Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Development of a National Literacy and Numeracy Policy
Bernadette KielyJCSP Support Service
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Background
International research has highlighted the circumstances that regularly ‘ignite’ school system reform:
• Economic crisis• A major report -Pisa 2009• New political leadership (McKinsey 2010)
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
National Programme for Government 2011
• Schools will be required to draw up 5 year development plans for schools and teachers
• To position Ireland in top 10 performing countries in PISA
• Review of JC & LC –encourage greater innovation and independent learning
• Every school will have a Literacy Action Plan
• Responsibility for achieving outcomes will rest with principal
• CDP support for principals• Pre-service training CPD for primary and
post-primary teachers
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Background
Recent reports:• Reading Literacy in Disadvantaged
Primary Schools 2004• Literacy and Numeracy in
Disadvantaged Schools- Inspectorate 2005
• Looking at English 2006• Incidental inspections Findings 2010• NA 2009• Pisa 2009
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Reading Literacy in Disadvantaged Primary Schools
Eivers, Shiel and Shortt: Educational Research Centre 2004
6,500 pupils in 1st 3rd and 6th class
29% significantly underachieving
Pupils whose parents agreed that they liked reading did better
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Recommendations• Targets for Reading Literacy should be more
realistic
• Stronger focus on Literacy in all schemes
• Designed to redress educational disadvantage. At least 90 minutes per day on English.
• School – wide focus on language and literacy
• Literacy Co-ordinators to support a Whole School Approach
• Pre-Service Training / In-Career
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Literacy and numeracy in disadvantaged School; Challenges for
Teachers and Learners 2005
During the evaluation it was evident that only a few schools acknowledged the necessity of, and gave considerable commitmentto, adapting their literacy and numeracy programmes to maximise children’s potential.
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Recommendation
A more systematic, school-based planning process is required to ensure continuity and progression in children’s learning. Central to this process is the establishment of specific priorities focused on improvement in literacy and numeracy within the context of a balanced child-centred curriculum. Such priorities should be agreed at whole-school level, and all staff members should include them in their individual planning.
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Recommendation
• The DES publication Looking at Our School: An Aid to Self-Evaluation in Primary Schools should be utilised by school staffs in the process of looking critically at their schools.
P.33
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Recommendation
The success of teaching and learning strategies requires the explicit prioritisation of literacy and numeracy education in which the most effective use of available physical and human resources is made. A culture of change for improvement is required in order to enhance the quality of children’s learning in a developmental and meaningful way. P. 35
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Synthesis of English Inspection Reports
75 post-primary schoolsJan 05 – May 06
Looking at English, 2006
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Provision of English - timetabling
Leaving Certificate• 5 lessons per week• Significant minority -6 per weekJunior Certificate – ‘considerably poorer’• Majority 5 lessons pw in 3rd year• 25% of schools -4 lesson pw in all 3 years• 1st year worst - majority offered 4 pw• 3 lessons pw in 1st year• Worst offered 3 pw on 3 consecutive days
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Timetabling at Junior Cycle
• Not high enough priority• Strongly focused on preparation for
exam• Focus on delivery of content, not on
development of skills• Concurrent timetabling rare in first
year• Restricts movement between levels• Restricts team teaching, whole-year
activities, inter-class activities
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Optimal situation for English
‘The optimal situation is for students to have an English lesson on each of the five days of the week, to enable them to develop the necessary skills and competences and to provide them with regular reinforcement of these.’(P.8)
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Area of weakness
A weakness was often found in otherwise substantial plans in the area of planned learning outcomes. References to aims and objectives were frequently too general to be of much practical use. In other words, they lacked a focus on the specific skills to be acquired by students in each class or year group.
P.21
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Good Practice• The school management is to be commended for
facilitating four or five formal meetings per year for subject departments.
• The learning support team has structured meeting time with the principal and deputy principal every week, and close liaison between the learning support team and the English department was evident.
• Minutes of English department meetings are kept, in which decisions and plans are recorded. These meetings promoted team building, collaborative planning and decision making.
• Teachers are also facilitated to attend in-service and to pursue further qualifications, for instance the post-graduate diploma in special educational needs.
P.16
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Good PracticeGood English departments showed the following
characteristics:
• a participative approach to planning for English• the sharing of resources and of expertise, particularly
in teaching strategies• the facilitation and promotion of good practice by an
active co-ordinator (or rotating co-ordinators)• regular meetings, both formally scheduled and as
issues arise, with agendas and records of decisions taken
• effective systems of communication within the department, with learning-support teachers, and with the management
• the distribution of routine tasks, such as setting papers and preparing resources to avoid the duplication of work
• an active approach to CPD P.20
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Good Practice
• There is a subject coordinator for English and the English department meets on a regular basis. These meetings occur both in time allocated by the principal for department planning meetings and at other times arranged by the department itself. Minutes of these meetings are kept, particularly decisions relating to common plans for the term. These arrangements speak to a high level of dedication on the part of teachers and the existence of a collaborative culture within the English department. P.27
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Good Practice
In a recent development, all subject departments have devised glossaries giving the meanings and applications of subject-specific terms to assist learning-support and resource teachers in their work with students. P.29
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Incidental Inspection Findings 2010
• Unannounced inspections
• 450 primary schools
• October 09 –10• 800 English
lessons• 500 Maths lessons
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Findings - English
• Concern re appropriate teaching approaches
• Oral Language• Collaborative/co-operative learning• Planning practices strongly linked to
pupil learning outcomes• Assessment practices also strongly
linked
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Findings - Maths
• Inadequate opportunities to learn through talk and discussion (18%)
• Concern in the context of skill development, and specifically the development of problem-solving skills that pupils in less than half (48.4%) of the lessons observed were enabled to work collaboratively
• Concern re use of resources• Concern re assessment practices
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Findings – Literacy and Numeracy
Consideration needs to be given to prioritising aspects of the teaching of literacy and numeracy – and especially the use of assessment to improve learning – in the provision of continuous professional development for teachers and principals. These are important school improvement issues that need to be addressed in all schools. P. 22
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Assessment PrimaryNA 2009
Assessment Post-Primary
Pisa 2009
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
2525
NA 2009NA 2009
• National Assessments have been carried out periodically since 1972
• NA 2009 saw two major changes:– Same pupils assessed for both
domains– A shift in target grades (to 2nd and
6th classes)
• No improvement in literacy or numeracy
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Findings
There was limited use of:• documented observations, • of strategies that enable planning of instruction
related to pupils’ learning needs e.g. teacher-made checklists,
• of pupil-centred strategies (e.g., portfolio assessment), • of reflective journals, • of pupil-self assessment.
WSE reports also highlight some shortcomings in these areas, noting that assessment for learning strategies are not used in all classrooms, and suggesting that the information derived from such assessments could contribute usefully to teacher planning.
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Recommendations
Each school should have a CPD plan that identifies key school- and individual-level CPD needs.Those identified needs should be the criteria on which participation in CPD is based.
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Recommendations
Strong leadership, collaborative whole-school planning and collaborative teaching (with additional support incorporated into classroom teaching and a consistency of approach across classrooms), sharing of good practice, and using aggregated assessment data are a few of the factors most commonly reported as features of effective schools.
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
PISA 2009: The PISA 2009: The performance and progress performance and progress of 15-year-olds in Irelandof 15-year-olds in Ireland
Educational Research Centre
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Overview of PISAOverview of PISA• Programme for International Student Assessment
– Project of OECD
• International survey of achievement of 15-year-old students
• Reading literacy, mathematical literacy, scientific literacy
• Three-yearly cycles– 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009
• In 2009, 65 countries/economies participated in PISA– 34 OECD member/candidate countries and 31 ‘partner’ countries
• In Ireland, 144 schools and 3,937 students participated in PISA 2009
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
•Selected countries above OECD average– Shanghai-China, Korea, Finland, Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, Japan
•Selected countries at OECD average– United States, Sweden, Germany, Ireland,
France, United Kingdom
•Selected countries below OECD average– Austria, Spain, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy,
Luxembourg
Reading Reading
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Mathematics• Selected countries above OECD
average– Shanghai-China, Singapore, Hong Kong-
China, Korea, Finland, Japan, Canada, Netherlands, New Zealand, Belgium, Australia, Germany
• Selected countries at OECD average– Norway, France, Austria, Poland, Sweden,
Czech Republic, United Kingdom• Selected countries below OECD
average– Luxembourg, United States, Ireland,
Spain, Italy, Greece, Israel
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Characteristics associated with higher Characteristics associated with higher levels of reading achievementlevels of reading achievement
• Higher levels of student and school Economic, Social and Cultural Status
• Home educational resources• Cultural possessions• Material possessions• Parental occupation• Educational level of parents• Number of books in the home
• Higher levels of parental interaction• More positive student-teacher relations• Better disciplinary climate• Higher perceived relevance of schooling
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Characteristics associated with higher Characteristics associated with higher levels of reading achievementlevels of reading achievement
• Students in Transition Year achieved significantly higher reading and science scores than students in all other grade levels
•Not significantly different to Fifth Years in mathematics
• Students attending girls secondary schools achieved significantly higher reading scores than students in all other school types
• Students attending schools with lower levels of negative student behaviour
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Characteristics associated with Characteristics associated with lower levels of reading lower levels of reading
achievementachievement• Students belonging to lone-parent families• First generation migrant students
– Native students and second generation migrant students do not have significantly different mean reading scores
• Migrant students who don’t speak English/Irish
• Students who spend more than 8 hours a week during term time in paid work
• Students attending DEIS schools
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Factors that Could have Contributed Factors that Could have Contributed to Changes in Performance in Irelandto Changes in Performance in Ireland
•Changes in the school-going population
•Curriculum changes
•Random fluctuations
•Linking and scaling methodology used in PISA
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
• PISA results suggest that 17% of Irish fifteen year-olds – and as many as one in four teenage boys – lack the literacy skills necessary to function in today’s knowledge-intensive society
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Better Literacy & Numeracy•Consultation document
•A draft plan, invited submissions
•Good is no longer good enough
•480+ responses, all will be published
•Meetings with external groups completed
•Positive suggestions incorporated
•Launch early summer
•Different title
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
In post-primary schools, the development of literacy and numeracy skills is not just the responsibility of teachers of English, Irish and mathematics: teachers of all post primary subjects have an important role to play in developing and consolidating the student’s ability to use literacy and numeracy.
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Actions to support principals in leading improvement in literacy and
numeracy
• Support principals in implementing robust school self-evaluation, focussing in particular on improvements in literacy and numeracy
• Provide leadership development programmes for aspiring principals
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Focus the provision of Department-supported CPD for teachers on the teaching
of literacy and numeracy and the use of assessment
• Twenty hours of CPD in literacy, numeracy and assessment every five years for primary teachers and teachers of L1 (English/Irish) at second level
• Professional development units on literacy and numeracy across the curriculum for second-level teachers
• Support - online, video, resources• Team of 20 advisors on literacy and
numeracy for primary and post- primary
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Actions to improve literacy and numeracy in post-primary schools
• Continue the development and roll-out of Project Maths
• Prioritise the revision of the English syllabus and the Junior Certificate English examination
• Prioritise the development of literacy and numeracy across all subject areas and areas of learning in the revised junior cycle curriculum
• Continue to support enhanced literacy, numeracy and language development in DEIS schools
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Actions to improve literacy and numeracy achievement in schools
servingdisadvantaged communities
• Supports for target setting will be reviewed and strengthened to identify and enhance best practice in planning and target setting
• Develop and implement an oral language development programme in pre-schools that are linked to DEIS primary schools
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Assessment
• Better assessment evidence at primary• Transfer of information at transition -
report card• Assessment at post primary level –
development of tests• Develop national standards of student
achievement for literacy and numeracy at five stages (infant classes, junior primary, middle primary, senior primary, lower secondary) and at various proficiency levels
Junior Junior Certificate Certificate School School ProgrammeProgramme
Summary
• Need for renewed focus on literacy and numeracy
• More focused target setting• Use of assessment data• Systematic planning meetings-
minutes etc• Regular & well structured
communication between members of departments
• Collaborative planning & teaching