What is hindering the achievement of the most able year 11 students in Maths and English?

Amy Green teaches in a large, mixed, non-selective secondary school in a borough with a grammar school system in southeast London. She carried out qualitative research in 2012-13 with a group of ‘able’ year 11 students to capture their own thoughts on what may hinder their achievement. ‘Able students often feature as an underperforming group’ she writes, ‘but research tends to focus on the views of adults’. Her findings suggest that in her context, classroom factors, not family or peer-group factors, had the biggest impact on achievement. The findings are used to make recommendations for establishing a school environment where high achievement is expected, planned for and celebrated.

 

Can collaborative target setting raise attainment in writing in year three?

Rebecca Turvill was an NQT in a 3 form entry primary school in a South London Borough when she undertook this action research which was completed in 2005.  She writes ‘I undertook a collaborative target selection process with children, where they identified their own writing targets reflecting an aspect of writing they wanted to work on. As a result, the children’s attitudes to writing improved and their understanding and use of targets increased significantly. In addition to the children selecting their own writing target they were provided with oral and written feedback regularly in respect to their individual target. Whilst successful in raising the standards of writing, I also found individualising the target setting process improved the quality of the teacher feedback and the quality of the pupil-teacher interactions.’