Pilots and Trials

Key Stage 3 Regional Pilot

St Peter’s High 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.

Following the dissemination of the 'Pathways Document' this school had begun to make a lot of changes and integrated a lot of the areas of the revised curriculum into their schemes of work. The school had taken a thematic approach at Key Stage 3 and will continue with this for the pilot. Interviewees stated these themes were linked and progressed through Key Stage 3.

In Year 10, the thematic approach has accommodated Key Stage 3 tests and choices for Key Stage 4. These termly themes were created upon the following criteria:

Commonality between subject clusters;
To reinforce appreciation of connections and links between and across different learning areas;
The maturity of the pupils.

Initially the planning process took a whole school approach. At the same time a Key Stage 3 Strategic Steering Group was formed at this outset stage of planning to monitor and evaluate actions on a termly basis and action plan for the new term ahead.

This Steering Group was composed of the following staff leadership roles reflecting key management responsibility within the pastoral and academic framework:

Year Tutor Year 8 (Employability)
Year 8 Form Teacher / Maths / Numeracy KS3
Pastoral Manager (Science KS3) . SENCO (Environment & Society - History)
Vice-Principal (English)

At an INSET Day all staff discussed the use of Themes and the issues involved in the planning for these. The staff were split into Cluster Groups according to the former areas of study such as Science and Technology to collaboratively plan how their own scheme of work could be approached thematically. The broad themes that would be used in Year 8 and Year 9 programmes of work were agreed amongst the whole staff. The Themes diverged in context from:

Local Term One;
National Term Two;
International Term Three.

This was to ensure that the pupils' knowledge, skills and understanding could be widened accordingly.

On a departmental level staff rewrote/reworked their schemes of work in line with the agreed Themes that would be used. A proforma was disseminated to each department to create the new scheme of work within. It allowed the subject areas to recognise their links with the broad theme contexts (termly) as well as connecting learning and skills with other learning areas/subject strands.

Within each department teachers collaboratively plan the content that their scheme of work (the proforma) would contain. The interviewees emphasised that although a thematic approach was being adopted, subject skills were always of importance and departments were encouraged to ensure they blended into the themes.

In addition departments within their own Cluster Groups had the opportunity to collaboratively plan together on amending their schemes of work. This also gave the opportunity for teachers across the year to see the links between subject areas relating to each Theme.

The planning returned to a whole school level to address any issues or ideas that individuals voiced. This was done on a regular basis. The interviewee stated that although a Key Stage 3 Steering (strategic) Team was in place all decisions were made following consultation democratically on a whole staff level.

In addition to this, a Key Stage 3 Core Curriculum team was created to represent all the Learning Areas, to monitor and evaluate the terms work across all departments (this is different from the Key Stage 3 Steering Group). This Group focuses on the implementation of the New Curriculum (Big Picture) at grass roots levels. There is then a termly review of all group workings.

Currently the school's Key Stage 3 Curriculum provides Citizenship as a discrete subject for Years 8, 9 and 10 and programming for Employability (CCEA Pilot) will be progressing to Year 10 during 06/07.

The main challenge within Learning for Life and Work is therefore for the school to create a facility for Home Economics as this is ultimately a new subject to the school. Other challenges met by the school were creating planning time, the move from traditional methodologies to new teaching methods and encouraging pupils to become more participative in their own learning.

Ongoing training needs identified were for the school:

To revisit the information on Assessment for Learning against agreed whole school action strategy:
To investigate the criteria for PSHE and the Home Economics Strand;
To continue to work on the development of Profiling.