Reimagining Assessment: Views From an Autistic Young Person

13th June 2023Website Admin

Reimagining Assessment: Views From an Autistic Young Person

Joshua Gross

Since the 1990s, the way we assess young people has been dominated by a culture of public accountability and competition, leading to the unhealthy belief that the grade is everything. The idea is now so important that many exams, like GCSEs and A-Levels are referred to as “high-stakes” tests because of the way they determine the next stage of someone’s life.

Those who create the high-stakes assessments claim that they are the fairest and most rigorous tool we have to demonstrate student achievement. However, the evidence used to back up these claims is often insubstantive (Richardson, 2022). One of the consequences of these high-stakes assessments is that young people’s outcomes are reduced to a number or letter which only reflects a very small proportion of their experiences and achievements at school and usually only in academic subjects.

Whilst this affects all young people, data has shown that, on average, autistic young people do not achieve the same levels of academic success as their non-autistic peers assessed in this way. The most up-to-date government data shows that 64% of non-autistic students achieved a Grade 4 or above in Maths and English, compared to 31% of autistic students – and this data is not a one-off. The same pattern exists in the previous three years’ data. While the statistics alone are striking, even more profound are the hidden stories behind the data. As such, in this piece, we share the reflections and experiences of Joshua, an autistic young person who has the lived experience of feeling let down and misrepresented by the current system and who has vital ideas on how it might be reimagined to prevent the same thing happening to others.

“The big problem with existing assessments is that they are the be all and end all when you leave school.” Joshua

The same idea is expressed in the opening sentence to this article and yet what this means for young people can often get lost in the statistics. For Joshua, who at the time of writing is applying for apprenticeships, the implications are clear.

“I can only put my grades, not the fact that I spent most of my A-Level time suffering through extreme mental health issues and that it was a miracle I even made it to sit the examinations, not the six times I almost dropped out and came back to them later… It becomes really difficult to come out the other side and still be a strong candidate when the only important thing is what grade you got.”

Joshua’s solution to this problem would be for schools to recognise the skills that young people have through a more flexible approach to curriculum and to assessment. In Joshua’s case, he has a talent and passion for computer programming and, while he was able to take this as an A-Level, he was still assessed within the constraints of that curriculum and the conventions of exams.

“In my A-level computer science class we had people who had never opened the Python Editor before and we had people like me who had made full video games in one day before… I would be running off doing these ultra-complex things at home that would never be recognised because they weren’t even remotely related to the curriculum. Like, I can make a video game using languages that the curriculum doesn’t even know exist. And I’m just sitting there doing these things, but none of them get recognition. I can do all this stuff and it doesn’t matter because it wasn’t what I was told I had to do. I didn’t fit that specific guideline and therefore it’s not good enough.”

By having a curriculum that is less constraining, less of a rule book, there would be more scope for teachers to work with young people in their area(s) of interest and strength, aligned with their passions. While this would have benefits for all learners, there would be particular benefits for some autistic young people who often have a special interest or aptitude. Recent research by King’s College London, for example, has shown that when adults are accepted as having a special interest, and where it is responded to positively, recognised and valued, this can lead to them excelling in the linked curriculum area (Wood, 2021).

As not all neurodiverse young people will have a special interest that can be assessed within school, it is also worth considering other ways in which a more flexible assessment process would be beneficial. Here, Joshua has further important ideas to share.

“Assessment as it is now is not actually really a test of knowledge, but more a test of memory. I found often that those kinds of assessments really did not work for me, but one that I really excelled in were the two B-techs that I took in Business and Digital Media. Instead of having this one assessment that you’re building up to and studying in unhealthy ways for, you’re working on it throughout the entire course. It’s not one giant thing, it’s a bunch of smaller things. Break one big problem down into a bunch of smaller ones, and suddenly it becomes less of a big problem.”

Joshua’s views about coursework are echoed in the academic literature, which has shown the pedagogical benefits of such forms of assessment, as well as the fact that students prefer it to exams (Richardson, 2015). Despite this, under the current assessment system in England, none of the Maths, English or Science GCSEs have a coursework component which counts towards a student’s final grade. As such, the work that a student does across two or three years of study is condensed and assessed through a few hours of exams. This in turn then shapes their future opportunities. Joshua considers this system to be a particular challenge for autistic young people as “Often the pressures of the school system can break a student so easily and so quickly. And it becomes really difficult to come out the other side and still be a strong candidate when the only important thing is what grade you got.”

There are two more things that we know about the lack of fit between the current assessment system and neurodiversity. One was well articulated by Joshua: “If you emphasise ‘standards’ and ‘standardisation’, then by definition this will not work for autistic young people who are, by definition, non-standard.” The other, which is linked, relates to the idea of “spiky profiles”. Autistic learners are less standardised, less conventional – they have great strengths alongside different challenges. An assessment model that emphasises the challenges (e.g. writing essays) and minimises the strengths and passions (e.g. technical capability, creativity) will serve both autistic youngsters and the system badly.    

Endnote

Joshua’s views are those of just one student, but the dearth of autistic voices in both the academic and non-academic literature in this field makes this a provocative contribution and one that we hope is built on by further activity in this area.

References

Richardson, J. T. (2015). Coursework versus examinations in end-of-module assessment: a literature review. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 40(3), 439-455.

Richardson, M. (2022). Rebuilding Public Confidence in Educational Assessment. UCL Press.

Wood, R. (2021). Autism, intense interests and support in school: From wasted efforts to shared understandings. Educational Review, 73(1), 34-54.

 

Professional Prompt Questions

  • What rings true for you in Joshua’s comments?

  • You will almost certainly have neurodiverse learners in your school. Might a small piece of research or a focus group with them help to unearth challenges they face to which you could respond?

Three Big Ideas for Assessment for Schools Hoping to Do Better

13th June 2023Website Admin

Three Big Ideas for Assessment for Schools Hoping to Do Better

Julie Temperley

1. Agree together the outcomes you value most for your learners (the knowledge, skills, values and characteristics). Which of these do you currently assess well?

Some things to try:

Run a whole school enquiry to surface what learning teachers, learners, families, and the wider community consider most important to be able to assess or demonstrate. Knowledge is sure to feature, but so too will skills like problem-solving, and characteristics like confidence and kindness.

Explore together how much time is spent in school on assessing learning that is not congruent with the things that you value.  Do you have the balance right?

Co-design with staff, students and stakeholders a learning dashboard that teachers and learners can complete together to track and communicate progress in knowledge, skills and characteristics important to everyone in the school and beyond.

2. Expand the range of assessment tools and methods used in school and grow teachers’ confidence and capability in their use.

Some things to try:

Group assessment – instead of awarding individual marks, teachers and learners agree assessment criteria for group work and, on completion, the whole group gets the same mark. This approach is especially useful in project-based learning, but can be applied to any group-work activity, and encourages the development of skills for collaboration, teamwork and shared responsibility.

Routinely include an element of self-assessment – learners use the same criteria as teachers to “mark” their work, then teachers and learners discuss the differences between their assessments and what might sit behind these.

Mastery learning – learners explore success criteria at the beginning of a unit of learning (perhaps using “exemplar work”) and make as many attempts at some or all of the assessments as they need to, in order to identify gaps in their knowledge and skills. They can then seek help from their peers, teacher or other resources to address the gaps. Learners do not move onto the next unit of learning until they are confident they have mastery and can pass the assessment.

A variation of mastery learning is repeating assessments but with reduced support, where success becomes a learner being able to complete similar tasks over time with an increasing degree of independence.

3. Engage a wider range of people and perspectives in assessment, including learners and their families – and ensure that teachers are all “assessment literate” to lead this.

Some things to try:

Co-design of assessment rubrics and criteria charts – teachers and learners work together to design a rubric that describes success criteria and sets out what good looks like. Rubrics like this are often co-designed on the basis of shared examination of an exemplary piece of work, identifying and agreeing what makes it so good. Rubrics promote learner agency and empowerment by giving learners a sense of control over their learning and how they are being assessed.

Learner portfolios – portfolios and learning passports record learning in a variety of ways, for instance using narrative and photographs and annotated copies of learners’ work to give a clear and detailed perspective on what the learner has achieved and why this is important to them. Recently, digital tools have expanded the range of evidence and examples that can be collected in a portfolio, to include video, audio and presentations, for instance.

Exhibitions of learning – there is a long history of exhibition or performance as a means of making achievement visible and assessing it. Art exhibitions, drama or music performances, sport, chess tournaments – there are multiple examples. More significantly, there are examples in the UK and around the world of schools where exhibition and learner portfolios are the principal forms of assessment.   

Final word

There is, of course, much more that we could add to this – and much more was contained in the Critical Friendship Group conversation from which this article was drawn. What all the suggestions have in common, though, is that they are driving towards assessment processes that facilitate growth, the exploration of oneself, deeper learning and self-worth. They are about creating – for all learners – hope for the future.

Acknowledgements

This article has been developed by drawing on contributions made in a Gesher School Critical Friendship Group by generous friends and colleagues who are expert in assessment and/or neurodiversity. They are:

Dr Amelia Peterson (London Interdisciplinary School)

Alison Woosey (Bolton Impact Trust)

David McVeigh (Head of Assessment Design at Pearson UK)

Kelly Sanders (Former USA school principal; consultant)

Joe Pardoe (School 21 and Big Education)

Joshua Gross (a neurodivergent school-experienced young person)

Anne-Marie Twumasi (Big Change)

We would like to take this opportunity to offer our sincere thanks for the time, energy and insight that each of our critical friends brought. Your advice and ideas are already making a difference.

The Role of Local Systems in Rethinking School

12th June 2023Website Admin

The Role of Local Systems in Rethinking School

With thanks Veronica Ruzek, Director of Curriculum and faculty members across the Farmington schools.

As has been said in Holly’s introduction, there are three sections to each issue of this journal.

As has been said in Holly’s introduction, there are three sections to each issue of this journal.

The first is “Rethinking School”, and most of the articles do just that – imagine how school could function differently. However, schools don’t exist in a vacuum and this short piece focuses on the enabling role that the wider system within which the school is nested, can play.

In the final section, “Resources for Schools” you will find some inspiring project cards from schools in Farmington, Connecticut, USA – with many thanks to Veronica Ruzek, Director of Curriculum and faculty members across the Farmington schools for sharing them. Farmington Public Schools has a mission and vision statement to “enable all students to achieve academic and personal excellence, exhibit persistent effort and live as resourceful, enquiring and contributing global citizens aligned to our Vision of the Global Citizen”.

This Vision of the Global Citizen is worth sharing, partly because of the system leadership it displays – a bold, inspiring and invitational vision for all Farmington’s schools – but also because of the direct connection one can make with the moral underpinnings and student agency displayed in the Project Cards.   

Read it, then read the cards, and the connection will be obvious.

What is Crew? We are Crew? Kvutzah at Gesher

12th June 2023Website Admin

What is Crew? We are Crew? Kvutzah at Gesher

Sarah Sultman and Bradley Conway

Valerie Hannon and Julie Temperley (both of whom have been good friends of Gesher School) recently published the book “FutureSchool”, which involved the identification and study of around 50 schools across the world that are doing exceptional things in the education of their young people.

There were a few features of note in common, and three are highly relevant for this piece. They are:

  1. Building a “team” culture of mutual support and ambition amongst and between learners.
  2. Creating a relational climate that promotes motivation and wellbeing.
  3. Knowing learners profoundly well, such that engaging learning can be personalised to their interests and passions.

These are foundational features of Crew, which is what this article is about.

What is Crew?

As parents, we know and value the relational qualities of primary education. Our children are taught largely by a class teacher who knows them really well – and they know that they are known. Parents know it, too.

Rod Allen, who co-hosts the podcast Free Range Humans: how can we make schools fit for human consumption? recently cited an experience from his daughter’s primary-class years. Her teacher loved photography and committed to taking a photograph of each child in her class illustrating who she felt each child really was. At parents’ consultation he and his wife were shown a photograph of their daughter in the playground with other children, which caused him to say: “I didn’t need to hear any more. It was obvious that this teacher understood our child and valued in her what we valued – Maths and English and love of learning – she was in good hands.”

Contrast this with the dominant model of secondary schools where a student is likely to be taught by between eight and 10 teachers a week (or more) for, at most, three one-hour lessons. Few youngsters will feel well known; many won’t even have their names known by all their teachers. Crew is an antidote to this.

Crew is a secondary (and primary) school approach that enables youngsters to feel profoundly secure and well-known by their Crew Leader. It occupies perhaps one hour or more each day, and there are three key features:

  1. It prioritises relationships and wellbeing.

  2. Knowing learners really well enables learning support to be personalised to student interests and passions.

  3. It generates within the “crew” a community of mutually supportive learners. It is not a teacher and 25 students, but 26 learners and teachers working together with their different knowledge, experience and capabilities.

Put another way, Crew is two things. “It is a school-wide culture that supports social and emotional wellness, character development, and academic and life success for students and staff. It is also a unique and transformational meeting structure for secondary school advisories, elementary school morning and closing circles, and for staff collaboration.” Ron Berger, CEO of Expeditionary Learning Schools is considered to be the architect of Crew, and EL schools have been practising it for 25 years. The quote above is taken from the introduction to his book “We Are Crew”.

Ron Berger’s insight into the alchemy of Crew goes something like this: “If you are a member of a climbing team trying to get to the top of the mountain, that is only possible if the whole team makes it to the top. So, your job is to support every other member of the team to make it – and they in turn will be supporting you.” This is it in essence – a mutually supportive community that cares enough to support all members to success.

That is Crew. We are all crew, not passengers. This is Crew.

Crew in the UK

Crew is not part of secondary school culture in the UK. Traditionally, UK schools have short “form tutor” periods involving registration, administration and occasionally some personal and social education. This is nothing like the Crew model, which is at the heart of EL schools and a range of other US school designs. There, it is both a structural component and the foundation of school culture. It “serves as an ethos of inclusion: students strive to reach ambitious goals together as a community. They are responsible for their own wellbeing and their classmates’ wellbeing.”

One UK school that has made Crew foundational is XP School in Doncaster, for which the school maxim is “Above all, compassion”. XP is an Ofsted outstanding school, where inspectors remarked on features that relate to Crew: “Leaders are driven by the conviction that everyone can and should do well. Pupils are kind, generous-spirited and aware of the needs of others, both at school and beyond…..personal development and wellbeing are very well supported and pupils are taught to be considerate, kind and confident.”

Crew at XP is foundational. Students are aware of its impact: “At XP we are not just a school, we are a family,” and “It’s basically a metaphor for us all achieving our goals and we all do it together, so if someone falls behind we don’t just leave them,” and “We don’t just remember facts. We create memories.”

If you are not yet inspired, watch this video. As Andy Sprake (XP’s Executive Principal) says in it: “If you are going to make any difference to young people’s lives, you’ve got to know who they are.”

Crew or Kvutzah at Gesher – Its Origins

Gesher uses the term “kvutzah” instead of the word “crew”. As a faith school, this embodies the ethos, as Judaism is an insistently communal faith. Our sages tell us “do not separate yourself from community” and this notion of living our lives supported, enmeshed and emboldened by others defines our existence. The original meaning of the word kvutzah is “a Jewish communal and co-operative farm or settlement” but over the decades this has evolved into meaning the group you are a part of, or belong to. Urban Dictionary quite wonderfully describes its meaning as “a tight-knit group of crazy kids who spend summers together but will stay close no matter the distance”. And that is the purpose of kvutzah or crew at Gesher – to create a trusted community of people, a social collective where all voices are valued, bonds are created and everyone feels supported and understood.

There is a wealth of literature spreading across several disciplines that shows how important it is to wellbeing, to be surrounded by friends. Having people to talk to makes a difference. We speak of “unburdening” ourselves to others, and the metaphor is exact. There is something about human nature that makes troubles or concerns shared easier to bear. We are, as Aristotle and Maimonides said, social animals. What distinguishes homo sapiens from other life-forms is the extent and complexity of our sociality. Kvutzah encourages and champions this notion of respectfully sharing thought and feelings which in turn creates bonds between teachers and students; student to student, which in turn creates a culture of community at the school. (Adapted from Rabbi Sacks’ Community of Faith.)

The two statements below are taken from the “day in the life” created as a practicalisation of the school and community’s Blueprint vision for the school.

“At the beginning of every day we spend time together. Kvutzah is our secure base. The name provides the clue to how it works – we care about one another and pull together to help each other to succeed. We check in; have learning circles; plan our day, etc. Above all we focus on mindfulness, wellbeing and motivation. We focus our mind and collectively start our day, using tefillah/prayer to help us.

“School day also ends with Kvutzah when we are not out doing community projects. There is check-in and sharing and planning for extended and home learning. There is fun, too.”

It is no stretch of the imagination to understand that the diversity of need and talent amongst SEND learners makes something like Crew or Kvutzah essential. Autistic and neurodiverse young people need to be known; need to have their profile of behaviours understood and accommodated; need to feel valued and respected within a supportive community of peers; need to feel that they belong. This is even more important in a context where many young learners have had damaging prior experiences in mainstream schools.

Crew at Gesher in Practice

In practice, Crew time is an opportunity for the students to focus on, and enhance, any, and all, of the three key relationships in their life – their relationship with G-d; their relationship with other people; and their relationship with themselves. Through prayer, a daily review or quiet contemplation/meditation, the students work individually, and together, to enhance their own mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. They learn to care, share and be aware of their own needs as well as each other’s, which enables them to develop their compassion, collaborative skills and resilience – key attributes of life.

However, crew time at Gesher is not restricted to the students. Staff have their own form of crew time. Every week, a staff member chooses a key theme which permeates through three morning briefings and enables all staff to be aware, involved and connected with key aspects and events within Judaism, other faiths or none; within SEND or therapy; within education or their environment; and within the UK or beyond. Regularly enhancing our staff’s personal and professional development has had a profoundly positive effect on the camaraderie, cohesion and teaching within the school and ensures that everyone’s inspiration and passion is valued and shared.

Who is wise?

One who learns from everyone!

(Ethics of the Fathers 4:1)

 

Professional Prompt Questions

  • Where Crew (or Advisory, or Kvutzah) is practised, there is a school-wide body of practice that supports it. Is that true of tutor time in your school?
  • Watch the XP video as a staff or as a year team. What can we take from that to influence our own practice? What might be easy to do tomorrow?
  • Do your staff “have their own crew time”? Should they? Could they?

Why Gesher is Now an All-Through School

12th June 2023Website Admin

Why Gesher is Now an All-Through School

Sarah Sultman and Sam Dexter

In early 2018, when Gesher was a newly opened primary school, we were focused on primary education and growing the pupil population at the school. Having recently opened in 2017 with just seven pupils, whose parents bravely took a leap of faith in sending their children to a brand new, untried and untested school with no track record, we had not thought about what might happen to our students when they reached 11 and would need to leave to find appropriate secondary schools.

In a meeting with a donor, he suggested that we consider becoming “an all-through school”, a term we weren’t familiar with. It felt like too big a leap, too big a dream to entertain; we were too busy navigating Ofsted and determining our primary curriculum to even imagine that this might be a consideration. But the seed was planted nonetheless.

In the early stages of the creation of Gesher, we had been inspired by the advice and counsel of James Wetz, author of Urban Village Schools (see The Bridge 1). His research was strongly influenced by the small-school movement in the US which provides a fertile environment for authentic peer-to-peer and student-teacher relationships, safety, learner-centred empowerment, and community involvement.

It was not, though, until early 2020, during Covid, that the plans for Gesher to become an all-through school really developed with speed. By then we were fast approaching 40 pupils and were growing out of our space on the temporary site that we were renting. We became increasingly mindful that our oldest learners were approaching year six and that we would have to signpost them to their next school. Yet, the choices were few and the demand for good secondary provision for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) far exceeded the supply in our area and in our community. Our learners were thriving with us, too. And so, the next stage of the Gesher story began in earnest.

All-through schools are not a new idea. There are many of them, particularly in the private and SEND sectors. Private schools often have primary, middle, and upper schools that share a campus, or a private secondary will have affiliated and well-known feeder schools. What this provides, for pupils and their families, crucially is continuity; providing stability and creating a community with long-lasting relationships. The independent SEND sector mirrors this. Over the years we have visited over 50 schools around the country to learn from others, to seek out best practice, to establish which models work and why, and to harness what we have gleaned so that we can implement and incorporate those things that work uniquely well at Gesher.

There is little research on the comparisons between all-through schools versus the standard model of a separate primary, secondary, and sixth form. It is interesting, though, that the private and independent SEND education sector has developed this model as a way to recognise the value of growing and developing their students all the way through. The state sector, conversely, has been driven instead to create huge economies of scale in large secondary schools. The overriding impression we gained from all our visits was that, for children with SEND, all-through schools provide a long-term stable environment where the pupils are well known to all the staff – and where they understand and respect each other, too. Peer relationships are celebrated at Gesher and benefit all of the pupils. Our older students mentor the younger ones; they become role models, giving them a sense of responsibility. As one parent said:

“It’s great for my child to be around older kids who are also neurodiverse. It creates a real community.”

When we sought to expand the school, the views and perspectives of the parents were important to us. We know that transitions are a particularly challenging time for autistic young people and for their parents. In addition, we were aware that for our young people, new environments and their spiky profiles mean that it takes time for staff to know and understand their needs. As two parents at Gesher articulated so well:

“Especially for neurodivergent children who prefer familiarity and routine, having primary and secondary school in the same place makes it a safe space and one they can rely on. Additionally, they won’t ‘lose’ time getting to know a new environment and people and likewise a new set of teachers and peers getting to know them.”

“(We value) knowing all the good work that has been put in during the primary years can be built on and not having to worry about the transition to secondary”.

Thus far, all the families that have attended Gesher primary have chosen to remain at the school, where they feel supported and understood, into the secondary phase. Another parent, whose child is now in the secondary phase at Gesher, felt the continuation of the same curriculum ideas was really important for their son:

“Now Gesher’s an all-through school it is wonderful, especially with the new Life Skills provision that the school now offers. It means that our son will be able to continue to thrive and be happy in an environment that can support his needs.”

Gesher is a learning community, one which puts relationships at the heart of its organisation and design. Attachments and relationships are key to our pupils being stable and happy learners, comfortable in their environment, with their self-esteem enhanced, and confident in their sense of place and space. For our parents, too, it provides security and stability:

“One of the big reasons we chose Gesher is that it is currently a through school. We need a school that will teach kids the skills they need as they become adults, and there’s not really any school like that, especially a Jewish faith one, apart from Gesher.”

__________________________________________________________________________

In designing their secondary provision, the Gesher team has cast their net wide for examples of schools that make being small in size part of their success story.

Since 1991, the New American Schools Initiative has opened 2,600 new small high schools in 45 states across the USA. Two of the most globally influential school models have arisen as a result:

  1. Big Picture schools, founded by Dennis Littky and Elliot Washor (now 65+ Big Picture high schools in 18 states and more around the world). These small, personalised schools, started for drop-out learners and graduate 92% of their students on time, compared to a national average of 84%.

  2. High Tech High (HTH) is a community of 16 elementary and high schools in the San Diego area creating an all-through local school system. Some 98% of HTH’s graduates have been admitted to college or university. About 35% of HTH graduates are first-generation college students and 85% of their free-school-meals students complete degrees.

With their focus on the centrality of relationships and the personalisation of learning that arises from knowing students well, young people in these schools thrive and consistently outperform teenagers in conventionally sized, conventionally structured high schools with comparable demographics.

 

Professional Prompt Questions

All-through schooling is not an easily available option for most schools.

However, some of the features that professionals and parents value in all-through schools – relationships, deep knowledge of learners, security, and personalisation of approaches – can be adapted for more familiar models of schooling.

The professional prompts that follow respond to the question: “How could we help different phases of schooling to incorporate some of the virtues of all-through provision?”

  • Is knowledge transfer about students primarily documented or also face-to-face? How is the more subtle knowledge of children and families communicated?
  • When there are concerns about a student in their first year after transfer, is the relevant feeder school teacher consulted and involved?
  • Does your school have any teacher exchanges with your feeder school to build empathy and to forge relationships?
  • Are feeder school staff invited to events and productions and activities involving their former learners?
  • When achievements are celebrated, is the contribution of the feeder school recognised?
  • On graduation from your school are feeder schools notified of results and destinations – can they share in the successes?

Reimagining Schools By Design: Assessment, Pedagogy and Curriculum

12th June 2023Website Admin

Reimagining Schools By Design: Assessment, Pedagogy and Curriculum

David Jackson

Teaching: the design and facilitation of great learning through relationships

This short article is about the second phase of the process Gesher School undertook to design the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment they knew they would need to do a brilliant job for children who learn differently, as they moved from primary into their secondary education; from childhood into adolescence, from primary to all-through.

The ‘school design lab’ process – eight workshops involving about 100 stakeholders, completed in March 2021 – resulted in a blueprint for this new school ambition. You can see the final version of the Gesher School Blueprint here: https://gesherschool.com/about-us/blueprint/.

It is worth looking at – for its comprehensiveness, its ambition, its philosophical coherence and the obvious seriousness of intent. Beyond that, there is much to recommend in the evident way it unites a school community (internal and external) around a shared mission and sets out the practical requirements needed to achieve this.

The process to develop the blueprint began by asking “What outcomes do we want all our learners to achieve?” We started with a pie chart (six slices), one of which already had “good exam results” filled in, as a given. The task then is to populate the other five slices. (It could be six slices saying “good exam results” if that’s the only outcome that matters – but in a decade of doing this activity, exams have never featured more than once.) The result? Agreement about the purpose of the school and the outcomes for all learners that matter to the school community.

Standing on the shoulders of giants

Having agreed purpose and outcomes, the next stage in the process was the development of a set of design principles to achieve these, which form the values and practice architecture – the “laws with leeway” – for the school. In that process the Gesher team engaged with the designs of highly successful schools around the world, in a process known as horizon scanning, to find inspiration and ideas that would help them to learn from the very best that exists and has evidence of success.

You will find more on the Gesher school design process in The Bridge Issue 2.

Having the purpose, outcomes and design principles agreed upon, the next couple of workshops focused on assessment, pedagogy and curriculum.

Assessment

The Gesher Blueprint, then, sets out the school’s desired outcomes. They include: skilled for the future workplace; confident in their sense of self; builders of meaningful relationships; and ethical and responsible citizens. Finding meaningful ways to assess, recognise, accredit and value these – to validate them – is the next stage in the design challenge.

Another desired outcome is qualified for the next stage, and while existing accreditation pathways can obviously fit that bill to an extent, they don’t get close to assessing “meaningful relationships” or “confidence in sense of self”.

Fortunately, there is a different audience for some of these outcomes – the students themselves, their parents, peers, community members, etc – and there are known ways of doing it. There are exhibitions, digital badges, portfolios (real or digital), records of achievement, transcripts or even a unique, composite and personalised School Diploma owned and endorsed by all stakeholders, incorporating a range of such validation methods.

Professionals generally agree that schools should be free to assess what they value, rather than driven to value what is assessed. Gesher’s Blueprint states that it will generate unique profiles… affirm talents… recognise unconventionally expressed achievements… and work of relevance to the community and the world. This ambition is shared by many schools and there are, as we have seen, a range of possible ways of assessing what is valued. However, few schools do. Gesher, in this respect – as in many others – aspires to be a “beautiful exception”.

Pedagogy

Ask secondary teachers about their professional knowledge-base and most will probably talk about subject expertise. This is not their professional knowledge-base: it is what they bring in service of their professional knowledge-base. Lots of geographers or scientists or linguists don’t teach.

Teachers’ professional knowledge-base is the design and facilitation of great learning through relationships. It is the creation of apt pedagogy combined with personalised knowledge and understanding of learners. In other words, teachers are designers. They create great pedagogical designs together.

Only, in most schools, they don’t.

To do this requires scope for interdisciplinary planning; it involves real-world relevant tasks (to make learning matter); it will deploy a repertoire of assessment methods (appropriate to the task, relevant for each person); and it requires time deployment that allows on-site and community learning. This is different from 25 one-hour lessons. It also requires that teachers have time together (to design together).

For Gesher, and for most of the astonishing schools around the world that were studied in the horizon scanning, Project-Based Learning (PBL) provided at least part of the pedagogical solution. Real links have been made with the professional PBL knowledge-base from High Tech High and Expeditionary Learning Schools as international examples and with XP and School 21 as domestic ones. Additionally, Gesher commissioned the support of Imagine If to help facilitate its journey.

Gesher, together with a number of other schools of course, deploys time and space flexibly (the subject of a future article); combines a core of subject teaching with flexible interdisciplinary learning opportunities (PBL); deploys a range of assessment approaches relevant to the task; and, because it is a SEND school (although all schools are SEND schools), integrates into learning designs therapeutic approaches and support.

And these rich approaches, whilst great for students, are also fulfilling for the professional lives of teachers.

Curriculum

If pedagogy is how we teach stuff and how learners learn it, and assessment, broadly speaking, is the range of ways we let students and other stakeholders know how well they are doing, then curriculum is simply the range of material – the content – we want students to learn.

For most secondary schools the curriculum is pretty straightforward: divide what we teach into “subjects” and have specialist subject teachers deliver it in lessons lasting about an hour. The learning week, for learners, is therefore a jigsaw puzzle of disconnected hour-long subject lessons (French, then PE, then English, then Science, then Maths….) and fragmented relationships.

There is another way.

Gesher’s curriculum statement emphasises “the application of knowledge through real-world assignments and projects… rooted in Jewish values… highly personalised and responsive to individual interests, aptitudes and needs”. Much is packed into those 24 words:

  • Application
  • Real-world uses
  • Projects and assignments
  • Overt values components
  • Highly personalised

What all this means practically at Gesher is that the curriculum contains all the subject knowledge required, some of it taught as it has always been taught, but much of it designed into projects, with real-world relevance (perhaps real-world need) within which students express agency, personalise their contributions and also integrate or enact the values from relevant parts of their culture. They might be assessed in a range of ways, singly or in combination – tests, exhibitions, vivas, presentations, peer evaluation, portfolios, or whatever.

Endnote

The Blueprint design shows graphically that desired outcomes (purposes) frame everything and lead to school design principles facilitative of those outcomes. In other words, “Here are the things we want all learners to achieve and to do and so we need our school to be designed with features like this.”

The heart, the driver, the energy source to achieve this is the integrated and interrelated core of assessment, pedagogy and curriculum. Beyond that, there is a range of further features related to technology, time and space; culture, leadership and professional development; parental partnerships and community relationships.

More of that next time, perhaps.

 

Professional Prompt Questions

  • If your school was to do the pie chart activity – the six outcome areas that really matter to you – what would be included? (You could try it as a staff workshop activity.)
  • What scope is there in your school for teachers from different subject disciplines to plan learning together? What could there be?
  • Do you agree with the definition of teaching at the start of this piece? If so, what implications might that have for your teaching or your school?

Why Faring Well Really,Really Matters – Laurel Freedmman

31st March 2022realsmart admin

Why Faring Well Really, Really Matters

 

Laurel Freedman

Looking at what ʻhappinessʼ means to Gesher, it is defined as the need for children to feel broadly secure, to feel satisfied about whatʼs going on with them and to experience a sense of safety in their wider environment In this article we speak to Laurel Freedman, an Educational Psychologist and chair of the Mental Health, Wellbeing and Happiness committee at Gesher, and unpick the schoolʼs Mental Health, Happiness and Wellbeing work, to explore why faring well really matters for children and how you prioritise it in a school.

At Gesher the mental health, wellbeing and happiness (MHWH) of children and adults are core to our ethos. This is grounded in, and driven by, an understanding of what is most important to children and young people.

Children often come to the school having not had their sensory and emotional needs met in mainstream settings, leading to ʻoverwhelmʼ. Overwhelm, and the anxiety that comes with it, blocks children from flourishing and reaching their full potential.

Alternatively, security, safety and solid attachments create the foundations for children to take risks. Learning is all about taking risks; managed risk is at the core of all exploration and education. In short, happy children learn.

“In short, happy children learn.”

This isnʼt only true for children. Staff and parents also need to feel safe, secure and listened to, in order to create the same environment for children. When concentrating on mental health, happiness and wellbeing, Gesher also wanted to create the space and mechanisms for adults to voice their opinions, hear praise and talk about what they needed for their own wellbeing.

The schoolʼs MHWH policy was developed as a means to articulate and pin down the practices they had been developing and refining, in order to keep a record of what they had been doing and to share that with others. The following five steps are drawn from this policy & accompanying work.

Five steps to embedding a Mental Health, Wellbeing and Happiness school ethos

1. Learn from others

Look elsewhere for inspiration and to gather ideas.

For example, Gesher gathered ideas from:

  • The ʻMentally Healthy Schoolsʼ work of the Anna Freud Centre;
  • The Carnegie Schoolʼs Centre of Excellence for Mental Health in Schools, working with the centre in the form of grantees, as well as governors
  • Schools with similar cohorts to the children at Gesher, where they asked to review the schoolʼs policies, undertake visits & take ideas

“Itʼs important to note that Gesher is still in learning mode, and probably always will be.”

2. Establish governance for the work

Gesher established a Wellbeing Committee, comprising the CEO, School Wellbeing Lead & Music Therapist, and School Educational Psychologists, focussed on:

  • Bringing challenge and rigour to the development of the schoolʼs approach
  • Building a MHWH curriculum
  • Establishing impact measures & celebrating successes
  • Embedding the work across the whole of the school.

(A school wanting to establish its own committee might also want to include pastoral care and safeguarding leads.)

3. Build the right team, skills and approaches

On top of the committee, the school also appointed multidisciplinary specialist workers to meet specialist needs that some children might have. These included:

  • A SENDCo
  • A wellbeing lead
  • A drama therapist
  • An educational psychologist
  • An Occupational Therapist, and
  • A Speech and Language Therapist.

However, Gesherʼs MHWH approach is ʻwhole schoolʼ, meaning itʼs owned by everyone. The work is designed to feel connected and to promote the fact that everyone has skills and a role to play in promoting it.

Whilst some staff are appointed for their specific expertise, every member of staff is trained and supported to spot early warning signs and the different needs of each child. There are also displays, celebration assemblies and constant discussion opportunities in the school to talk about it.

4. Create tailored support strategies for each child, promoted by your curriculum

Each child has a tailored support strategy, focusing on hearing each young personʼs needs and voice.

This strategy closely involves families, building important links between home and school. These strategies, and the emotional scaffolding tools used within the curriculum encourage:

  • Children to feel confident
  • Effective expression of emotions
  • Relationship building
  • Ability to cope with stresses of life & deal with change
  • Independence

Activities that promote this include:

  • Pupil-led activities: self expression day; opportunities to share feelings or lead activities
  • Class activities: Middah slips where staff recognise the positive impact of student action; timetabled relaxation time; mindfulness
  • Whole School activities: Jewish faith ethos to ʻlove thy neighbour as thyselfʼ; celebration assemblies; and displays about positive mental health.


5. Think about your impact & how you assess wellbeing

Observe changes in the resilience of children (and adults) who face adversity and struggle. The coronavirus pandemic, for example, helped the school to see this in action. Gesher was able to stay open during lockdown, knowing that stability was needed for children. But staying open wasnʼt the only thing that created that safety. The children were still able to thrive and learn during such a difficult time because of the consistent and tailored support strategies put around them. supported and listened to? Do they feel like owners of the work?

Talk to parents. Parents have told us that they have a ʻdifferent childʼ, they describe the changes to their childrenʼs interests, interactions, appetite for learning and in the way they look forward to things. All teachers will observe this themselves, but itʼs really validating to hear parents observe it too.

Ask your staff for feedback regularly. Do they feel supported and listened to? Do they feel like owners of the work?

The above steps are drawn from one schoolʼs learning journey to date. Itʼs important to note that it is still in learning mode (and probably always will be). Their next focus is an exploration of adolescent transitions and good mental health.

Professional Prompt Questions

  • Whatʼs needed to guarantee children feel secure and valued in school?
  • How can schools ensure that children are really well known, and that they know that they are known?
  • How do you build security and support for staff in SEND schools?
  • How can you make mental health, wellbeing and happiness everyoneʼs business in school?

Laurel trained as a primary school teacher over 40 years ago and has had a number of roles and professions both in England and Israel, including teaching adults and pre-school children, and childminding. After qualifying as an Educational Psychologist (EP) in 1996, she worked for the London Borough of Enfield for seven years and then moved to Norwood (Binoh) where she managed the EP team, working predominantly within the Jewish community. During this time, she also spent five years on a secondment to the Tavistock Centre, working as a part-time course tutor on the Doctorate for Child, Community and Educational Psychology. Since leaving Norwood in 2013, Laurel has worked as an independent EP and is now semi-retired.

Gesher Design Principles

29th March 2022realsmart admin

Gesher Design Principles

EVERY YOUNG PERSON IS PROFOUNDLY WELL KNOWN
Learning at Gesher is founded on relationships and attachment:

  • Adults know students as both young people and learners
  • Young people know and support one another
  • Gesher is a community of ambition built on relationships and compassion.


PERSONALISED LEARNING INFORMED BY YOUNG PEOPLE’S PASSIONS AND INTERESTS
At Gesher young peopleʻs learning will be highly personalised:

  • Fostering curiosity and discovering passions and interests
  • Developing from that to ambition and engagement
  • Ensuring holistic growth and development


ACADEMIC RIGOUR AND AUTHENTIC REAL-WORLD LEARNING

  • Learning at Gesher will be academically rigorous and authentic – connected to real-world tasks in the adult world
  • Learning will take place in school, in the community and through internships in the workplace
  • Young peopleʼs learning will include real-world projects, appropriate skill-based learning, and authentic real-world assessments
  • We will design together rigorous and engaging projects that will develop young people’s sense of agency, ability to collaborate constructively and encourage collective
    achievement.


A CULTURE OF REFLECTIVE PRACTICE AND COLLABORATIVE PEER LEARNING

  • Gesher has a culture of staff reflecting and thinking about their practice together, and collaboratively planning how to improve outcomes for each and every young person
  • Gesher has a culture of peer teaching and tutoring enabling young people to learn from one another.


PARENTS AND COMMUNITY AS PARTNERS IN LEARNING

  • Parents are critical partners – expected to play an active role in their child’s school and home learning
  • At Gesher, parents are our partners in their child’s education, and our community supports and enables learning to happen
  • Gesher engages with the wealth of experience and expertise in our community, and we create opportunities for volunteering.