The Pivot Readiness to Learn (RTL) Surveys
Pivot’s new Readiness to Learn survey measures student and teacher confidence around the key capabilities – such as social and emotional skills, collaboration, and critical and creative thinking – that research tells us that young people need to thrive in school and after school.
RTL also measures the essential protective factors for learning, such as sense of belonging, resilience and responses to any bullying.
Why is RTL important?
Young people with strong social and emotional skills (measured in our RTL survey) are four times more likely to finish high school, twice as likely to be happy, and more likely to have better jobs and higher incomes.
Research shows that these capabilities (sometimes called social and emotional skills, dispositions or competencies) can be taught and nurtured by teachers and school settings. Quality learning interventions for these can offer up to an 11:1 ratio on investment.
Pivot gives you the insights and tools to better invest in your students’ success, and track and enhance the impact of such developments and investments over time across your school.
from SEL to RTL
Our SEL survey – the precursor to our RTL survey – was developed in response to school demand for clear, insightful and reliable data on student and teacher perceptions of these vital skills.
Our schools knew SEL was important and also knew Pivot’s philosophy: evidence-based, cost-effective and smart in our execution. Could we bring our approach to help shed light on this challenge? Yes!
Because social-emotional skills are neither innate nor static they can be improved through targeted development and practice (the L in SEL). In the same way that a student can be strong or require development in various social-emotional skills areas, a school can be effective or limited in teaching those skills – or how to improve them.
Our approach to gave schools the information they needed to diagnose and respond to these priority areas.
In 2019, Pivot redeveloped and extended our SEL survey to encompass new evidence from research, particularly about the importance of capabilities. Our new Readiness to Learn survey retains the best elements of the SEL survey, adding carefully developed and tested measurements of capabilities such as critical and creative thinking, collaboration, communication – and additional items around online bullying, workplace culture and other factors influencing learning and teaching in modern schools.