Improving universal provision for all pupils - how high quality teaching supports strong attendance

This is based on the EEF attendance reflection tool and was written for the Transforming Attendance in Cornwall flipbook for OneCornwall Teaching School Hub Partnership.

Key questions:

• Do all teachers have a good knowledge of pupils learning needs, and how is this

information shared regularly?

• Do teachers have the expertise and support to meet these needs in the classroom so that all

pupils can learn successfully?

• Is professional development effective and structured in a way that supports staff to change and

develop their practice? (See the EEF Effective Professional Development guidance report for more

information about a balanced approach to effective PD).

• What systems are in place to hear seek and hear pupils’ views about their school and learning

experiences, and do you use this to help identify potential barriers to pupil learning an engagement?

Attainment and attendance

Pupils that attain well, attend well.

Classrooms are about learning as part of a large group. It is therefore essential that pupils experience success with regards to both learning and being part of a group. Success leads to motivation. Learning becomes something to engage in rather than get through.

Staff can create the conditions in which pupils are more likely to experience both academic and social success but can also unwittingly create invisible barriers if pupils’ learning needs are not attended to.

Do teachers have good knowledge of pupils’ learning needs, and how is this information

shared regularly?

When staff have good knowledge of pupils’ learning needs, adaptations to teaching and interventions more closely hit the mark. What do pupils know? What do they need to know next? This knowledge and its deployment are a key part of creating psychological safety in the classroom, ultimately leading to pupils feeling that they are ‘good at this.’

Assessment of pupils’ learning needs is a broad domain, and leaders need to be clear that assessment, monitoring, and transitions systems give staff actionable data to support pupils.

Here we can briefly explore one fundamental aspect – that of checking for understanding.

Barack Rosenshine underlined that more effective teachers had strong checking for understanding protocols, asked lots of questions and evaluated pupil responses. He also outlined the wrong way to check for understanding: teachers calling on volunteers to hear their (usually correct) answers and then assuming that all of the class either understood or had then learned from hearing the volunteers’ responses.

When teachers aren’t investigating the difference between ‘I taught it’ and ‘they learned it’ many pupils can feel left behind and unheard. It is too often the case that pupils with a weaker understanding sit through lessons compliant but inhibited and fearing exposure. Pupils who regularly experience this may avoid coming to school.

A maturity index for checking for understanding

Thank you Doug Lemov and the TLAC team and Tom Sherrington for shaping my thinking here.

From...	To...
Pupils show evidence of learning (e.g. mini whiteboards, utterances) but there is too much information for the teacher to process or action	Teacher has clarity over what they are looking for and engineers checking so that this is revealed
Teacher takes responses from the most confident pupils	Teacher uses different means of participation to illicit data which enables responsiveness
Errors are difficult to respond to	Errors are seen as valuable and interesting
Correct answers are met with positivity, giving secret signals that pupils should only speak up when they are certain	Teacher values thoughtfulness and effort rather than being correct Contributions are authentically valued and met with emotional evenness
Misconceptions can be left hanging	Misconceptions are exposed and responded to.
Learning as a linear process, covering the curriculum	Learning as a contingent process
Core concepts and knowledge are covered	Core concepts and knowledge are learned more accurately, rehearsed, discussed, and interrogated

Pupil learning needs, not pupil labels

Labels can get in the way of thinking about learning needs. A child with a diagnosis of autism

who is also finding learning challenging might need glasses rather than positioning all his

learning needs in relation to his autism. To quote Margaret Mulholland, we need to be experts

in our pupils, not labels. SEND diagnoses must not cloud responding to observable, diagnosed

learning needs (e.g. they now need to learn their 5x table, they now need support in constructing

a cohesive paragraph).

Do teachers have the expertise and support to meet pupils’ needs? Does professional

development enable teachers to continue to improve?

More now than ever, we have descriptions of how to implement and sustain professional development, such as the work of Sam Sims et al. for the EEF The ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of teaching are vast and complex, meaning that teachers’ professional development needs are huge. It is imperative to use time impactfully.

Within professional development, teachers should be guided to prioritise key aspects such

as reading diagnostics (phonic knowledge, fluency of reading) and the core mathematical

concepts outlined in the DfE’s Mathematics Guidance (ready to progress criteria). Backwards

planning units of work is helpful in teachers grasping the journey they will take pupils on, and

therefore what knowledge to prioritise and check along the way. Professional development

should support teachers to avoid the trap of narrowing the curriculum as a result. Assessment

tools are not a curriculum, and teachers should be supported to understand this difference.

What systems are in place to seek and hear pupils’ views? Is this used to help identify

potential barriers to pupil learning and engagement?

The ‘curse of the expert’ makes it hard to stay conscious of how a novice learner will experience content for the first time. Failing to view our classrooms, learning content or paired talk from the perspective of pupils can mean that there are barriers to engagement of which we are unaware.

We may be using words pupils don’t understand. It may be that rather than I do > we do > you do, our pupils will feel that they really get it with multiple opportunities to practice (the more gradual release of scaffolds) I do > we do > we do > we do > you do. It may be something as simple as ‘I can’t see the board.’

Marc Rowland's maturity index for independence in learning

A great tool for a pupil voice activity.

How do you ensure that you are successful in your learning?
From: -          I don’t muck about	To: -          I ask for a better explanation
How do you know that you have been successful in your learning?
From: -          I do well in a test -          I get a good grade -          I wrote a lot -          My lessons are fun -          I get rewards	To: -          I understood the teacher’s explanation -          I checked my answers -          I used the example the teacher used on the board -          I asked a friend to check through my work -          I have asked questions
What do you do when you find a task difficult?
From: -          I put up my hand and wait for the teacher	To: -          I look at the example the teacher modelled -          I use the times table grid to help -          I ask questions -          I go back through my book -          My teacher asks someone to give and explanation about how they got to their answer
What more could teachers do to support your learning?
From: -          Make lessons more fun -          Give you rewards	To: -          Slow down -          Give clearer explanations -          Encourage me to ask questions -          Tell me to be independent when I haven’t understood -          Get pupils to explain how they got their answer -          Not sit me by my friends

Without listening to our pupils, teachers may invest a great deal of time in preparing lessons

which are ineffective without knowing why learning is failing.

Teachers and other staff should have a shared understanding of the components of inclusive quality first teaching, specific to their subject and phase. Subject and phase leaders should ensure that their daily practice, and that of the teachers in their teams, is inclusive and high quality for all. There should be memorable, joyful learning experiences in which all learners, particularly the disadvantaged, are expected and encouraged to participate.

Activity might include:

- Professional development for teachers and other classroom practitioners, focused on

assessment of need

- Recruiting and keeping specialist teachers. Disadvantaged learners may be disproportionately

impacted by a high turnover of staff or difficulties in recruitment, as well as inconsistencies in

expectations, relationships, or knowledge of prior learning/experiences

All pupils thrive when there is a relentless focus on high quality teaching (and a shared

understanding of what this is).

The Great Teaching Toolkit may be a resource that supports this work, alongside EEF guidance: