It’s a well-known and researched fact that the education system in the UK isn’t fair. The socio-economic background of a student plays a huge part in how successful they will be both academically and with their future career prospects.
So why is it that children who come from a low-income background don’t have the same experience in schools as their peers from higher income backgrounds?
A recent report card from the Fair Education Alliance showed that’s “disadvantaged pupils are already more than 8 months behind their peers in reading, writing and maths by age 11. They are less than half as likely to achieve passes in GCSE English and maths, and four times as likely to be permanently excluded from school. They are nearly ten times less likely to go to a top university.”
Factors such as English not being a student’s first language, a lack of resources in their home environment due to financial difficulties i.e. access to the internet, and personal challenges in their home life all play a part in this.
Understanding student performance trends and patterns
By acknowledging the factors that can negatively impact a student’s performance we can start to look at ways to reduce educational inequality. We can quickly address concerns with grades and behaviour as soon as they arise/a pattern emerges.
But without a way to quickly see a snapshot of a student’s performance across all of their subjects it can be difficult for teachers to develop an action plan for them.
A teacher can’t spend all of their time figuring out why a single student isn’t performing well in their class. Perhaps on a certain week their behaviour is particularly disruptive or even out of character. If all of the time was spent working out why this was happening then we’d then see a detrimental effect on the grades of other students who also need their focus.
Levelling the playing field
Technology is built to help us. We use it every day in our personal lives from online and mobile banking, to staying connected with friends and relatives via social media. But how are we utilising technology to make school a great experience for students? How are we using it to help teachers reach their career goals and aspirations?
The Mossbourne Federation is an inner-city London school with higher than average national stats for SEN, EAL and PPI. It is a shining example of how technology can dramatically change the performance of a school. From being labelled as “one of the worst schools in the UK” to now consistently performing in the top 1% of schools.
Peter Hughes, the CEO of the Mossbourne Federation grew tired of the challenges his team faced on a daily basis. Not having information on student progress easily to hand, the amount of time it took to bring student progress, teacher feedback and performance management documents together, and not having a simple and accessible way for teachers and parents to communicate.
From here the ProgressTeaching platform was born. A user friendly tool for teachers and leaders with 3 pillars at its core — teacher development, student progress and parent communication. Its primary objective is to give students the best chance at a fair education from excellent teachers.
The success of the platform was staggering. It was too good not to share and was quickly adopted by other schools, academies and MATs across the country. It is the only teaching improvement platform of its kind. It helps thousands of students across the country to get a fair chance at education regardless of the background they were born into.
On 8th December we held a webinar which explored how ProgressTeaching was adopted by the Crest Academy to improve their quality of teaching. We heard how it gave the senior leadership team a way to systematically measure both their teaching quality and student progression. It was so successful that it was then rolled out across the entire E-Act multi-academy trust.
Watch the webinar to learn more about how the ProgressTeaching platform can help you to give all of your students a chance at a fair education.