Prior to his keynote presentation at our Conference on 25 March, Bill Lucas, author of ‘Power up your Mind - learn faster, work smarter’ will be running a workshop session for about 45 boys in KS4 from across the network.

The one and a half hour session will focus on ‘[Becoming a Competent Learner’ and involve a composite group of boys from De La Salle, Sweyne Park and Woodlands. The target group will consist of pupils who have been identified as having a learner profile which might be characterised by an inconsistent pattern of achievement, unusual KS3 scores of particularly interesting learning style.

It is hoped that through a variety of tasks and access to Bill’s techniques the boys will be encouraged to be increasingly resourceful, resilient and reflective in their learning.

<ANDY SAMWAYS - SPS>

The underachievements of boys in literacy have recently attracted interest and attention. The current concerns arose after the Ofsted report ‘Boys and English in 1993’ which highlighted differences in the achievement in English of boys and girls. It concluded that more boys than girls experience difficulty in learning to read and write and that more boys have instrumental attitudes towards writing which are accompanied by problems with motivation and a lack of engagement with writing tasks. Stephan Nicholls of Glebe Junior and Emily Evans of Sweyne Park were keen that we organised a Network group to develop this topic.

With the more recent expansion in gender focused research on the ‘gap’ in boys writing achievements in relation to their reading, our Network group has not only been getting to grips with existing research but also exploring how classroom teachers can be supportive and motivate boys in their writing. We have shared work and used the expertise of a visiting consultant. The group is looking at the role that variety in learning, ICT and assessment for learning techniques, may take in narrowing this gap. This work will form the basis of a group’s workshop for both primary and secondary colleagues in the Autumn Term.

<ANDY SAMWAYS - SPS>

There is little doubt that activities involving the members of any community in decision making is crucial to creating a positive culture and increasingly schools are achieving a similar effect through the use of school/year councils. Certainly in my experience when the collective pupil brain is engaged to improve an aspect of school life, the healthy ideas are very impressive and create a real buzz about the place.

The most common role for school councils is to improve the pupils’ environment. At Sweyne Park, a whole range of developments have taken place as a direct result of consulting the pupils and giving them a forum to innovate. These have included the design of murals, renovating bike sheds, purchasing water fountains and even building gardens with comfortable places to sit.

Pupils have a budget to spend as part of the premises budget and the discussions about how to spend their money have been very heated! However, there is no reason why councils cannot take an active role in other areas of school life, such as fundraising, organising events such as Sports days and even shaping how the curriculum is delivered. For example, Lynne Knight our Head of Art, spent an hour with all the KS3 school council members discussing what areas of the Art curriculum they felt were not successful/productive and what improvements they might like to see. The feedback they gave was incredibly mature and Lynne found some of their views and suggestions very insightful and useful. Pupils have taken part in a similar session about Science with Ed Hawkins, our Science School Leader.

Our next project is to set up a termly Head’s question time session, when pupils on the Year /school council can ‘grill’ Kate Spiller on the issues in school they feel most strongly about. This idea has already been happening for Year 9 pupils in PSE on an annual basis and proved very successful. Giving that several of our council members were also invited to speak at The House of Lords last year, the pupils will certainly be used to the cut and thrust of political debate - so watch this space!

<ANDY HODGKINSON - SPS>