Education and Learning Programme

Report

The past year has seen a range of activity across the Education and Learning programme, seeking to address a number of prevailing issues that challenge teachers, learners and leaders within both formal and informal education settings.

Our Musical Futures Special Initiative has continued to grow, as more schools embed the practices we have developed, increasing both teachers’ and students’ enthusiasm for school-based music education. We are delighted to be expanding the initiative into Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We will also be working with partner organisations to advocate for the place of music in the school curriculum in England, in light of its exclusion from the approved English Baccalaureate subjects and its potential removal from the National Curriculum.

Learning Futures, a Special Initiative focused on young people’s engagement with learning, has continued to strike a chord with teachers, school and sector-level leaders, both in the UK and internationally. The approaches we have developed to teaching and learning – and to whole-school organisation and ethos – have achieved real breakthroughs in young people’s engagement with their learning.

We are hopeful that the models developed by our newest Special Initiative, Musical Bridges: Transforming Transition, will, like Learning Futures, have much to offer the wider curriculum. Musical Bridges has progressed this year from initial scoping and research to on-the-ground practice and professional development work with teachers in three pilot areas.

Learning Away is a Special Initiative that works with schools to strengthen their commitment to providing quality residential learning experiences. The initiative is tapping, and beginning to evidence, the huge potential of residentials to enhance a wide range of outcomes, not just for pupils, but for the school as a whole. Schools are facing additional barriers in committing to residentials for pupils (as well as many other curriculum-enhancing opportunities), owing to budgetary constraints linked to public sector cuts. Our Learning Away partners are

demonstrating a number of exemplary, low-cost residential models, where pupils and staff design and share ownership of the learning experience.

Within higher education, we are confident that the consensus that has emerged this year from the evaluation activities supported through our What Works? Student Retention and Success initiative will offer valuable insights to universities. We are learning about ways for higher education institutes to prevent students from dropping out and to ensure their successful participation. These findings will be particularly pertinent as universities face major challenges from teaching grant cuts, the introduction of higher tuition fees and the likelihood that students will become more assertive and discerning consumers.

Through our Open Grants scheme, we have awarded 38 grants totalling £3,269,219 across our three themes – Developing Speaking and Listening Skills for 11–19 year olds, Supplementary Education and Preventing Truancy and Exclusion¹. Among our new grantees, together with those still delivering work funded in previous years, are many exciting and impactful examples of how to foster change, not just at the level of the individual beneficiaries, but at the level of communities and a wider field or educational sector.

We are concerned about the impact of public spending cuts on many of the charities, schools and other statutory organisations doing important work in these three priority areas. They are likely to adversely affect young people, such as those attending supplementary schools, from more disadvantaged backgrounds. In the coming year, we will be paying particular attention, through our Open Grants, to supporting partnership working and collaboration, professional development and sustainable approaches and interventions.

Programme principles

We have this year developed a programme-wide strategy to enhance the wider impact of our work and more actively promote the learning generated from our Open Grants work, alongside the existing plans to disseminate findings and practice recommendations from our Special Initiatives. The strategy encompasses a set of core principles that we aim to see reflected across the programme.

Among these are a wish to help ensure the breadth of young people’s education so that they can develop a range of skills, qualities and knowledge they will need for the future. The Speaking and Listening theme of our Open Grants scheme has stimulated a large volume of work to this end, much of which would not otherwise have taken place. Organisations such as the Geography Association, featured in the Open Grants section, are developing new programmes and resources that will help to ensure that young people develop the communication skills that will enable them to confidently contribute to the world of work, engage in democratic processes and become agents of change in their communities. Our Learning Away Special Initiative has also achieved significant outcomes for pupils through fostering a wide range of personal skills and aptitudes to complement subject-based learning.

As with the work of all the Foundation’s UK programmes, participation lies at the heart of what we are doing – it is vital in the work we support that learners are active in shaping their own learning experiences. This is fundamental to our work within Learning Futures. Moving well beyond more common ‘student voice’ activities, our Learning Futures schools are aiming to achieve a ‘learning commons’, where the school becomes an open, shared space within which everyone – pupils and staff – can contribute to, and take responsibility for learning. The schools are working to establish three inter-related cultures: of collaborative enquiry, of genuine co-construction (of learning experiences) and of democratic community².

Participation is a key criterion for our Open Grants work and the Browsers project run by the Glasgow South East Regeneration Agency is just one of many examples of how young people, in their case those at risk of exclusion, can gain a new sense of ownership for and commitment to their learning.3

Another area of interest is to explore ways in which the different elements of the education system can fit together better and offer a more coherent learning experience for children and young people. Through our Supplementary Schools Open Grants theme, we have funded this year several projects aiming to build stronger partnerships between mainstream and supplementary schools and this will remain a priority for the coming year. Our Musical Bridges: Transforming Transition Special Initiative is seeking to tackle the common disconnect between different phases of the education system, in particular through a focus on transition from primary to secondary school in relation to music education.

Learning and development

During the coming year we will receive key evaluation reports on all five initiatives, including the synthesis of the evaluation work we have been funding in higher education to understand how universities can best ensure student retention and success, and final external evaluation reports on Musical Futures and Learning Futures. We will be producing a range of tools and materials designed to guide and help others to replicate the effective practices that we have developed and tested.

Within our Open Grants programme we will be commissioning some work to help ensure greater impact across our three themes for the relevant sectors and developing some new activities to facilitate sharing of learning and practice amongst our grantees.

Across all three Open Grants themes we have been disappointed during 2010/11 to receive very few applications from outside of England. We would therefore welcome in the coming year more applications under all themes from other parts of the UK.

The Education and Learning Committee has been bolstered this year with the appointment of Jennifer Izekor as a new advisor. Her experience of engaging and working with voluntary and community sector bodies, particularly with black and minority ethnic communities, has improved our understanding of current challenges facing supplementary schools and will help us to increase the impact of work in this area.

Special Initiatives

Musical Futures

Transforming music education in schools

£189,913 in 2010/11

Musical Futures has been running in schools for seven years now and has developed an approach to music teaching and learning that is followed in more than a third of English secondary schools. This approach aims to sustain engagement and participation in young people’s music making by providing a range of strategies that make music learning relevant, realistic and enjoyable for young people. Musical Futures is a new way of thinking about music making in schools that brings non-formal teaching and informal learning approaches into the more formal context of schools.

The vision that guides the current phase of the initiative (to July 2012) is for Musical Futures to become embedded into at least half of secondary schools in England, for these schools, teachers and practitioners to feel supported and confident, and for Musical Futures to form a crucial, long-term part of music education policy and practice.

Work during 2010/11 focused on further embedding Musical Futures techniques into practice through a range of activities. Highlights include the launch of our Young Champions programme, engaging students as online mentors for other Musical Futures participants, increased input to initial teacher training courses, and the continuing development of our CPD offers for teachers (delivered by our Champion Schools). We have also developed a cross-phase project to help build on successful national programmes for music participation at primary level and create links to Musical Futures work at secondary schools. The project, based on the Iggy Pop song ‘The Passenger’, is designed to be accessible to non-specialist primary school teachers as well as specialist secondary music teachers, and can be used in schools with different levels of music facilities.

We have developed a film to encapsulate Musical Futures approaches and demonstrate its impact for teachers considering its use, or encountering it in their teacher training. We are contributing to an Olympics themed project led by the Youth Sports Trust, delivering Musical Futures workshops alongside Olympic athletes.

Over the coming year we will be contributing, alongside the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust and other partners, to a new nationwide music competition for young people, and piloting Musical Futures in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Learning Away

Achieving more through school residentials

£83,492 in 2010/11

Learning Away supports schools across the UK to enhance young people’s learning, achievement and wellbeing by using residential experiences as an integral part of the curriculum. We want to achieve significant shifts, nationwide, in schools’ commitment to high-quality residential learning experiences for their pupils.

This year we have developed the infrastructure of the initiative by appointing Peter Carne, previously national champion for Learning Outside the Classroom, as project leader, creating an online forum and organising national events to share and improve practice.

Around 2,000 children and young people, from the 61 schools acting as our Learning Away pilots, participated in residentials this year. The schools divide into 13 clusters, each with a different focus, such as curriculum development, community cohesion and inclusion, multi-agency and family support work, facilitating student transition, working with parents, improving student attainment, leadership and wellbeing.

Over the first year of activity, our evaluators from the Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Evaluation (CUREE) saw significant progress in many clusters.

The impact of schools’ Learning Away programmes on students included increased knowledge and skills in different areas of learning, enhanced transferable skills and attributes, such as independence, and a number of affective benefits, such as increased self-confidence and resilience.

In many cases teachers emphasised that young people’s levels of engagement in and enjoyment of their residential learning were higher than those seen at school. Increased student engagement and motivation are commonly seen as indicators and drivers of better future performance and are therefore likely to contribute to positive learning impacts for pupils. A priority for the coming and future years will be to gather more direct evidence of the impact on attainment.

Staff, children and their parents often linked the improvements in confidence and self-esteem with new experiences and the sense of independence and achievement that young people experienced while away. This was particularly true for pupils with special educational needs. Two primary clusters noticed that some of their learners became more resilient and willing to persevere in the face of initial difficulties. All clusters highlighted improvements in student relationships – with peers, staff, and family members – as an important outcome of their Learning Away programmes. Through working with partner schools on designing, delivering and evaluating their Learning Away programmes, staff benefited from opportunities to work collaboratively, reflect on their approach, develop research and evaluation skills and participate in project-specific continuing professional development.

We aim to embed residential learning experiences into school life so that they become integral to the curriculum and wider culture. By demonstrating the powerful impact residential learning can have on a wide range of outcomes for young people, including attendance, aspiration, achievement and cohesion, we hope to inspire other schools and policy makers to recognise residential learning as a highly effective means of fostering learner engagement and success.

Over the coming year we will be working closely with the clusters to understand in more depth their various ‘theories of change’ and link the processes and features of their residential interventions to the outcomes they are achieving. We are keen not just to evidence the impact achieved but to understand why residential learning experiences are often so powerful, and to explore whether these pedagogical practices and other features can be replicated in schools’ day-to-day activities.

“[ He] was close to exclusion even though he is only Year 2. He was in my office three times a week for disciplinary reasons. Now he comes to see me at least once a week to show me his ‘excellent work’ badges. He has completely re-engaged with learning.”

– A teacher from Newall Green High School, describing the impact of the school’s residential learning programme

Learning Futures

Developing teaching and learning to achieve breakthroughs in learner engagement

£475,586 in 2010/11

Achieving deeper learner engagement such that learners become enthusiastic owners of their learning, and giving them vital ‘21st century skills’, such as collaboration, information literacy and adaptability, are major drivers for change within the education system.

Learning Futures has been working closely with seven schools to develop new approaches for developing deeper learner engagement. For us deep engagement is something much more than compliance in the classroom. It is a concept that has relevance not just for those who are visibly disengaged, but also children and young people who passively withdraw from their education, and those who could be characterised as disengaged achievers – those who perform well academically, keep out of trouble, but reject further and higher education and opportunities for lifelong learning.

We have produced a further publication this year examining learner engagement: ‘The Engaging School: Principles and Practice’. We are working closely with partner schools to develop a comprehensive set of materials and tools to guide and aid schools more widely in implementing change to build better engagement.

The initiative benefited from a visit in March 2010 to the group of High Tech High schools in San Diego, which are internationally recognised for their expertise in project-based learning approaches. A group of teachers from High Tech High will be making a return visit to work in the Learning Futures schools and help strengthen their pedagogical approaches.

The initiative will end at the end of 2011 and work is going into securing its legacy, to maximise the reach of the research and resources developed. Learning Futures has attracted attention from around the world and will be taken over by the Innovation Unit, which has partnered PHF in the development of the initiative.

What Works? Student retention and success

Learning how best to ensure student success in higher education

£57,148 in 2010/11

Over a three-year period (2008–11), we have been generating evidence to help universities learn how best to ensure high student continuation and completion rates, particularly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The initiative aims to build understanding through evaluation and transfer knowledge about effective practice, rather than to fund retention interventions directly.

Working with seven clusters of higher education institutions (22 HEIs in all) we have found that the key to higher retention rates lies in enhancing students’ engagement in their higher education experience. The depth of understanding created by the initiative provides insights into how student engagement can be enhanced throughout the student lifecycle and across the academic, social and professional service spheres of the institution. This programme is particularly valuable in providing evidence about practical ways in which institutions can provide opportunities for student engagement, and it identifies the key features of interventions which facilitate student engagement. In addition, the conceptual model recognises the need for institutions to develop students’ capacity to engage. This includes developing their knowledge and understanding about the benefits of engaging across the different institutional spheres, and expanding their skills to do so. The evidence from the initiative is that significant institutional transformation is often required to achieve this.

Work this year has focused on completing evaluation work across the seven clusters with a view to synthesising findings for wider dissemination over the coming year. An important output of the project in 2011 is the development of practical tools to enable colleagues across the HE sector to put into practice the learning from the programme. In the light of forthcoming higher tuition fees for students, the need for HEIs to ensure strong student engagement to increase student retention and success will become an even greater imperative. Looking ahead, we will need to ensure that our work is presented in such a way as to ensure its ready utilisation by institutions more widely to help them strengthen their practices to ensure student retention.

The What Works? initiative is jointly funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England.

Musical Bridges: Transforming Transition

Improving practice to support young people as they progress from primary to secondary music education

£100,084 in 2010/11

In its first full year of operation, Musical Bridges has embarked upon a range of activities to improve the process of transition between primary and secondary school and minimise its negative impact on children’s musical education.

The initiative has developed several key strands of activity, including evidence gathering and research to better understand current practice, an innovative cross-phase teacher professional development programme and the development of an auditing tool to help schools assess their practice.

A cross-sector survey brought together views from primary and secondary schools, music services and other music education providers, culminating in the ‘Sound Tracks’ report, which can be read on the PHF website. The report emphasised many of the problems of transition and identified a healthy appetite among primary and secondary teachers for working together and sharing pedagogies.

The teacher development programme, developed in partnership with Trinity Guildhall and the Open University, is currently being piloted with around 30 schools in three locations across the country.

A longitudinal survey is also underway, tracking the experiences of a cohort of children as they make the transition from the final years of Key Stage 2 into the first years of Key Stage 3. An interim report, ‘Changing Key’, also available from the PHF website, provides evidence of some of the disconnects between primary and secondary music education.

The importance of transition to a child’s musical development was noted by the Henley Review of Music Education. Musical Bridges was recognised for its work in this area and we will be working to influence the National Plan for Music Education that the Department for Education has promised along with the development of regional music hubs. A priority for the year ahead will be the scale-up of improved practice, particularly through working with the new regional hubs, and to raise awareness more widely of the problems often associated with transition to stimulate further breakthroughs in practice across the country.

Open Grants Scheme

The Education and Learning Open Grants scheme operates across three themes.

The Speaking and Listening theme supports activities, taking place in or outside of school, which develop the oral communication skills that all young people need to become effective, contributing members of society.

The Supplementary Education theme supports the work of supplementary schools (defined as schools which operate on a part-time basis, led by voluntary sector organisations and with the active support of parents and the local community) primarily for the benefit of children and young people from black and minority ethnic communities.

The Preventing Truancy and Exclusion theme aims to support preventative work that will reduce the chances of children and young people reaching the point of persistent absence or exclusion from school, by enabling those considered to be most at risk of this to achieve and progress alongside their peers.

Grants awarded in 2010/11

The Geographical Association Speaking and Listening theme

£91,500 over 18 months

Geography as a lever for social and political change? With its Making My Place in the World project the Geographical Association is not expecting to influence global change but is anticipating schoolchildren will see the bigger picture whilst investigating local issues.

An 18-month pilot, initially taking in two inner-city schools from Sheffield and Manchester, will boost the confidence of disengaged pupils as they discuss their localities with local planners, architects, politicians and policy-makers.

“Young people understand their own areas uniquely,” says the Association’s programme director, John Lyon. “They are very confident in their ‘personal geographies’ so it’s a small step to encourage them to talk about these spaces and debate the issues with others.”

Introducing young people to local decision-makers is nothing new but it hasn’t been attempted in the context of geography before. “Pupils might not see this dialogue about the power and significance of space as geography but they will nevertheless be empowered by having their views heard.”

Working with community geographers – someone who will broker the relationship between the schools and the decision-makers – the Key Stage 4 pupils might at first use techniques such as walking interviews and audio diaries to develop their speaking and listening skills.

Early fears that schools might be under too much pressure to commit to such a project have proved unfounded. “It’s encouraging to find schools are still up for innovative and exciting projects despite demands on teachers and timetables,” says John.

“We will support teachers and encourage them to take on our ethos of letting the young people be experimental in their approach. That’s often a challenge for teachers locked in a target-driven system where learning can become heavily structured, restricting challenge and individuality.”

Following the pilot, the Geographical Association hopes many participants will become advocates – young community geographers themselves – not only for their local areas but for the project itself, even participating in workshops at national conferences.

Lessons learnt will be highlighted on a project website and debated in academic and teacher-led journals. The nuts and bolts of the project will be available as an online professional development package so geography teachers – the Association has 6,000 members – can run it for themselves. Following workshops, student geography teachers will also take mini versions into their training placements, further disseminating the project which has the potential to involve hundreds of schools and communities.

Ongoing grants

Glasgow South East Regeneration Agency

Preventing Truancy and Exclusion theme

£121,477 over two years

The Glasgow South East Regeneration Agency (GSERA), committed to improving employment prospects for local people, has received PHF funding since September 2009 to roll out a project targeting school pupils at risk of leaving school with few, if any, qualifications.

The Browsers School Project uses computer programs to motivate those young people who are disengaging from learning and likely to truant or be excluded. Originally piloted in one secondary school, the project now engages 11–16 year old pupils in the bottom sets of all South East Glasgow’s secondary schools.

Browsers uses off-the-shelf computer packages to teach aspects of the maths, English and modern languages curricula over an initial six-week period. CrazyTalk, used in language lessons, is an animation program that requires none of the conventional techniques – model-making or repetitive drawing – but is based instead on easily imported digital images. The popular computer game Neverwinter Nights, published by Atari, has been developed to increase literacy and numeracy skills.

“The young people are much more confident expressing themselves in this way than through conventional learning techniques,” explains Browsers support officer, Brian Keegan. “Their teachers see them engaged and focused which improves sometimes strained relationships.”

Pupils’ own evaluation of the project has consistently reported increased confidence and school attendance and a greater commitment to learning, outcomes reiterated by the teachers themselves and commended by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education.

“The Browsers Project has dramatically reduced disciplinary referrals and school exclusions, and contributed to a different attitude towards learning,” says Margaret Leyden, deputy head at Hollyrood Secondary School. “For example, Year 4 students who wouldn’t ordinarily be turned on to speaking French have spoken a pre-prepared script into the CrazyTalk program which has then been assessed. The whole group has achieved at least a Standard Grade pass, which would not have been possible without this approach.”

Inspired by the potential of technology, some students are now studying computer programming and gaming at college. Others have helped the Browsers team to deliver their high-tech lessons.

However, with PHF funding coming to an end and with a rationalisation of the regeneration agencies across the city, it is unclear how this successful project might be extended in a climate of financial constraint across all sectors.

Black Families Education Support Group

Supplementary School theme

£108,260 over three years

Since it began back in 1993 the Black Families Education Support Group (BFESG) in Bath has moved on from simply advising concerned parents and popping into schools each November to deliver Black History Month workshops.

“Our emphasis now is on a complete programme of educational provision for young people,” says development manager, Jason Pegg. “We run a supplementary school, a mentoring scheme, after-school and residential activities and build links to further and higher education. PHF is supporting specific areas of that provision.”

BFESG has extended the age range for its supplementary school pupils, now running sessions for 10–12 year olds as well as for 13–16 year olds. The tutors use film-making, photography, drama and poetry to energise a curriculum that includes a black and minority ethnic (BME) heritage qualification as well as English and maths. “You can learn stuff you don’t normally learn at school,” says one young participant. “I listen to people more and I’m more relaxed, I don’t get angry,” says another.

Recruitment and retention are difficult issues. “The supplementary school is on Saturday mornings and young people have busy lives,” says Jason. “One solution we are considering is to develop a virtual school that might look something like Facebook, where young people can download missed lessons, sign up for activities and update the site themselves.”

With the Foundation’s investment, BFESG’s relationship with schools has radically changed. Mainstream teachers are being encouraged to take an active role instead of just referring ‘bad lads’ to the school. “They’re now visiting us and taking some of our curriculum back to use in their own lessons,” says Jason.

“We also train BME peer mentors. Schools choose appropriate young people who we train specifically in BME issues, skills they take back into the mainstream.”

Parents are encouraged to become more aware of their children’s options. BFESG organises fact-finding visits to universities – for parents and children – and the links with higher education work in the other direction too. Student teachers from a nearby university have placements at the supplementary school, so they get an early understanding of the needs of all their future pupils.

Within the turmoil surrounding public service delivery BFESG sees itself potentially in a strong position. “If we can persuade schools that our programme has the potential to deliver specific outcomes, then we could become a commissioned alternative,” says Jason. “We’re in the right place and PHF has given us greater visibility.”

Completed grant

Kidscape Campaign for Children’s Safety

Preventing Truancy and Exclusion theme

£40,000 for one year

Kidscape, a national charity committed to keeping children safe from abuse, says one in 12 children are bullied badly enough for it to affect their education, relationships and

even job prospects. Official government figures suggest approximately a dozen youth suicides each year are directly attributable to bullying.

Nowadays there is no respite for victims. Constant contact through social networking sites and mobile phones, so-called ‘cyber-bullying’, means children are tormented even at times when they should feel safe.

For several years Kidscape has been running workshops for the most vulnerable, often suicidal, young people whose parents have often turned to the charity as a last resort. The ‘ZAP’ one-day workshop builds self-confidence, equips victims with body language and verbal assertiveness skills, teaches relaxation and creates a support network.

“When the children arrive for the workshop they are unable to meet our eyes,” says ZAP manager, Linda Frost. “By the end of the day their confidence levels have soared. It’s like watering a flower.”

Kidscape has used a PHF grant to replicate the successful ZAP techniques. “We wanted to work with bullied children whose school attendance was already affected, and to pass on skills to the educational professionals who were able to support them,” says Linda,

Working with 20 schools in Lincoln, Durham, Norfolk and Buckinghamshire – chosen by the strength of the partners’ commitment rather than the prevalence of bullying – Kidscape ran their ZAP workshops with children whose attendance was less than 85 per cent. “Each area had to commit to monitor attendance for three months after the workshop,” says Linda. “Overall the attendance of the 800-plus participants increased by an average of 10 per cent.”

Teachers, education welfare officers and educational psychologists attended the workshops. “We had a package of support for up to 80 ‘participant-observers’, so best practice was embedded on the ground. One area went on to train an additional 80 staff in ZAP techniques.”

With a reduction in the number of educationalists able to support the most vulnerable pupils, Kidscape sees the need for earlier intervention. “If we can empower Year 6 children before they move to ‘big school’ it would have huge benefits,” says Linda. “A child’s life can be turned around in this one-day workshop: it gives them a different view on how to deal with an intractable situation.”