Dear colleagues,

I hope you have had a great weekend.  Last week proved to be another positive and successful week. Thanks for your influence and input. A massive thanks to the Maths team who hosted Michelle and I on Friday for Open Doors.  We had a very positive time - loads of great practice to share.

Learning, Teaching & Assessment

It was great to see everyone together at Wednesday's twilight. I think everyone has identified their plus one for the session.  We hope that the shorter cycle will prove more impactful.  Massive thanks to Michelle and the Working Group Leads for organising and delivering the sessions. This is one of two big investments of time and input that are running this session.  Next week on the 10th and 11th September, Mark Burns is coming in to deliver professional learning sessions with all teaching staff.  You will be advised of your time this week.  Mark delivered a fantastic session to the Leadership Team last term, so positive and helpful that we have booked him to work with all staff.  The focus is feedback and linked to assessments that will help us make accurate judgements about learners progress.  I hope tha this in turn will support the work we are doing on monitoring and tracking.

Raising Attainment & Achievement - next steps

Thanks to David who has pulled all of the S5/6 course information together.  As 5@level 6 is an important focus for us, given the three year downward trend, I am keen to share the picture from the finalised course choices. 

At this stage the picture is significantly more positive than it ended last session.  Our school aim is to keep and support young people in level 6 courses, carefully track progress and quickly intervene when learners are falling off track.

The spreadsheet has three S5 groups, each in a tab:

S5 Group 1 (45 pupils):  These learners are doing 5 Highers from A at N5 and should be secure 

S5 Group 2 (20 pupils):  These pupils are doing 5 Highers from 4 As.  The subject that is coloured yellow or blue, denotes a crash (blue) or progressing from a B at N5 (yellow)

S5 Group 3 (21 pupils):  These learners are the least secure of our 5 Higher candidates.  They will need the most support and intervention from the start.  Where your subject is red, the learner is progressing from a C pass at N5.

Interventions:

• In class monitoring and support by teacher

• Regular retrieval quizzes 

• Carefully consider the groupings/ pairs that these learners are in

• Peer mentoring (S6 pupils with Higher passes and time)

• Regular past paper homework to guide revision

• Supported Study: £15,000 funding is available for targeted out of school hours study sessions.  You can start these as soon as you are able for young people in red, yellow or blue.  Please discuss the possibilities and options that may be offered by your team.  PTs should complete the Supported Study Request Form outlining the plan and target pupils. I will quickly get back to you with a response. Thanks in advance for offering this.

After each tracking period, we will share an overview of where learners are overall.  Again, Supported Study funding will be on offer along with short-term targeted support from subject specialists in HWB time. David will coordinate this with PTs.  

Safeguards to promote attainment

Every year at attainment meetings, a significant number of PTs emphasise the impact of pupils having too much time out of class.  They are able to match young people's time out to overall attainment.  With that in mind, we will not be approving trips for S5/6 pupils after prelim time.  Together we will give our young people the best support to secure their best achievements.

Thank you for your hard work and professionalism. Have a great week.

Elaine