Barking and Dagenham LA and the Five Year Strategy
Roger Luxton (Director of Children's Services)
Five Year Strategy
The Authority fully supports the objectives of greater autonomy, specialism
and freedom of heads and governors to manage and personalise their provision – in
both secondary and primary schools.
Each and every school already has distinctive features – real
strengths in, say particular areas of the curriculum, or new approaches
to learning, pastoral care or out of school hours opportunities.
We wish to see these features enhanced and extended in each school. Each
school has its own characteristics and different contribution to make.
The LA must do everything possible to support schools in strengthening
this contribution, not least in partnership with other schools.
Within that approach to the development of individual schools, it is
essential that every child has the best possible start in life. Each governing
body and head teacher has responsibilities for the young people in their
care. Adding up these individual responsibilities does not necessarily
mean that the needs and interests of all children are addressed. The vulnerable,
the rejected, the isolated, the excluded can all too easily slip through
gaps between schools. The authority, by pursuing the Every Child Matters
agenda, must ensure that all young people get access to care, protection
and achievement. Access means actual participation and success – not
just opportunity to take part.
The Authority must ensure a high standard of common achievement and progress
for all the young people of the community. Educare is fundamental. Personalised
support for parents is essential. The development of extended schools offering
a range of services going beyond the school day and the formal curriculum
is a very high priority.
At the same time continuity and coherence in pedagogy and curriculum
from the early years to post 16 fundamentally important to the progress
of all children. Each child and young person (and adult for that matter)
is a social being who wants and needs to find his/her place at home, in
school, in the world at large. He or she can only grow if accepted by a
group, if recognised as a genuinely valuable memberand able to make a demonstrably
worthwhile contribution to the well-being and progress of the group. In
order to keep every child on board, especially at transitions between years
and between schools it is very important to have a pedagogy which is known
and understood by all children and young people – they know what
to do and how to do it. Without continuity and coherence between years
and phases and schools a significant number of children lose their way,
fall by the wayside – are excluded by doubt and insecurity in the
face of incomprehensible pedagogical changes. Security and stability are
essential above all for the average and below average learners So, the
point is that schools build on and develop their distinctive characteristics
on the basis of a strong, flexible, inclusive cross-phase pedagogy. .
The characteristics of that pedagogy are:
building a classroom community;
every learner finding a productive place in that community;
collaboration and co-operation as the keys to finding that place – speaking
and listening, high quality dialogue are centrally important in binding
the groups;
high expectations and standards of achievements for all learners – maximising
the number attaining and exceeding national expectations at 7, 11, 14,
16 and 16 plus.
An overarching pedagogical framework follows from these
features. It incorporates:
all possible patterns of grouping of children – whole-class,
small-groups, paired work and independent learning, often in a single
lesson;
a significant whole-class episode in every lesson to ensure common
ground in tasks which support a coming together; the intention is that
the whole class moves forward together;
an episodic structure, with an appropriate number of episodes in a
given lesson ( NOT always three sections, not always a plenary; not always
starter activities). The episodes are a combination of whole-class, small-group,
paired and independent sequences. They draw upon the full range of models
of effective teaching and the whole learning repertoire;
opportunities for enhancing and extending learning outside the teaching
opportunities at the school - where children:
work independently within their community
work with peers from their community
work with adults from their community
a central place for dialogic teaching which is:
collective: teachers and children addressing learning
tasks together, whether as a group or as a class, rather than in isolation
reciprocal: teachers and children listening to each
other, sharing ideas and considering alternative viewpoints
sustained: teachers and children building on their
own and each others' ideas and changing them into coherent lines of
thinking and equity.
supportive: children articulating their ideas freely,
without fear or embarrassment over 'wrong' answers, and helping each
other to reach common understanding
a physical layout (e.g. a horseshoe) designed to support whole class
interaction and dialogic talk, children taking lessons forward, for example
through extended explanations.
a central role for ICT. ICT must contribute to the learning of the
children in all patterns of grouping – i.e. to whole-class groupings
as well as the more familiar small-group, paired or individual contexts.
This is especially important given the central role of the whole-class
episode in the pedagogical framework described above. ICT promotes excitement,
engagement, wonder, the ‘wow’ factor not for their own sakes
but in order to promote deep learning – for example, learning through
dialogue, through providing extended explanations to other learners,
through extended creative and factual writing and sustained mathematical
or scientific thinking. ICT comes into its own at last as it makes an
immediate, easily accessible contribution in all contexts for learning,
rather than a few.
