Harris Federation Student Commission Newsletter 2018

Student

Commission Summer 2018

Introduction by Sir Dan Moynihan

World Class Learning

When we relaunched the Student Commission last academic year we tasked them with researching the skills and behaviours that would future proof our academy chain.

They did this through action research projects around the working title of World Class Learning. In July 2017 we were astounded by the level insight at the bi-annual SLT conference when a select group of commissioners presented their five key recommendations, engraved on a plaque that now adorns the wall outside my office. Their work on mastery, mind-set and feedback underpinned their recommendations on the use of student voice and went on to change Teaching and Learning practices across the Harris Federation.

This year we challenged our commission to delve deeper into some of the fundamentals of educational leadership that would support our continual drive for improvement. We are immensely proud of our Student Commissioners and look forward to seeing the impact of their recommendations shape the future of the Harris Federation.

The 2017 Student Commission changed the perception not only of what student voice was but also what it could achieve.

Having presented their five key recommendations to over a thousand Senior Leaders at the Harris Federation conference, the gauntlet was laid down for the 2018 Commissioners to sustain the level of insight and impact of the 2017 cohort by ensuring World Class Learning for all students across all Harris Academies continues.

Keeping with the model of action research and building on the improved studentteacher relationships from the work of the Commission, we saw our numbers swell.

Students realised what could be achieved provided they had the confidence to share their ideas and the commitment to work with leaders to bring them to fruition.

Intrigued by working titles that included mental health, staff wellbeing, questioning and homework, the commissioners reconvened at Harris Girls’ Academy Bromley to share the findings of their research projects. Through presentations, interviews and debates, they devised a new set of recommendations which are contained within the pages of this newsletter. Also included is a review of the research that each academy undertook.

This newsletter has been complied by an exceptional group of students who demonstrate their passion to ensure the educational experience for every Harris student across the Federation is as meaningful and successful as possible. We hope you enjoy reading about their work and are inspired by their findings.

David Astin and Michael Williams

Last year’s successful relaunch of the Student Commission has led to a huge rise in both students and staff wanting to be involved in this year’s action research project at Harris Academy Beckenham.

We now have 55 Student Commissioners participating over 8 different projects and nearly 20 staff directly supporting them!

Following our move into a glorious new building and securing our outstanding OFSTED judgement last summer, we broadened our horizons, looking to further develop our Academy as an institution for World Class Learning. With our Academy

vision for this academic year being ‘Unleash the Imagination’ students were naturally inclined to investigate how both student and staff mental health and wellbeing could be maximised to ensure phenomenal performance through reduced workloads and less stress leading to greater output. Students’ research on homework has inspired a new Academy Policy and structure for next year, while other commissioners

As traditional questioning techniques are explored and to challenge the students in their learning progress the student leadership team at Harris Bromley launched an enquiry in an attempt to answer the complex art of questioning.

Staff are trained to move away from convergent questioning which typically have one correct answer and challenge the students with divergent questions- also called open-ended questions, which are used to encourage many answers and generate greater participation of students.

The student commission sought answers from individuals who are asked questions by teachers every day. We looked at the issue from the perspective of the teachers and offered

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Student Commission | Summer 2018

looked at opportunities above and beyond the normal curriculum such as Enrichment, Trips and the Careers programme in light of the new Gatsby Benchmarks. All of these projects have come up with some impressively innovative approaches to further develop our provision across the Academy and secure Harris Academy Beckenham as a beacon not only for Student Voice but also World Class Learning!

them an insight into the minds of students they teach so that students and teachers understand the purpose of open-ended questioning better.

Collecting data from both ends of the spectrum, we explored the methods so that the art of questioning asked in our school can continue to be consistent and might be used in academies across the Federation. Using a range of methods to collect data over a time period we have compiled our research to exhibit our findings to encourage the benefit for students and teachers in its consistent use so that students continue to excel in lessons.

The student commission at Chobham Academy consists of a representative from every form group in Years 7 to 10. Their main remit is to develop teaching and learning within the academy from a students’ perspective.

This involves many factors including task design, student observations and learning lunches.

The Year 10 students in the commission have embarked on a research project titled “How important is learning outside the classroom� where they have looked at the impact on trips in-particular, balancing the educational value with the views students have on them.

They have enjoyed the initial research planning and the discussions that took place to decide on a project collaboratively. They produced some excellent questionnaires to ensure they had both quantitative and qualitative data. They believe the changes they would like to make (such as educating students on the wider understanding of the trips, an impact review and why certain trips take place) are long term and related to the academy awards system leading to a sustainable improvement in the quality of educational visits and their effect on both student progress and morale.

The Student Commission have been busy conducting educational research into why students do not do homework and looking for solutions to encourage them to do so.

They have diligently conducted a three part action plan whereby they have investigated the attitudes of students through the outcomes of various experiments. They have compared year groups and have found some interesting results. On delving into two different year groups we have found that the needs of students at KS4 are different and the task which are favoured at KS3 are felt as less effective when studying for skills based exams. We also found it interesting to discover what tasks the students themselves felt to be more effective and therefore worth doing.

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The students at Harris Academy Chafford Hundred chose to continue to develop their project from 2016/17 on student inspectors. This has built from two inspectors to four with the intention that these students will train and develop students from lower years to ensure that by the end of the 2018/19 academic year there are student inspectors represented in all year groups.

The student inspectors completed learning walks with a number of various teachers from the SMT, including the lead for teaching and learning and lead practitioners. This year the students chose to specifically focus on ‘challenge’ as they felt this was a key area as it is fundamental to them performing at the highest level (regardless of ability).

The student inspector team provided feedback to the senior lead for teaching and learning, giving a number of key recommendations, from their perspective, of what the school should focus on in order to improve all students’ progress and learning. The three key recommendations were based around a knowledge base, the importance of questioning whilst allowing this to develop in class and a consistent structure across all lessons. The student inspectors are keen present their findings to the student commission and excited about developing this further in the future.

How does learning outside of the classroom impact on our progress?

We decided to focus on how homework, revision and other outside of the classroom learning opportunities have an impact on our learning.

the classroom created a greater sense of progress in the older years within the academy due to the clear relevance to in-class learning. Further to this, when the homework activities were incorporated into the lesson, particularly for flip learning lessons, students and staff all felt the activity had greater impact on progress. It was also highly evident that timely feedback was essential to ensuring that the activity had a sense of purpose.

This topic was chosen due to the investment of time from students to complete these activities and the investment from teachers to assess them. Our aim was to ensure that the impact of these activities are maximised.

Our recommendations to staff, as a result of our research, are to ensure that homework/out of school learning is linked to the following lesson’s content not the previous lesson’s learning. Furthermore, feedback must be provided in the following lesson through activities such as peer assessment or in a timely manner if it is work that needs to be read and marked by a teacher.

Our research methodology involved: lesson observations, in-lesson research, reflections and discussions with staff members. The findings illustrated that learning outside of

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Student Commission | Summer 2018

The aim of our research was to find out whether a consistent approach to behaviour management, rewards and sanctions supports students focus, engagement and behaviour.

The Student Commission of Harris Academy Greenwich met as a team in September and shaped their project for the year: ‘Stopping the Forgetting from Happening: a focus on effective practices to support sustained progress over time.’

The commissioners spent 15 minutes a week observing a lesson of their choosing. The focus was to find out what the teaching staff do well to promote and encourage knowledge retention. All student commissioners regularly provided feedback to the teachers that they had observed.

The commissioners were able to identify a number of ways in which teachers can help ‘stop the forgetting from happening’. They found the following methods to be most effective: - Low stakes testing at the start of a lesson. Students noticed that this was particularly effective when the knowledge tested was not only knowledge from the previous lesson but previous week, month etc. The team noted that this practice was not yet as consistent as it could be.

- Learning by rote. The physical act of regular repetition helped students remember the content.

- Flip and Fetch homework. Students read, write, check and repeat knowledge provided by their teachers.

The team met with SLT to present their findings and suggested that low stakes testing become a focus for the school next year.

The hypothesis states that student behaviour, engagement and focus is improved when all staff take a consistent and clear approach to rewards, warnings and sanctions.

Secondary research suggests that clarity and consistency in the approach to behaviour management and rewards has a huge impact and enables staff to establish clear routines and expectations. The research also suggests that a variety of rewards, again distributed in a consistent and clear way, is an extremely effective way of motivating students and building positive relationships between staff and students, which in turn leads to a more productive working atmosphere in classrooms and around the school.

The primary research involved students carrying out a series of lesson observations, looking at the way teachers at HIAC approach behaviour management, rewards and sanctions, and students questionnaires to look at the impact of these approaches on student behaviour and motivation.

In conclusion, consistency in behaviour management and rewards has an enormous impact on positive behaviour, rapport between staff and students and student motivation. If students feel unfairly treated or the behaviour policy is unclear, they will not want to work in those lessons. Where boundaries, expectations and strategies to tackle poor behaviour or reward good behaviour and engagement are consistent, students feel empowered to make better choices regarding their own behaviour and work more effectively in lessons.

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Student Commission Recommendations for

World Class Learning Students & staff are highly skilled with regard to questioning; it should be personalised and challenge each individual.

Students need to develop their competency to revise effectively; revision must enhance recall and understanding in students.

Homework needs to be structured & purposeful; it should be part of the culture of learning.

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Student Commission  |  Summer 2018

The relationships between staff and students are crucial; they must be respectful and caring but with an element of challenge.

The mental health of students needs to be of uppermost importance at all times as it can have an impact on every aspect of the academy.

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What makes for World Class Learning?

The student commission is a long term solution to improve our academy.

Adiyaad Nuh, Harris Girls’ Academy East Dulwich

The relationship between students and teachers is crucial because of its impact on students’ motivation.

Rowan Makuwa, Harris City Academy Crystal Palace

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Student Commission | Summer 2018

The student commission recommendations will be our legacy in the academy.

Keira McKenzie, Harris Academy Bromley

We wanted to give students a voice and improve our understanding of mental health.

Jessica Lu, Harris Academy Beckenham

I have learnt that you can accomplish great things with the right mind-set.

Favour Bulem, Harris Academy Chafford Hundred

I learned that change is possible when we all work together and are committed to improving.

Amy Maloku, Harris Academy Falconwood

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Aspiration and determination.

Hannan Ismail, Harris Academy Purley

Practical learning, excellent questioning and consistent homework.

Leon Hedman, Harris Boys’ Academy East Dulwich

Motivation, hard work and respect.

Cayden Parkes, Harris Academy Merton

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Student Commission | Summer 2018

Be creative, have confidence, take risks.

Sammy Burgess, Harris Academy Orpington

Students driven by their passion for learning and teachers pushing them to be the best version of themselves.

Princess Alagbala, Harris Academy Beckenham

A peaceful and inspirational learning environment.

Micah Williams, Harris Academy Peckham

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This year our Student Commission has met every week to discuss teaching and learning at our academy.

Our latest project has been researching student voice and its role at Harris Academy Merton in improving student engagement in lessons. Our Commissioners have been involved in honest and constructive discussions regarding pedagogy and areas of strength and weakness across the Academy.

After much discussion, and implementing a whole-academy student feedback box whereby students could anonymously provide feedback highlighting areas of best practice and engaging lessons and areas for development across the Academy, we decided to take a case study approach.

We identified members of teaching staff who deliver lessons on a weekly basis to the Commissioners in all year groups and we agreed upon two members of staff to trial a student voice experiment. One member of staff was identified as being particularly strong in their delivery of curriculum content and student engagement and another member of staff who the Commissioners believed would benefit the most from some student feedback.

The HAMD Student Commission meet weekly and have conducted research across the whole academy into Independent Learning, in collaboration with their teachers.

We used the following questions to focus our research.

1. “How can we motivate students to learn independently and undertake further reading or practice outside of structured lesson tasks or homework?”

2. “What strategies work well across the curriculum?”

3. “What does a classroom that supports independent learning look like?”

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The Commission then identified all of the areas of strongest practice for both members of staff and also elements of the teacher’s delivery that they wished to improve along with suggestions of how to make lessons more engaging.

This feedback was then shared with both members of staff who then created an action plan and altered their lessons for an entire week to only include teaching styles/activities highlighted on the strong practice list in addition to Commissioners’ suggestions.

Throughout the week, Commissioners across the year groups wrote up lesson observations. The members of staff were then invited to attend a Student Commission meeting where the Commissioners shared their feedback and both parties were able to share their experiences and feelings about the week and lessons that have been learned on both sides.

Following this, we have been experimenting with these techniques: - Giving students more freedom with a choice of tasks.

- Students inventing the starter for next lesson as a challenge task or homework.

- Changing our classroom design.

Do we have lessons to learn from primary?

- Flipped learning/research before the lesson on a topic.

- Students leading group work.

We are currently analysing our results from our student focus groups and teacher surveys, as the commissioners will be presenting our conclusions to all teaching staff in June and then to the

Student Commission | Summer 2018

Harris Student Commission teams from each school. The results will then be used to inform and improve teaching and learning across our school and enhance our student’s confidence as independent learners.

At Harris Academy Orpington, the Student Commission team have been exploring the implementation and impact of homework across the Academy.

Our student commissioners selected their focus by looking at current areas of development suggested by the Student Voice team. Students chose to focus on homework, as this would allow them to examine the current homework policy and its impact, as well as the role of homework within modern education across the country.

As a starting point, students collected and analysed data from both the student body and teaching staff, to establish the current methods of homework implementation in the academy, and any opinions on how effective and successful these methods are. Following this, students collated current research into the scientific and statistical benefits and pitfalls of homework.

Having developed their understanding of homework on a larger scale, the students then focused on how we can address these current issues with homework.

Our results revealed three main areas of interest: frequency and quantity, relevance and accessibility, acknowledgement and feedback. In response to these findings, students chose to scrutinise the role of homework in a range of different schools. They came across a number of intriguing ideas and later filtered these for suitability at HAO. The student commissioners tested and identified some interesting and effective strategies that could be used to further develop homework across the Academy, and are in the process of feeding these ideas back to the Student Voice team, in the hopes of implementing them full-time.

When we looked at the key areas for improvement across the academy, the Student commission were in agreement that an area that would benefit from a review was homework.

We reviewed a pilot homework project in History in the autumn term, and set out to see whether similar projects could be available across the academy. For spring term Art, RE, Geography, Music and PE were selected as focus areas, and this term we are working with Maths, Science, and MFL. Over the academic year, we are pleased to report that homework has featured more regularly across subjects, with feedback to students being a key part of this process. As a result, we feel the level of investment from both students and teachers has increased.

As the student commission, we would like to thank each of the subject areas involved for giving their time to meet us and then produce homework projects. We have taken the projects and looked at the strengths and areas for development. We provided meaningful feedback to each subject about what was most impactful about the homework booklet in each area. We hope our feedback enables homework to be further developed. Now homework is very much back on the radar, our next step is to look at how it can be set and marked using a digital platform. There is still work to be done!

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Leading on from last year’s highly successful range of developed teaching strategies to help improve student ownership over their own lessons, the baton for developing relationships between students and staff has fallen squarely on the shoulders of five Year 10 students.

The students developed a range of communication lines between the students and staff to help provide interesting and varied feedback to improve both the academy in general and in particular the teaching of a wide range of lessons.

Having been encouraged by the number of suggestions supplied to them in their self-made brightly coloured suggestion boxes, the students decided to hone in on particular members of staff from a range of disciplines to see if they could implement similar results across different classrooms and subjects. They were pleased to see that they could, and discussed at length with the teachers the suggestions that they were going to use to help support student voice and learning.

The review of this process showed a high level of satisfaction from students and staff alike. Things that have worked well are the inclusion of more visual resources to help

support visual learners within the class; more chances for group discussion and interactive pupil challenges to build a sense of ownership and problem solving; and student lead components to help provide opportunities for students to review and express their learning.

Recommendations for next year: 1) Use students from Year 9-10, rather than year 11 to lead the proposals 2) Get teachers who have been part of this year’s process to coach and buddy up other teachers to help be part of ongoing professional development hub.

3) Give some form of recognition to students who are leading learning in the classroom.

We here at Harris Academy Rainham’s student commission have decided to set our focus on the goal of improving the memorization of information and keeping information in the student’s mind long enough for them to be able to make use of it for examinations and various other academic endeavours.

Our Student Commission group is comprised of various year groups and many academic and creative strengths to allow for a diverse insight.

After having discussed and debated methods of research, we decided that the best way for gathering the information was to question the students and teachers about their personal opinions on the matter. This resulted in us making questionnaires to decipher both students and teacher’s views.

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Ultimately, we limited our views on the research of how students at Harris Academy Rainham best record information; based on this information, we concluded that the main goal was to help students best retain information.

Our research should be able to be generalised and used by other schools and academies. This will hopefully result in increasing the overall number of students who can retain large amounts of academic information across multiple schools.

Student Commission | Summer 2018

Our findings show us that there are several tools that both students and teachers feel are effective in retaining information. These include note-taking, using video clips, regular low stakes questioning, and teacher questioning.

This year’s Student Commission at HASN have tackled a question that is pertinent both locally and nationally: How can we as an Academy increase the engagement, and therefore the achievement, of boys?

Uniquely, this year, our Student Commission has been comprised of only boys, and all of these boys have been in Year 8. Thus, the aim of our Student Commission was to contribute to the wider discussions around boys’ achievement that HASN is engaged with and to present informed opinion, suggested strategies and new ideas that would help improve the performance of boys in the coming years.

To achieve this aim the Commission engaged in three strands of enquiry. Firstly, the Commission surveyed all Year 8 students and asked them about their attitudes to subjects and their perceptions of the obstacles they face in engaging well with them. All students, boys and girls, were surveyed in order to provide illustrative comparisons of what works and what does not work for the different sexes. Secondly, the Commission observed lessons in which teachers were explicitly attempting to use strategies to engage boys and discussed whether or not these would work.

Finally, the Commission read some academic work on the achievement of boys and spoke with the ALG member in charge of improving boys achievement as a way of helping inspire their own new ideas.

Harris Academy Tottenham is now in its fourth year, with the current year being the third on this site. The building and outside areas have since 2014 been developing, with the opening of the theatre and basketball playground areas earlier this year.

With such transitions and restrictions to learning/play areas due to ongoing construction, students were interested to investigate the following: How can we better engage students across the All Through Academy in student voice, with matters that involve playground and canteen spaces?

The investigation involved interviews and questionnaires of students and staff across Primary, Secondary and Sixth Form areas. The key findings were: students find networking across year groups’ difficult, student leaders were not as high profile as they should be and students wanted more of a voice when it came to decisions made about their play spaces.

The HATO Student Commission has suggested the following actions based on their findings.

- Students would like a formal arrangement (Student Leaders/MPs) to decide on matters regarding playground decisions.

- Student Leaders to be used within classrooms (specified roles) to bolster the student voice profile across the Academy.

- A curriculum designed to engage Primary Secondary and Sixth form students in cooperative learning projects.

- To invite motivational speakers from local industries/ communities to bridge an aspiration gap.

The expected outcomes of the named actions will be an engaged and involved student body across all stages of the All Through Academy.

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Harris Boys’ Academy, East Dulwich have chosen to base their teaching and learning project on Stretch and Challenge.

Specifically, the Student Leadership Team have chosen to focus on how effective they feel it is embedded within the academy for each year group and ability. To conduct this research project, students have taken a sample of books from across both Key stage 3 and 4 and across a range of abilities. Additionally, the student leadership team have used a questionnaire for both staff and students to receive feedback across the school.

In our findings there will be feedback into what makes effective stretch and challenge and other models of how it is used effectively. From this research we plan on implementing key findings into our own policy and evaluating what impact this has had.

At Harris Girls’ East Dulwich, we are exploring how to develop students into independent learners by devising different revision techniques that are of benefit to them.

The demands of the new curriculum required students to deploy a range of strategies to support them in memorise and recall facts. This idea emanated from students having different views on revision techniques, discussing around which ones were effective showed disparity amongst the group and how they can take ownership of their learning from year 7 onwards.

The school council members had discussions with students on what their preferred revision techniques are and what is independent learning? They conducted some secondary research to see if there were any common themes to explore further. Then, they devised a questionnaire to get more information on what is independent learning and what was their preferred way to revise using Ebacc subjects as a case study.

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Student Commission | Summer 2018

The aim of this research was to: • To explore the range of revision techniques available to students that support them in becoming independent learners.

• How teachers can support students to develop and use these preferred revision techniques?

• Suggest suitable revision techniques for students to use On completion of the data analysis, the findings will be presented to SLT, Governors, teachers and students.