Schools
At least three pairs of eyes on every child Shaun Pope describes Truro School’s collaborative approach to supporting students’ achievement Most highly regarded schools encourage academic excellence whilst at the same time ensuring that students get the opportunity to engage in a broad range of co-curricular opportunities. This is the essence of a rounded education. In this regard, Truro School is no exception, but what might be more unusual here is that we have a team of staff whose responsibility it is to closely monitor student progress; three pairs of eyes ensuring that every child gets the support they need to achieve all that they are capable of, whatever their personal gifts may be. Why do we take this approach?
Three dimensional view
Our job as educators is to prepare a young person for life after school. As part of this, we need to focus on developing the whole individual so that a student leaves us fully equipped with the qualifications and personal skills needed to thrive in higher education and succeed in the workplace. We believe that when it comes to motivating students and encouraging achievement, three minds are better than one.
What this means in practice is that subject teachers, form teachers and pastoral heads at Truro School work together to encourage progress. They meet regularly to review a variety of information on our students’ progress, discussing their achievement and making decisions together on what steps might be needed to help to ensure that each child achieves their full potential. In our experience, having three views on the progress of each individual student gives us a much clearer focus on the best way to challenge, inspire and support that child, as well as spotting those who need to be passed on to the pastoral, SEN or academic teams for further intervention.
A focus on the individual
If you are imagining our staff having to trawl through pages of data on a student’s attendance, achievement and conduct, think again. We use a colour coded system within our management information system (SIMS) which gives us a clear picture of each child’s progress in relation to the individual goals they are aiming for. This means we can see at a glance whether a student is below, at, or above their targets, so that decisions can be made
Autumn 2016 11 Spring 2017
