Pilots and Trials

KS3 Regional Pilot

Little Flower Girls' School

The following information is a transcript of an interview conducted with the pilot school at the end of the first year of the pilot.

 

The Little Flower Girls' school describe their approach as the Whole School/ Webbed Model for the implementation of the revised curriculum. Their focus at Key Stage 3 is 'Learning how to learn'. The following points are the main features of the model:

• They place Learning for Life & Work at the centre of the curriculum.
• Emphasis is on transferable skills and capabilities.
• Direct radical change within subject areas.
• Increase the range of active learning experiences provided.
• Create opportunities for connecting learning through collaborative units.
• Integrate Assessment for Learning.

The curriculum team decided to deliver the strands of Employability and Citizenship in an infused manner throughout all subjects. Personal Development will be taught discretely in form class and Home Economics was already timetabled.

 

This school described their planning as a whole school approach. It involved several stages. Initially a meeting was held for heads for departments and information on the cornerstones of the revised curriculum and also a proforma for their schemes of work was disseminated. This proforma included Learning Outcomes, links to LLW, Skills & Capabilities and Assessment for Learning.

 

The departments planned collaboratively using the proforma to audit how they would meet the criteria and represented this using web mapping. Each department returned their audit to the core team to be used for the overall picture. The team have planned to show this visually as a jigsaw to the whole school.

 

The team used web mapping to evaluate any opportunities for collaborative units between departments on a project. This also allowed the team to break down the 'big picture' of Key Stage 3 across the three year groups for each subject area. Any collaborative units identified in this process amongst subject areas will be piloted and evaluated. On a departmental level schemes of work will be designed for each subject at Key Stage 3.

 

The school encountered a number of challenges in their planning:

• Time to plan.
• Acceptance by all staff.
• Change of mindset from traditional teaching methodologies to skills driven methodologies.

The main training need identified by the interviewee was staff training on Assessment for Learning. The school hopes to involve pupils in their future planning to evaluate the delivery of work in class.