Chisnell Chatter – Edition 18 – Irresistible Learning

Welcome to my latest edition of Chisnell Chatter. In my meanderings across the South East of England, life in school continues to be both joyful and challenging with equal poise. Our educational landscape is changing as swiftly as ever and the summer term always brings key updates and changes along with some interesting research updates as practitioners consolidate their new thinking from the past year.

KCSIE 2024 Draft published

Keeping children safe in Education 2024 – Draft Document 11 points to look at in terms of changes from 2023. Remember, while this is a draft document this becomes statutory from 1 September 2024, as such it is important to ready your practice and adjust your annual training in good time before the 1 September.

Definition of Safeguarding: The definition of ‘safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children’ has been amended to reflect the updated ‘Working together to safeguard children 2023’.
Early Help: The section on ‘Early help’ has been updated to reflect the revised ‘Working Together’ guidance.
Abuse and Neglect: The heading ‘Abuse and Neglect’ now includes ‘exploitation’, and this addition is reflected throughout the document as applicable.
Indicators of Abuse and Neglect: New text has been added to the section on ‘Indicators of Abuse and neglect’ to include observations related to domestic violence, specifying instances where children see, hear, or experience its effects.
Safeguarding Issues: The term ‘deliberately missing education’ has been updated to reflect the revised definition of ‘unexplainable and/or persistent absences from education’.
Data Protection: New content regarding compliance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and UK GDPR has been added.
Alternative Provision: Text has been added to clarify that schools remain responsible for the pupils they place in alternative provision.
Support for Specific Groups: Links and advice have been added concerning protecting children with special educational needs (SEN) and those who are deaf/disabled.
– There is also additional text and a disclaimer added concerning children who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or questioning their gender identity.
Child-on-Child Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment: Modifications have been made to the section on ‘Early help’ to reflect the latest guidance.
Further Information: Additional age-appropriate guides for supporting children involved in the court system are now included. Also, updates on the prevention of radicalisation reflect minimal changes aimed at clarifying schools’ duties.
Role of the Designated Safeguarding Lead: Expanded guidance on holding and sharing information, specifically on the rationale behind decision-making.

Headspace – a time to reflect and re-connect 27 & 28 June 2024

Headspace – there are limited spaces left on the residential course but day delegates are able to attend either or both days at a reduced rate. Let me know if you would like to attend.

Ofsted on the Early Years

Here is a link to an Ofsted webinar produced by Ofsted’s new Chief Inspector that explores his future direction regarding the Early Years. This may be a useful link to share with governors with responsibility for the early years and early years practitioners.

EEF – A schools guide to implementation

Here is a link to the download of the EEFs Schools guide to Implementation.

The guide aims to support school leaders in implementing a change in the day-to-day work of people in schools, colleges, and early years settings.

This guidance on effective implementation – and its accompanying resources – offer a helpful guide to help you make sure new approaches or practices have the biggest possible impact on children and young people’s outcomes.

Based on a new review of the evidence, the updated guidance is focused on three key elements:

The behaviours that drive effective implementation.
The contextual factors that facilitate implementation.
A structured, but flexible, process to enact implementation.

The process is designed to support you to do implementation, while the behaviours and contextual factors help you to do it well.

EEF – Retrieval quizzing

I am a fan of retrieval quizzing, in particular using low stakes quizzes in class that draw on meaningful prior knowledge to best support pupils in their understanding of new ideas or concepts. While often seen in school classrooms, the precision and purpose can sometimes be less well thought through.

The EEF have published a blog on this very issue and therein, Rachel Cattrall provides four core components to consider when quizzing:

Core components to consider include:

1. Activities must engage the long term memory.
2. Balance challenge with opportunities for success.
3. Retrieval should not be a single, separate learning activity.
4. Provide some form of feedback.

In order to enact these four components, she suggests the use of existing activities that can be aligned to these. in the blog she suggests the following:

Think Pair Share. This questioning strategy has been utilised for a number of years to encourage whole class participation. As it is important to engage individuals’ long term memories, we can view the “think” stage of this strategy as an opportunity to allow for individual recall, and the pair stage as a way of prompting the knowledge pupils struggle to recall.

Whole class participation. Noting the importance of feedback, consider how you might use your current strategies (mini whiteboards for example) to capture the retrieval attempts of all students and identify misconceptions to address.
Brain dumps. By asking students to record everything they can remember about a topic, we can identify knowledge that is easily recalled compared to knowledge that is not. It can also provide an opportunity for students to recall more complex concepts in addition to factual recall.
Questioning. Coe (2019) identified the possible problem that teachers may design tasks that focus solely on factual recall. By considering how we plan probing questions, we can build on initial factual recall to demonstrate depth of conceptual understanding.

The full blog can be found here.

Dialogic teaching – the power of classroom talk

I am really pleased to share a recent article that I have published in the Chartered College of Teaching’s journal Impact. Here is the link for those who are members of the CCT. The article outlines an approach taken by Pilgrims’ Way Primary School in Kent to use the theory of dialogic teaching to enhance pupil engagement.

Dialogic teaching involves the following five principles.

Collective – the teacher and student address learning activities together rather than in isolation. Helping the dialogue to become a human, shared experience.

Reciprocal – students and teachers listen carefully to one another and respond by sharing their own ideas, viewpoints and challenges.

Supportive – contributions are valued and respected by all participants with the goal being collective understanding.

Cumulative – talk is ongoing and builds on prior knowledge and understanding, encouraging shared problem solving between teacher and student.

Purposeful – the teacher clearly defines learning goals to ensure the dialogic talk is well planned, implemented and skilfully facilitated with due regard to time, space, organisation and relationships.

These principles are underpinned by effective questioning, assessment and feedback techniques.

In my article, I conclude that dialogic teaching offers a framework in which teachers can encourage students to engage in purposeful classroom talk. While it does not provide a panacea for improved outcomes for students, it does have the potential to develop a climate in school where teachers and students act as co-creators in their learning and students feel empowered and engaged in class. From lessons learned about introducing a culture of dialogic teaching, here are some key steps in the process:

Train

Share the theoretical basis to dialogic teaching and help staff to understand the key principles and practice that underpin this approach.

Construct and deliver a training programme to support teachers and support staff to move from theory to practice. Using this as an opportunity to develop the talents of staff.

Coach

Provide time to enact and refine what is learned in staff training sessions using a peer coaching model.

Build in designated time for peer coaching to strengthen practice and learn from colleagues.

Review

Encourage staff to engage in research practice to reflect on the impact of dialogic teaching on targeted student groups.

Learn from your mistakes and share your research findings to embed practice that works.

I hope this edition has been of interest to you. Please feel free to share this with colleagues.

Working together to improve school attendance – new guidance published.

The DfE has updated its guidance on attendance. This comes into effect on 19 August 2024. Here is a link to the document.

Key changes to the guidance include:

Greater clarity on the link between improving attendance and wider school culture,
including the importance of working in partnership with families to find supportive
routes to improve attendance.

Changes to the law on keeping school attendance and admission registers
including a revised set of codes, granting leaves of absence and access to, and
sharing of, attendance information introduced through the School Attendance (Pupil
Registration) (England) Regulations 2024.

Set out the new National Framework for issuing penalty notices and reflect changes
to the law introduced through the Education (Penalty Notices) (England)
(Amendment) Regulations 2024.

Change ‘parenting contracts’ for attendance to ‘attendance contracts’ to better
reflect the agreement between parents, schools and/or local authorities.

The expectations of schools have been updated to:

Update the section on pupils who are prevented from attending school due to
physical or mental ill health to be clear where schools’ role starts and ends, provide
further clarification around medical evidence, additional support for pupils with
special educational needs and disabilities and part-time timetables.
Explain the new requirements for schools on data sharing introduced through the
Education (Information about Individual Pupils) (England) (Amendment)
Regulations 2024.
Provide clarification of the expectations of schools’ senior attendance champions.
Expect schools to inform a pupil’s youth offending team worker of any unexplained
absences.

The document is a helpful read for those grappling with attendance and persistent absence. It outlines a six step approach to tackling these issues.
Expect – Aspire to high standards of attendance from all pupils and parents and build a culture where all can, and want to, be in school and ready to learn by prioritising attendance improvement across the school.
Monitor – Rigorously use attendance data to identify patterns of poor attendance (at individual and cohort level) as soon as possible so all parties can work together to resolve them before they become entrenched.
Listen and understand – When a pattern is spotted, discuss with pupils and parents to listen to and understand barriers to attendance and agree how all partners can work together to resolve them.
Facilitate support – Remove barriers in school and help pupils and parents to access the support they need to overcome the barriers outside of school. This might include an early help or whole family plan where absence is a symptom of wider issues.
Formalise support – Where absence persists and voluntary support is not working or not being engaged with, partners should work together to explain the consequences clearly and ensure support is also in place to enable families to respond. Depending on the circumstances this may include formalising support through an attendance contract or education supervision order.
Enforce – Where all other avenues have been exhausted and support is not working or not being engaged with, enforce attendance through statutory intervention: a penalty notice in line with the National Framework or prosecution to protect the pupil’s right to an education.

My back catalogue for school leaders is available in my edu-blog here.

For more information about my consultancy offer, please visit my website here. My latest consultancy offer includes Coaching for Appraisal, a course that prepares leaders and staff for impactful appraisals. This course is co-facilitated with HR expert Gary Edwards. I will also be co-facilitating Headspace, a residential recharge for school and trust leaders on 27 and 28 June 2024 at the beautiful venue of Hythe Imperial Hotel in Kent (flyer for this later in this edition). Let me know if you would like to secure a place for you and your team.

Do get in touch if you are interested in training, consultancy or coaching support.