Education and Learning programme
Report
At the heart of our commitment to education and learning has been a desire to ensure that children and young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, can benefit fully from the springboard that education can give them to realise their potential. Through our Open Grants and Special Initiatives we have sought to generate knowledge and trial ways of working that can influence practice beyond the schools and other organisations that we have directly supported.
Between 2007 and its closure in October 2014, our Education and Learning Open Grants scheme supported innovative proposals under three themes: developing speaking and listening skills, reducing the impact of school truancy and exclusion, and supplementary education. We received a record number of applications in the final weeks of the scheme. An enhanced budget of £5 million enabled us to award 35 grants to highquality projects throughout the UK across our three themes. These range from support for communityled activity through to sector-level interventions.
Many of the proposals received during 2014/15 relate to the wider debate about the status of teaching as a profession. The year saw a number of publications on this issue and a successful campaign to found an independent, profession-led College of Teaching. We supported a wide range of activities designed to empower teachers to test and embed new practice in their own classrooms, led both from within schools and in partnership with the voluntary and informal education sectors.
In November 2014, we were pleased to announce a two-year grant to support the Teacher Development Trust to extend the reach of its National Teacher Enquiry Network in the North East of England. We have also renewed our relationship with Whole Education, with a further two years’ funding to support its network of schools and partner organisations engaged in innovative educational practice.
A number of our Special Initiatives drew to a close this year. Musical Bridges, which began in 2010, aimed to facilitate effective partnership working between primary and secondary schools to ensure that pupils’ musical development is consistently and continuously supported through the transition to secondary school. In September 2014 we transferred ownership of this initiative to Music Mark, the national association for music services, which is working to facilitate the spread of Musical Bridges resources and practice recommendations among its members and the schools they work with.
We are committed to collating and sharing what we have learned with the sectors we have worked in, and to working in partnership where there is demand to take forward this work. During 2014/15 we made a significant legacy grant to support Musical Futures, PHF’s longest-running Special Initiative, to become an independent enterprise.
In August 2014, after seven years as PHF’s Head of Education and Learning, Denise Barrows left to take up a new role at the Mercers’ Company. During her tenure Denise developed and led a number of ambitious programmes and partnerships. We are grateful for her substantial contribution to our work, for her vision and integrity.
In March 2015 we also said goodbye to three of our four programme advisors: Benita Refson OBE, Sir Alasdair Macdonald, and Anita Kerwin- Nye. We are delighted that Sir Tim Brighouse will continue to advise the Foundation as a member of our Learning Away steering group until July 2015. Our advisors’ expertise informed our past work and the development of our future strategy, and we are grateful for their commitment over the years.
In future, much of PHF’s work with schools will focus on improving young people’s education and learning through the arts. More detail will be announced in the summer but, during 2014/15, we were pleased to announce a two-year grant to the Cultural Learning Alliance (CLA). The CLA’s vision, ethos and expert knowledge make it an important partner for the Foundation and all other agencies working to improve and extend arts-based education.
Abi Knipe
Grants Officer, Education and Learning
Special Initiatives
learning away
Achieving more through school residentials
£188,857 in 2014/15
In July 2014 Learning Away’s five-year programme of action research came to an end. Working collaboratively with each other, with independent evaluators and specialist advisors, 60 primary, secondary and special schools across the UK have helped us define, test and evaluate what we now describe as ‘Brilliant Residentials’.
We believe that residential learning is ‘brilliant’ when it is led by teachers, co-designed with pupils and fully integrated into the curriculum. By working in this way, schools can achieve significant breakthroughs in learner engagement and progress, while achieving positive outcomes for teachers and the school as a whole.
We always intended Learning Away to be about much more than providing schools with funding to deliver new residential programmes. The initiative aimed to develop an influential body of practice, knowledge and evidence relating to the use of residential experiences to enhance young people’s learning, and provide support for schools across the UK to adopt these practices.
York Consulting will publish its final evaluation report on the impact of Learning Away in summer 2015. Interim analysis of surveys and focus groups with pupils and teachers has started to identify what it is about the overnight stay in particular that can bring about powerful positive outcomes for young people long after their return to school.
The Learning Away website now hosts over 50 good practice case studies, alongside material to help make the case for residential learning to school leaders, governors and Ofsted. Writers from our partnership schools have also helped us produce a series of practical resources for teachers and visit leaders, including planning information, activity ideas, downloadable templates, presentations and films. These materials are being shared and recommended between peers, locally and via social media, and their influence on schools and residential providers can already be seen.
Our funding for Learning Away ends in September 2015. We are working with the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom and other like-minded partners to ensure that our emerging policy and practice recommendations will continue to be taken up by schools and providers, so that Learning Away has a sustainable and lasting legacy.
‘inspiring music for all’
Independent review of music education in UK schools
£20,896 in 2014/15
The Foundation has long had an interest in music education and we have supported a great deal of work in this area, including Musical Futures. In November 2013 we commissioned an independent review of the state of schools-based music education, to inform the development of our new strategy. Katherine Zeserson, Director of Learning and Participation for Sage Gateshead, undertook the review, working with Professor Graham Welch from the Institute of Education at University College London.
The review covered the following areas of music education in England:
- What are the key issues relating to schools-based music education?
- What are the key strategies, drivers and agencies influencing schools-based practice?
- What has been the significance of Musical Futures to schools and how has it affected musical education?
- Are there potential opportunities for PHF to make a distinctive contribution to tackling the key issues identified and achieving further significant impact in the field of music education?
The review found that the place and status of music in schools varies widely across the country. The best music in schools is significantly more inclusive, more musically diverse and better quality than it had been a decade earlier. However, the quality and reach of schools-based music education is still unacceptably variable and inconsistent, across primary and secondary phases.
The report Inspiring Music for All was launched at a Music Education Council event at the Royal Opera House in July 2014. We are pleased that the review and its recommendations to the music education sector have prompted considerable discussion.
The review also made recommendations to the Foundation, which the trustees decided to take forward in our new strategy. These include the establishment of a time-limited working group to create a set of clear, practical, inspiring guidelines and tools for schools, teachers and others to use in providing an enriching music education for children and young people.
what works? student retention and success
Developing student engagement in higher education
£12,330 in 2014/15
Since 2008 we have worked with universities to build understanding of how to support students to stay on at university and successfully complete their courses. The initial phase of the work, which involved 22 universities, pointed to the importance of student engagement and a sense of belonging to their academic domain – particularly to their discipline group within the university – as a key to their retention and success.
In April 2014, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills published its National Strategy for Access and Student Success in Higher Education. We were pleased that this drew on the What Works? research, citing the findings and the principles that What Works? had put forward to shape further work on student ‘belongingness’ and retention.
In phase two of What Works?, 13 universities are putting these principles into practice as part of a three-year change programme, guided by the Higher Education Academy. The aim is to translate knowledge about student engagement in their academic discipline area into practical changes to what university staff can do, at induction and subsequently through approaches to teaching and learning, to nurture students’ sense of belonging.
Action on Access is evaluating the process of change in the universities. As we move into the second academic year of this phase, we are beginning to see the effect of the changes being put into place in three discipline areas in each university. The impact of the changes is being assessed through data on student attainment and students’ sense of belonging, engagement and self-confidence, using a research tool developed specifically to gather data on this dimension of the student experience.
We will publish the evaluation to share what we have learned about how to build student engagement and belonging.
the reading agency
Support towards additional digital capacity and the Reading Hack programme
The Reading Agency received a 25th anniversary gift of £1m from the Foundation in 2013 to support the expansion of its digital capacity and to develop its work with young people aged 13–24.
Building on the success of its Reading Activists programme, the Reading Agency aims to inspire young people to read more, share their love of reading with others and celebrate the benefits of reading. It believes that confident and skilled readers have greater aspirations and opportunities and that reading brings enjoyment and increases wellbeing. The Agency is also using an element of PHF funding to develop its fundraising capability and to strengthen evaluation of the impact of its work.
Over the past year, The Reading Agency has been consulting young people and libraries, and working with youth digital media company Bold Creative, to develop a new name and design for the programme. In 2015, we will see the launch of Reading Hack, including a new digital platform for young people and pilot groups being set up across the UK, with a particular focus on disadvantaged communities. In partnership with libraries, Reading Hack will encourage young people to generate, participate and lead their own reading-inspired activities to engage their peers with reading. Activists will develop their own skills, confidence and employability through involvement in volunteering, including supporting the Summer Reading Challenge or World Book Night.
Legacy
As the Foundation refreshes its strategic focus, we will cease to offer funding in some areas. Where we have had a long-running relationship with an issue or sector but are now stepping back, we are working in partnership to secure and enhance the impact of our past investments.
We have funded supplementary schools for 14 years through the Education and Learning programme, contributing to improvements in the quality of tuition and range of activities, as well as the development of partnerships with mainstream schools. Over the past three years, we have undertaken additional work to strengthen the sustainability of our grantees and the wider sector, including:
- A large-scale research study of the impact of supplementary schools on children’s attainment in mainstream education
- A series of case studies of supplementary schools which aim to show a range of relatively strong models for maintaining financial stability
- Organisational development support for seven supplementary school grantees
This work is nearing completion. In July 2014 we also awarded a grant to the Royal Society for the Arts (RSA) to conduct an investigation into the lifetime outcomes of black and minority ethnic young people, which considered the role of supplementary schools in improving these outcomes.
The research report, case studies and RSA investigation were published in May 2015 and are available online via the National Resource Centre for Supplementary Education (NRCSE) and our own website. Shorter printed versions of the case studies will be distributed to our grantees and NRCSE members. Although the Foundation will no longer have a specific focus on supplementary education, we hope that these publications will provide useful and lasting resources for the sector.
Our work to facilitate learning and knowledge transfer within and across the sectors in which we have been active is ongoing.
The Communication Trust, a key partner in our work to encourage and support new interventions that develop the speaking and listening skills of young people, has published a suite of tools to help non-specialist facilitators to monitor learners’ progress. Over the coming year we will continue to convene networking and practice-sharing events for current grantees, and will launch a number of new publications.
After 12 years of grant funding, we have supported Musical Futures to make the transition to an independent not-for-profit company limited by guarantee, which it became on 1 April 2015. Since 2003, Musical Futures has developed a range of innovative approaches that enable teachers to deliver inclusive and inspirational music learning activities. In July 2014, we made a three-year transition grant to enable the development of new programmes that spread its practice among existing and new sectors, and to support the new company to build sustainable income. Although our direct relationship with Musical Futures is at an end, we continue our interest in arts-based education practices and recognise the new company as a key partner in the field of music education.2
Language Futures is a learner-led approach to language teaching, originally developed by Linton Village College as part of our Learning Futures initiative. Since 2010, we have provided support for staff across a number of schools to explore how Language Futures approaches can be used to, for example, re-engage students who have been disruptive in conventionally taught lessons, or to support young people to become literate in their mother tongue – themes relevant to PHF’s wider education and learning priorities. In March 2015, the Education and Learning programme awarded a three-year transition grant to the Association for Language Learning, its partners Whole Education and the British Council, to underpin the spread and longer-term support of Language Futures approaches.