MBC Education and Lifelong Learning SECONDARY EDUCATION UNIT

Aspiration for All:

Secondary Schools

in Sandwell

A World Class Learning Community

G:\ADV\SEU\SECONDARY VISION-16-07-04.DOC

Final draft 16 July 2004 Aspiration for all

Introduction: Aspiration for All

Young people should have the best start in life. Our vision is to raise the aspirations of all young people in Sandwell and to lift levels of achievement significantly.

Education in Sandwell is about preparing young people to participate in its community. It will be the necessary catalyst to bring about lasting change in our multi-cultural, multi-faith communities. We want healthy, aspirational communities whose members understand the possibilities that their talents and the world can give them, who have high self-esteem which promotes aspiration, who are aware of the contribution they can make to others and who enjoy emotional, social, cultural and economic fulfilment.

The Sandwell Partnership’s vision is that ‘Sandwell will be a thriving, sustainable, optimistic and forward looking community’. This document reflects our response to the Green Paper ‘Every Child Matters’. We believe that the secondary education we can deliver through strategic capital investment in our schools will act as a cornerstone for community and economic regeneration in the borough. The vision outlined in this document makes clear the cross-cutting objectives of Building Schools for the Future by supporting our 14-19 Area Inspection Action Plan, developing a lifelong learning culture and by supporting community development and regeneration. It is part of a coherent and integrated set of aspirations which is directly linked to our Excellence in Cities plan, the Sandwell Plan, our School Organisation Plan, the Behaviour Support Plan and Inclusion Strategy and our Education Development Plan. Linked to the Council’s priorities to raise standards, our main priorities in education, as identified across these documents, are:

• Primary education • Secondary education • Young people’s strategy • Student disaffection • Extended schools • Learning innovation • Community and family learning

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Secondary schools, working together with local partners, have the potential to create flexible, dynamic and innovative learning communities which promote excellence and embrace diversity. We want to create 21st century learning environments which are genuinely forward-looking and responsive to the needs of our young people and their communities. This can only happen through collaboration within schools, between schools and beyond schools. Within and beyond institutions, however, the needs of the individual learner must be at the centre of our provision.

A number of important themes recur throughout this document. Inclusion - broadly defined as the process of enabling all children and young people to be present, participating and achieving - permeates all our goals. Inclusion should focus on providing diverse and appropriate opportunities and resources for all. e-learning, a priority within the borough, provides the means of achieving many of our goals through personalised learning, flexible provision and enhanced community involvement. Supporting a remodelled workforce is crucial and every adult involved in educating young people is part of our vision of a learning community. The spirit of collaboration between ‘independent specialist schools’ underpins everything contained in this document. We benefit from a wide and expanding range of specialisms within the borough and the willingness to form challenging partnerships between them is already one of our key strengths. We will continue to move the collaborative effort which underpinned our Excellence in Cities strategy three years ago into a higher level of collaboration and partnership. The capacity to build strong leadership will be crucial if we are to achieve our vision and we are committed to recruiting and developing the highest quality leaders at all levels in our schools. Finally, our local priorities reflect the national imperative to raise aspirations and attainment in areas most urgently in need of economic regeneration. The raising of standards across the borough, demonstrated in part by an increase in the quality of our examination results at all levels, will therefore be one important measure of our success in achieving our fundamental goal - aspirations for all.

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Excellence through personalised learning

We are committed to:

1. Providing flexible pathways which cater for diverse and individual learning needs

Flexibility must take account of when young people are ready to move between key stages and pathways, what is most appropriate for them to learn and where this learning might take place.

When

The opportunity to progress through education should be based on ability and readiness rather than on age. This is already anticipated in our 14-19 Area Inspection Action Plan. Furthermore, schools in Sandwell will actively pursue an accelerated or extended curriculum at Key Stage 3. Learning will take place in mixed age groups, particularly for students over 14. There will be clear pathways through 14-19 and into Higher Education. Sandwell embraces and promotes the notion of lifelong learning and will promote progression beyond 19. We are actively seeking to raise the staying-on rate into Higher Education.

What

All children in Sandwell are entitled to an innovative curriculum which is inclusive, accessible and purposeful. Multiple and flexible pathways will provide more choice and the ability to select highly personalised routes through secondary education. There will be parity of esteem between different routes and ways to combine them. We are committed to work-based learning and enterprise education and will continue to develop positive links with our business partners as well as the new Academy in order to provide both. All our students have an entitlement to enrichment opportunities such as off-site learning. This includes our gifted and talented students, provision for whom will build on the excellent Excellence in Cities networks that already exist in the borough.

Where

According to the Tomlinson Report, ‘it is naïve to believe that any school can meet the learning needs of all its students.’ The provision of highly flexible pathways requires a broad definition of the learning place. The three Local Learning Campuses already outlined in the 14-19 Area Inspection Action Plan anticipate this.

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Students’ learning will not be restricted to one physical site, especially after 14, and our provision must be learner-focused, not institution-focused. There will be movement between institutions and beyond as necessary which will maximise different specialisms. Our schools will provide diverse and high quality provision on a continuum which ranges from mainstream schools to schools for children with complex and profound difficulties and to enhanced work-based learning. We will also promote a virtual learning space which will help us to personalise learning further and keep travel to a minimum. All children will have an entitlement to off-site learning including a residential experience. At the heart of this vision lies collaboration between strong, confident and vibrant schools, balanced by the freedom to innovate. We envision an end to the traditional school day which will allow us to maximise the use of new buildings through the extended school programme.

2. Putting the learner at the heart of the learning process

We already pay great attention to the identification of learner needs. We use diagnostic tools – uniquely – in every secondary school in the borough in order to anticipate learning needs and pre-emptively address difficulties. Under our 14-19 Area Inspection Action Plan, every student in Sandwell is entitled to an individual learning plan, mediated through the Learner Management Centre, which takes account of individual needs and identifies pathways through a diverse curriculum. Systems to track students are being developed through e-technology so that individuals negotiating their way through different pathways can be effectively monitored. This has the potential to change the pastoral dimension of teaching in powerful ways, especially at 14-19. We are committed to the provision of one-to-one support for our students through the use of para-professionals and seek to extend our provision of academic coaches and learning mentors. Essentially, our vision is to identify personal needs, attitudes and preferences in order to tailor the curriculum as closely as possible to the individual. This is not just about opportunity; it is also about challenging and stretching all learners to the limit of their abilities. Aspiration for all means not only that young people should want to achieve but that they are provided with the appropriate means to do so.

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3. Educating the whole learner

Our young people have diverse needs which include an entitlement to good health, broadly defined in physical, emotional, intellectual and social terms. Our schools will recognise, celebrate and sustain the emotional, social and moral development of all our students whilst also developing essential personal skills. Successful education in the 21st century is dependent on individuals acting as democratic citizens who have a respect for – and an understanding of – their own capacity to learn and their place within their community. We will continue to promote, for example, opportunities for young people of different ages to develop skills of leadership through programmes such as the Youth Sports Leader Award. Community involvement and achievement in a range of different areas through, for example, the National Arts Award and the Youth Charter Award, will be encouraged and supported. All our students must be engaged in their own learning and in their own assessment for learning and they should be provided with opportunities to learn in different ways and in different settings. Learning does not simply happen in schools and we must celebrate and recognise the learning that goes on elsewhere in the community (for example in supplementary schools) and beyond.

Sandwell’s Cultural Strategy sees the Sandwell of 2020 as ‘a place where outstanding cultural life goes hand in hand with responsiveness to community need’. The students of Sandwell will benefit from the opening of THE pUBLIC in 2005, a flagship centre for the creative use of new technologies and community arts, and also a Learning and Cultural Quarter based in West Bromwich. The participation of our young people in these cultural innovations must be nurtured and their achievements and participation recognised.

4. Maximising opportunities afforded by e-learning

E-learning is a priority in Sandwell. There is now a borough-wide broadband network provided by Click! Sandwell aimed at the whole community which offers effective support for all e-learning initiatives. e-learning can promote and support personalised learning for all young people in their schools and learning communities. It can extend and enrich the curriculum, offer a wider range of curriculum choices, provide highly personalised and differentiated provision and cater for those who will benefit from Page 5 Final draft 16 July 2004 Aspiration for all

out-of-school tuition. We have already made significant strides both in individual schools’ development of e-Learning, which has been recognised nationally, and through collaborative partnerships, for example the ICT Test Bed in Smethwick, Click Greets Green, the Wednesbury Education Action Zone and its successor and other LEA services. These initiatives have included students drawn from across the full ability spectrum, including those in schools for students with complex profound needs and those who may need out of school access for a number of different reasons. e-technology also has a significant role to play in the management of personalised learning. It enables, for example, information about attendance, assessment, finance and student tracking to be easily collated and made readily available to a range of relevant audiences. This information can be shared securely between schools, the LEA and relevant agencies and also with parents. Pilot work is already underway in two of our schools that allow parents and guardians secure on-line access to a range of relevant information about their child. Sandwell is highly committed to the continued and innovative use of e-learning to cater for individual needs and will continue to build on the significant work of its two City Learning Centres.

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Learning campuses within local learning communities

We are committed to the development of:

1. Schools as learning communities

Schools are sites of learning but they are also learning communities. A school is a community in which the students need to function as its citizens and they must have a voice. All schools in the borough will have a school council that contributes to Sandwell’s Youth Council, which in turn will meet the Cabinet. Our Behaviour Support Plan states that ‘every child and young person in Sandwell (irrespective of age, gender, ethnicity or disability) has a right to be included as a valued, respected and equal member of the learning community along with all other children and young people of the same age with support according to need.’

Teachers and other professionals are also part of this learning community. Sandwell supports a programme of excellent continuous professional development (‘Sandwell Excellence’) which is flexible, tailored to individual needs and supported by the borough’s City Learning Centres. We see all teachers as leaders and all leaders as learners. Our students have an entitlement to teachers and other professionals with real expertise and we must attract and retain them by building on existing recruitment and retention initiatives. New school buildings must promote the well- being of everyone in them, including the workforce. Sandwell is adopting the well-being programme and sees the health of its professionals as crucial to the health of the institutions they run.

We will continue to appoint and develop excellent leaders at all levels. To do this we will make innovative connections between our growing number of Advanced Skills Teachers, leading practitioners, curriculum networks, Strategy consultants and the National College’s continuum of leadership development. We will also build on our international links – for example with North America and South Africa – in order to provide wider perspectives on effective school leadership.

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2. Schools within their local learning communities

Our schools will be at the heart of their community. Any major investment in the borough needs to offer advantages the whole of its population. The first accredited extended schools in the country opened in Sandwell and we envisage all secondary schools in Sandwell operating as extended schools in the future. These schools will play a crucial role in the regeneration of the local areas. They will be open throughout the day and year and offer a range of facilities to the local community. This requires buildings that are adaptable and fit for purpose in order to accommodate both the school curriculum and adult learners and to deliver the local learning plan. Schools will become places where all age groups within the community are involved for a range of purposes, from learning (adults alongside children), youth work and well- being clinics to health centres and sporting facilities. Our vision is to promote a vibrant lifelong learning culture. Access to childcare on-site will facilitate this and build on the Sure Start programme. The specialisms of the schools will influence their community role to a degree but this will be balanced with local needs.

3. Virtual communities

The 14-19 Area Inspection Action Plan proposes a Virtual 14-19 Campus to facilitate online tuition. This will allow young people to combine different types of learning in terms of location and styles through access to alternative learning communities. We are also seeking to develop and cultivate high quality online professional development through, for example, the City Learning Centres and WMNet (an online facility for teachers in to share good practice). The third dimension of the virtual community is parents. An exciting strand of the ICT Test Bed in Smethwick is to provide home computers in order to assess the impact technology can have on family involvement in students’ learning. The sharing of electronic data with parents, as previously mentioned, is a further example of how we are seeking to develop a range of distinctive, but overlapping, virtual communities.

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Working together: partnership and collaboration

We are committed to:

1. Partnership and collaboration within schools

Our schools will employ a wide range of adults working together to support learning and to implement the remodelled workforce, including learning mentors, academic coaches, learning assistants, administrative assistants and ICT technicians. We will continue to develop partnerships with parents and a range of professionals such as sports coaches and artists, using the advantages of an extended school and virtual communities to take this forward. We will also continue to move forward on the School Improvement agenda by the continued strategic work of our Governing Bodies and through our unique use of headteacher consultants. Under the Government’s radical new agenda of School Improvement Partners, these consultants can facilitate a school’s capacity to self-evaluate and subsequently challenge less than excellent standards of leadership, management and governance of teaching and learning.

2. Partnership and collaboration between schools

Every secondary school will have a specialism (specialist status, leading edge, training school, academy) which taken together will be complementary within the borough and enhance the diversity and excellence of the Sandwell Partnership, creating ‘education with character’. It is increasingly essential to see each school in its wider context and only collaboration will ensure that secondary education in Sandwell is truly the sum of its parts.

In relation to collaboration, Sandwell has already made huge strides. Our Excellence in Cities partnerships have been outstandingly successful, achieving their aims of ‘sharing collective responsibility for raising achievement in Sandwell schools’ and ‘creating an open and outward looking culture of community partnerships’. Similarly, within the three Leadership Incentive Grant collaboratives, there is already clear evidence of action and further evidence of the impact of these challenging collaboratives is beginning to emerge.

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The opening of an Academy within the borough presents exciting opportunities for further collaboration and we would be interested to explore the possibilities that further Academies in the borough might present (for example, the notion of continuous 0-19 provision). We have begun to develop strategic federations across the borough, based on the Sandwell policy for federation and collaborative arrangements. We now need to develop further to encompass site development and the federation between a special school and a mainstream school located on one campus would be a good example of this.

E-learning will help us to achieve further collaboration, for example through the sharing of resources. The WEAZ (Wednesbury Education Action Zone) will shortly be making its range of ALICE (Arts, Literacy and ICT) online materials available to all the LEA’s schools through the broadband network. Personal access to technology for all our students will sustain collaboration between students and schools

At 14-19, there will be common curriculums on line and common delivery models, working with work-based providers and other post-16 providers. The 14-19 Area Inspection Action Plan is planning the delivery of the curriculum through three local learning campuses, each of which will be distinctive but linked closely to Sandwell College and the Learner Management Centre and involving collaboration between the voluntary and private sectors.

Our Excellence in Cities plan identifies zero exclusions as a core aim and to achieve this, all schools must be responsible - through collaboration - for all students, including those in the PRU (Pupil Referral Unit). Learning support units are already part of a coherent strategy for leading practice in behaviour management but we need to build on this in order that they become models of good practice for others. Every school should benefit from approaches and strategies developed through our Behaviour Improvement Programme.

We will continue to foster greater collaboration between primary and secondary schools with the aim of improving every child’s start to secondary education. The well managed transfer of student from primary to secondary schools is pivotal in our drive to raise attainment. We have begun to make joint appointments under the ‘Teachers for the Future’ scheme and further innovations, such as bridge curricula and an earlier start to Year 7, are likely future innovations.

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3. Partnership and collaboration beyond schools

Multi-agency work that is coherent and collaborative lies at the heart of the Government’s vision that ‘every child matters’. Multi-disciplinary teams should be based in universal services such as clusters of schools, bringing everybody with a responsibility for children together. Sandwell is already a Pathfinder authority for the Children’s Trust. Information Technology can support the secure sharing of information between partner child agencies. Sandwell is committed to pursuing excellence with a range of partners and extended schools, as part of local learning communities within the Town Team structure, need strong partnerships in order to work. These partners include:

• Sandwell Partnership • local learning panels • Sandwell College • Academies • Town Teams • Voluntary sector • Private sector • Business community • West Bromwich Albion Football Club • Other agencies e.g. health authority • Primary schools • National College of School Leadership • Diocesan links • Black country school improvement partnership • Regional Affiliated Centre, National College of School Leadership partnered by the Universities of Warwick and • Work-based training providers • Government of the West Midlands • Advantage West Midlands • Other LEAs • Our international links • National Academy of Gifted and Talented Youth • The West Midlands Regional (SEN) Partnership

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We believe that it is only through partnership and collaboration within, between and beyond schools that we can deliver the vision outlined in this document. Sandwell in the 21st century needs its educational provision to look forwards, not backwards, and respond to the complex needs of its community and especially its young people in innovative and conceptually radical ways. Only then will we be able to provide what all our young people deserve: aspirations for all.

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