Rationale and Research

‘Acceleration for All’ is a new concept that has come to interest due to the ongoing impacts of two important events: the COVID-19 pandemic and the current civil rights movement. In recent years, we have worked hard to establish and develop the new curriculum, during this process new teaching and learning pedagogies flourished within the classroom ensuring education is equitable and inclusive for all. Historically, we would identify the top 20% of pupils who require enriched and extended opportunities to develop their abilities or talents in one or more areas. However, as a school we felt we needed to update our approach to ‘More-able and Talented’ to be in line with the changes of the curriculum. As a result, ‘Acceleration for All’ was born and identifies every child’s talent. Equity is at the core of our school ethos and therefore we wanted an inclusive approach to ‘More-able and talented’. ‘Acceleration for All’ will implement strategies that will put equity into action, which we believe must occur for the good of all students not just a select few. Providing all students with authentic, engaging learning opportunities focused on strengths and accelerating learning rather than on deficits and filling gaps can change the educational trajectory for students within our schools.

An ‘Acceleration for All’ approach will ensure opportunities should not be reserved for those students formally identified as gifted or advanced learners. A wealth of research has shown these strategies meet gifted learners' needs, both their social emotional and academic needs. Strategies and opportunities that we know to be effective for gifted learners making learning for all rigorous and engaging. Most importantly reaching this goal should not be contingent on a student's post code, background, privileges, race, gender or how they perform on assessments. We stand firm that to engage students in their learning and provide equity across the system, we must ensure opportunities are widespread and available to all learners, regardless of labels they do or do not have.

At Pembroke Dock Primary School, we aim to provide a curriculum that is appropriate to the needs and abilities of all our children. We recognise that each child is unique, displaying a range of intelligences and abilities. Staff at PDCS have high expectations of all pupils. We plan and match work to individual pupil abilities. Skill-slips and tool kits help to develop pupils’ skills for learning. We endeavour to create stimulating and challenging learning experiences that promote our pupils’ independence, problem-solving, decision making, thinking and collaboration within the Areas of Learning and Experience (AoLEs) and across the 4 purposes. We strive for all our children to become ‘Visible Learners’ that embrace challenge and are highly engaged independent learners. We plan our teaching and learning through listening to the voice of the pupil, this way we provide all pupils with a high degree of autonomy.

Aims and objectives:

· To provide all learners a high degree of autonomy to ensure they receive a suitably broad and balanced curriculum that develops their knowledge and skills progressively;

· High expectations of all pupils’ achievement and use of a range of creative strategies to challenge and extend all pupils learning;

· To provide additional enrichment activities to enhance teaching and learning;

· To identify specific skills and talents;

· To widen opportunities and expectations by extending teaching and learning skills;

· To make use of the wider community and partnerships/’subject experts within areas of learning to enhance learning opportunities;

· To promote positive parental engagement opportunities;

· To create an inclusive culture of high aspirations and achievement for all.

Identification and tracking of ‘Acceleration for All’

At Pembroke Dock Community School, we believe all pupils require enriched and extended opportunities to develop their abilities or talents. Every child has unique talents, strengths or passions, which we value. At the beginning of each academic year our whole school ‘Acceleration for All’ register is renewed and updated. As a school we identified every child’s talents and interests

through our ‘Acceleration for All’ register, we use this whole school register to identify these and are linked to one of the 4 purposes (see table below). Additionally, we identify the top 2% of pupils in each year group as defined by the most-able (or exceptionally able) these are highlighted blue on the register.

To identify each individual child’s talent, we gain input from parents through a questionnaire (see below), use teacher judgement and pupil voice to gain pupils personal views. These talents are then linked to one of the 4 purposes within the AfA register.

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=Ug4_TzS3ZEGUCRtgHRR5k5KCWiP_Sa9BmA9Hc8bcGY9UOU1CODNWTDlNU1NEVFExTkRaREwwSlI0RS4u