets/examinations is assessed in relation to standards set out in national 5-14 Guidelines.

Level A	should be attainable in the course of P1-P3 by almost all pupils.
Level B	should be attainable by some pupils in P3 or even earlier, but certainly by most in P4.
Level C	should be attainable in the course of P4-P6 by most pupils.
Level D	should be attainable by some pupils in P5-P6 or even earlier, but certainly by most in P7.
Level E	should be attainable by some pupils in P7-S1, but certainly by most in S2.
Level F	should be attainable in part by some pupils, and completed by a few pupils, in the course of P7-S2.
	Almost all: 90%+. Most: 75%+.

First ask whether standards in your school are in line with these levels. Many pupils should achieve beyond them. For example, Improving Mathematics Education 5-14 suggests that most schools should aim for most pupils to attain Level A by the end of P2.

What about our own school?

Before you plan for improvement, you need to look at attainment across all classes and stages. This means asking questions like:

How good are reading standards in this school?
How good is attainment in number, money and measurement in P6?
How much progress has Kirsty made in this class?

The remaining sections suggest different ways of arriving at the answers.

Part 2: How do we know?

Although assessment has many facets, its essence is determining what a pupil is actually achieving in relation to expectations of attainment and drawing conclusions from that comparison.

(5-14 Guidelines: Assessment 5-14, SOED, 1991, page 1)

What information about attainment is available?

Assessment 5-14: Staff Development Pack identifies three main sources of information about pupils' progress:

day-to-day observation
assessment tasks
National Test results.

Together these provide a detailed picture of attainment which will help you to establish practical objectives for classes, groups or individuals.

What do we do with the information we have gathered?

If you use straightforward methods of analysing attainment, you can spend more time addressing the issues which emerge. Choose the methods which suit you. You may look at information in one or more of the following ways:

by class at regular intervals
when a group or individual achieves a new attainment level
across classes at the same stage
by individual class or stage across more than one session
across the stages for the whole school.

In small schools, the attainment of a small number of pupils can make a big difference to the pattern of attainment across the school. It is still important to know pupils' current attainment and be able to assess what it might be after a certain period and by how much it could improve. Additional advice for small schools is provided in Setting targets in small primary schools.

You may not as yet be carrying out all of the activities described in this publication. However, you could make a start with one approach and adopt others as you become more experienced or come across issues which require different treatment. The rest of Part 2 suggests some possible approaches. If you wish to go further, refer to the activities in Part 4.

Example 1: Taking a closer look at the attainment of individual pupils

Setting targets is about improving the attainment of individual pupils. At the heart of the 5-14 Programme are approaches which enable pupils and teachers to identify strengths and development needs and to agree Next Steps for progress.

Context

Below is an extract from the class records for the current P7 class. Their new teacher is reviewing these records on the first day of the new session. They give the results of pupils' National Tests in reading, conducted in line with national advice, when pupils are ready. They indicate which levels pupils have attained and when.

Name	P2 1993/94	P3 1994/95	P4 1995/96	P5 1996/97	P6 1997/98
Angus	A June	B June			C May
Anne		A April	B May		C Jan.
Carol			A May	B May

Angus was making very good progress in P2 and P3. His progress has slowed by P6. What kinds of factors could be influencing it?
Anne is making progress in line with that expected of most children.
Carol has some learning difficulties in reading but with a lot of support made good progress between P4 and P5.
As their teacher, how would you use your other reading records when setting challenging but attainable targets for each pupil for the end of P7?
Now look at your own class records for reading, writing or mathematics. What targets for individual pupils can you set for the end of this term and for the end of session?
Some of your pupils may nearly have attained the next level. What are the outcomes or strands in which they most need to improve?

The teacher of this class will need to identify the skills which each pupil most needs to learn or improve in order to attain the next level. Taking a Closer Look at Reading suggests ways of helping pupils take their Next Steps in the areas of:

attitude and motivation
decoding
pursuit of meaning
awareness of the author's use of language.

By focusing on specific areas, you can target Next Steps effectively.

Example 2: Taking a closer look at attainment across the school

Context

Here is an example of the attainment information collated by one school for the national survey of attainment against 5-14 levels in June 1998. The teachers used this information to identify priority areas for improvement. Below are the levels attained in mathematics.

Level	P2	P3	P4	P5	P6	P7
NYA*	5	1
A	23	22	1
B		2	15	2	2
C			3	19	5	3
D					17	9
E						5
Total	28	25	19	21	24	17

*Not yet attained Level A

Most pupils are progressing at least in line with the minimum levels in 5-14 Guidelines, but at some stages progress is more patchy. Teachers will be aware if any of these pupils have special educational needs.

Refer to one of the tables your own school collated for the national survey of 5-14 attainment levels.

Are pupils at each stage attaining the standards set out in national 5-14 guidelines? Does one or more stage need focused action to bring about improvement?
How many pupils have attained a level later or earlier than other pupils at their stage? How would you follow up these cases to plan support or challenge?

Now look at your three tables for reading, writing and mathematics together.

What are the priorities for improvement?

attainment at a particular stage in more than one curricular area?

attainment in a particular curricular area across more than one stage or across the whole school?

If pupils' progress is slow in one area, for example, mathematics, what would you do to find out whether it is a particular outcome or strand which is causing difficulty?
If pupils' attainment at one stage is causing concern, how would you find out the factors contributing to it, for example, learning and teaching, class organisation or deployment of staff?

Raw figures can give information to enable you to focus improvements. In a larger school, using percentages of the roll achieving specific levels may make comparisons among stages or curricular areas more informative.

Example 3: Taking a closer look at progress at different stages in the school

Context

At the beginning of session, teachers calculated the number of pupils who attained the following levels in both classwork and National Tests in writing:

Level B or better in P4
Level D or better in P7.

They expressed each total as a percentage of the roll at that stage.

P4	75% attained or exceeded Level B
P7	56% attained or exceeded Level D

As attainment appeared to be relatively better at P4 than at P7, teachers then looked at attainment at P5-P7 more closely.

Level	P5	P6	P7
A
B	45%	51%	5%
C	55%	42%	39%
D		7%	50%
E			6%
F
Total	100%	100%	100%

What does the distribution of attainment levels at each stage suggest about the progress of pupils in this school?
What other information would help to confirm your impression?

Now look at attainment information from your own school in the same way.

If standards are relatively lower at P4 than P7, then look closely at P1-P4 for opportunities to improve attainment. If standards are relatively lower at P7, then focus on P5-P7.

Either carry out further analysis as in the example above or go straight on to considering the main factors affecting progress between stages, for example:

quality of teaching
level of expectations
pace of progress through programmes of study
monitoring of progress by promoted staff
extent and nature of learning support
early intervention.

If attainment causes you concern at both the P4 and P7 stages, then the issue will not be one of progress but of learning and teaching in that curricular area throughout the school.

Identifying priorities for improvement

Are pupils making slower progress in one outcome or strand?

Review assessment records and National Test papers.
Look at pupils' work.

Are groups of pupils making slower progress than expected?

Review individual assessment records, folders and National Test papers.
Read comments in profiles and reports.

Are pupils covering all the outcomes and strands?

Look at forward plans and class records of activities.
Look at pupils' work.

Is there a reduction in pace or expectation at specific stages?

Look at the attainment of specific year groups.
Look at the tasks and activities pupils have been set.

How well motivated are pupils?

Observe their responses in class.
Talk to them.

Are learning and teaching approaches appropriate?

Evaluate current practice in relation to issues in national reports:

*5-14 Guidelines in English Language* and *Mathematics, with Level F supplements*		Use Programmes of Study to check that pupils cover activities needed to attain the next level.

*Improving Mathematics Education 5-14* *Improving Reading at the Early Stages 5-14*		Use Key Recommendations to evaluate learning and teaching approaches.

*Achievement for All*		Use Main Recommendations and Key Principles to evaluate class organisation.

*The Assessment of Achievement Programme: Reports and Feedback*		Use Key Findings and Teaching Issues to identify factors in your own school.

*Taking a Closer Look: Key Ideas in Diagnostic Assessment (series)*		Use Areas for Exploration and Possible Next Steps to set targets for individuals.