First Keynote at the AHDS 40th Anniversary conference. The Scottish Attainment Challenge.

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AHDS Annual Conference 2015
Graeme Logan
Education Scotland
@GLoganEd

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1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal
and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world
works.

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2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and
thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you
can probably get a career in it.

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3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the
natural order of things.
Douglas Adams

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Who is your namesake?
Scotland made me. I was born 47 years ago as Graeme
Logan. I was adopted 4 months later by an Aberdeen
couple – Ernest and Christine – who decided to rename
me. Thanks to their love and kindness I enjoyed a
secure and happy childhood shaped by Scotland’s very
special institutions.

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Who is your namesake?
Scotland made me. I was born 47 years ago as Graeme
Logan. I was adopted 4 months later by an Aberdeen
couple – Ernest and Christine – who decided to rename
me. Thanks to their love and kindness I enjoyed a
secure and happy childhood shaped by Scotland’s very
special institutions.
Rt Hon Michael Gove MP

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Overview
• Learning, teaching and the Scottish Attainment
Challenge
• How Good is our School 4
• National Improvement Framework
• Workshop discussions throughout

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The ambition
“The most advanced education systems now set ambitious goals
for all students, with a clear focus on equity, and are clear about
what students should be able to do.”
“Excellence and equity in student performance are less related to
a country’s income or expenditure on education than to how
those educational resources are allocated, and to the policies,
practices and learning environments that determine the
conditions in which students work.”
Equity, Excellence and Inclusiveness in Education Policy:
Lessons from Around the World’ , Andreas Schleicher, OECD,
2014
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Attainment
Time
Disadvantaged learners
Other learners

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The priorities
Excellence
and
Equity
Raising attainment (universal)
and
Closing the gap (selective intervention)
Generic/ universal improvement planning won’t close the
gap (eg raise attainment in writing)
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Raising attainment for all through….
• Non-negotiable high expectations for all
• Zero tolerance of underperformance
• Relentless optimism
• Poverty and performance should not be linked
• Constantly talking about standards
• Forensic focus on children’s progress: keep shining the spotlight
on this
• Celebrating achievement, challenging underachievement
• Help everyone find their unique genius

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Evaluating equity as leaners move through CfE…
• Attainment
• Choices
• Opportunities

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P1 vocabulary gap – top initial priority
• Up to 18 months difference in vocabulary of children from the
most and least advantaged areas
• Curriculum model/ curriculum flexibility in early years
• Working with partners such as Speech and Language services
• If we can reduce the vocabulary gap the attainment gap won’t
continue to widen as children move through school
• Assess it, plan the right curriculum, assess again

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Curriculum design and rationale
• Are we being bold and brave enough?
• What do you see when you look at your
timetables?

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Curriculum toolkit now includes:
• Video workshop and professional learning activities (linked to
GTCS standards)
• Short clips of 5 headteachers describing the main drivers for the
curriculum in their school
• Examples of planning, tracking and monitoring
• Short 2-3 minute video clips of key messages for the primary
sector 2015/16

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POLAAR!
Primary One Literacy Assessment and Action Resource
• Based on a staged intervention model of ‘observe-action-observe’.
• Teachers identify and assess most at risk of developing later difficulties with
reading and writing.
• Identifies the most effective intervention to use.

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Challenge limiting beliefs and casual
assumptions which kill aspiration
‘We’ve tried that…’
‘We already do that…’
‘I’d love to do that but…’
‘It won’t work …’
‘It won’t work with our children…’
‘It won’t work with these children…’

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Identifying the barriers to learning for disadvantaged
pupils
Each school must ask:
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What are the barriers to
learning for our
disadvantaged pupils?

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Curriculum for Excellence Implementation Plan 15/16 and
the Inspection Advice note
What range of data do you use to improve outcomes?
What evidence is your curriculum model based on?
Clear plan in place for raising attainment in literacy and
numeracy: which strategies and approaches are you
using?
Know the gap at class and school level: what is the
difference in the progress and achievement between the
most and least socially disadvantaged children?

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Choosing school strategies
What strategies will produce these desired outcomes and help
the school to achieve these success criteria?
“Individual need, classroom rigour”
Use evidence of what works
Train staff in depth on chosen strategies
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Support your Parents
‘Analysis reveals that parents education, social status, race, or wealth
are not as important to children’s IQ levels as how much they talked to
their children and interacted with them in other ways.
Parents who talk to their children the most tend to praise the children's
accomplishments, respond to their questions, provide guidance rather
than commands, and use many different words in a variety of
combinations. This type of interaction can… “accurately predict the
vocabulary growth, vocabulary use, and IQ scores of children.’
Hart and Risley, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young American Children, 1995, Baltimore

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Know what impacts
Metacognition
Effective Feedback and Marking
Skilled Questioning
Informed Task Design
Collaborative Learning
Memorability
Expectation (Growth Mindset)
Education Endowment Fund website

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Learning behaviours for infants
Noticing
Explaining things
Asking good questions
Learning something new
Practising hard till you get it right
Thinking carefully
Listening carefully
Trying different ways of doing things
Being a learning friend who helps others learn
Making someone else happy
Becoming better at sharing
Reading every day

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The evidence
Seek out excellent practice in other schools
www.pupilpremiumawards.co.uk
Use the Education Endowment Foundation toolkit
http://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/toolkit/
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EEF Toolkit
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Sources of support
• Education Endowment Fund teaching and learning toolkit
• Closing the attainment gap in Scottish education – Joseph Rowntree Foundation
• New Scottish Attainment Challenge website

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National Hub for the Scottish Attainment Challenge
.

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Collaborative content and professional learning
.
Join the Scottish Attainment Challenge GLOW online community
http://bit.ly/saccommunity

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“The education community in Scotland needs
to get better at creating and sharing
knowledge in ways that focus on outcomes
for children in poverty. Better evaluation will
help practitioners distinguish between
proven, promising and unproven approaches
and decide how to make curriculum design
and planning decisions that raise attainment
for economically disadvantaged groups.” Closing the attainment gap in Scottish Education,
Joseph Rowntree Foundation, May 2014

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Which strategies are currently helping most to raise the attainment of
disadvantaged students?
In schools? Across the Local Authority?
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12 areas of focus in successful schools
Excellent collection, analysis and use of data relating to individual
learners and groups
Unerring focus on the quality of teaching
Identification of the main barriers to learning for disadvantaged
learners
Frequent monitoring of the progress of every disadvantaged learner
When a learner’s progress slows, interventions are put in place rapidly
Every effort is made to engage parents and carers in the education
and progress of their child
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12 areas of focus in successful schools
Evidence (especially the EEF Toolkit) is used to decide on which strategies
are likely to be most effective in overcoming the barriers to learning
Staff (teachers and support staff) are trained in depth on the chosen strategies
100 per cent buy-in from all staff to the importance of the agenda
All staff convey positive and aspirational messages to disadvantaged learners
Performance management is used to reinforce the importance of raising
attainment of disadvantaged learners
Effectiveness of teaching assistants is evaluated and, if necessary, improved
through training and improved deployment
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Equality is the process, equity is the outcome
• You need to fill the gap before you close the gap
• Who is quietly underachieving in your school?
• Low attaining children often spend a lot of time with support staff – are you
monitoring the impact of this?
• Training and professional learning for support staff: are they helping to
create independent learners or ‘velcro’ children’ ?
• Avoid ‘intervention add-ons’ We need well planned pathways
• This is a social mobility agenda: what about highly able children living in
poverty?

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What is the Scottish Attainment Challenge?
Programme of activities to bring a greater sense of
urgency and priority for everyone involved in Scottish
education to focus their efforts on narrowing the
attainment gap between those children living in
Scotland’s least and most deprived areas.

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What is new?
Universal
Support
Scottish Attainment Challenge
Attainment
Scotland
Fund

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What is new about it?
National
Hub
Attainment
Advisors
Universal support for the Scottish Attainment Challenge

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What is our
capacity for
continuous
improvement?
Leadership and
management:
How good is our
leadership and
approach to
improvement?
Learning
provision: How
good is the quality
of care and
education we
offer?
Successes and
achievements:
How good are we
at ensuring the
best possible
outcomes for all
our learners?
How Good is our School 4 Framework

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How are
we doing?
How do we
know?
Stop looking up and start looking out more!
Collaboration within, between and beyond schools

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How Good is our School 4
15 revised quality indicators include:
•Teaching, learning and assessment
•Personalised support
•Raising attainment and achievement
•Family learning and engagement
•Curriculum: courses and programmes replaced with learner
pathways
Translates and connects all current policy priorities into a clear set of
indicators/ areas of action
There are more ‘good bits’ of schools than there are ‘good’
schools!

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New QI on ‘Raising attainment and achievement
Attainment in literacy and numeracy
Attainment over time
Overall quality of learners’ achievement
Equity for all learners
Use the Challenge Questions for professional dialogue in your
school
Implications for inspection, self-evaluation and improvement
planning

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The National Improvement Framework - vision
• Excellence through raising attainment: ensuring that every child achieves
the highest standards in literacy and numeracy and the right range of skills,
qualifications and achievements to allow them to succeed; and
• Achieving equity: ensuring every child has the same opportunity to
succeed. The Scottish Attainment Challenge will help to focus our efforts and
deliver this ambition.

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National Improvement Framework
Our Priorities
• Improvement in attainment, specifically in
reading, writing and numeracy
• Closing the attainment gap between the
most and least disadvantaged children
• Improvement in children and young
people’s health and wellbeing
• Improvement in sustained school leaver
destinations for all young people

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Standardised assessment and the new dashboard
• Strengthening support for moderation and professional judgement
• Teachers continue to make professional judgement based on a range of
assessment evidence
• More specific advice for teachers on achievement of a level
• Benefits of new national development of a standardised assessment
• Aim to streamline, clarify and reduce the burden of assessment
• Dashboard will bring together all the data needed for improvement, learning
lessons from Insight in the senior phase

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Achieving Curriculum for Excellence Levels
Curriculum Level Stage
Early The pre-school years and P1
First To the end of P4
Second To the end of P7
Third, Fourth S1 to S3
Senior phase S4 to S6

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CfE data collection exercise
• The data collection requested that local authorities report the
percentage of pupils in P1, P4, P7 and S3 who achieved their
respective CfE level for 2014/15 in:
- reading
- writing
- numeracy
• Local authorities were also requested to collate this information
for those children living in the 20% most deprived areas

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Notes on data recording
• There was considerable variation in the recording of data.
Contributing factors include:
- the interpretation of ‘achieving’ a level varied
- a number local authorities recorded other measures
instead, such as working within the level
- some provided data for only overall literacy or languages
- some local authorities submitted data based on a sample
of schools or pupils

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What we will do now
• Greater clarity on achieving a level
• Cut down the guidance on assessment and provide final
versions of the ‘significant aspects of progress’
• Improve moderation at local and national level (focused and
ongoing)
• We all need to understand standards and be confident in
professional judgements
• What can be done to improve confidence and quality of CfE
level judgements?

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Thank you!
@GLoganEd

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“Mankind owes to children the best it has to give.
Their life is fragile. If they are to have a tomorrow
their needs must be met today. Many things can
wait but not the children”
Gabriela Mistral