Coaching of experienced principals

 

Mrs Danielle Gott The City of Ely Community College Ely, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom

 

Background on the school

In the heart of the fen, and surrounded by a thriving agricultural industry, the City of Ely Community College is a mixed 11-18 community college with 1,100 in main school and 200 sixth form students. In 2003 the school became the first specialist business and enterprise college in Cambridgeshire. The college has the Arts council Silver Artsmark and is Investor in People accredited. We are a centre where the community as a whole, from babies to senior citizens, can take advantage of a wide range of educational and social programmes.

The school is situated on the outskirts of City of Ely (north of Cambridge ). The world famous Ely Cathedral can be seen from the school grounds. Ely has an internationally recognised private school, a state secondary and an ex-grammar school within catchment for students to choose from on transfer so, as a result, it has a mixed intake of ability and social backgrounds.

Ian Gartshore joined the college as principal in 2001 and he set about starting a programme of raising standards to help students achieve their potential so they have better life chances and opportunities when they leave at 16 or 18.

As a result, the college has increased its exam results (number of students achieving 5+ GCSEs A*-C) year on year for the last four years, 34% 2002, 36% 2003, 39.3% 2004, and 50.3% 2005.

 

 

Mentoring to raise achievement

The school implemented its mentoring scheme and most intense raising achievement activities in 2004 and, with this achieved, its largest increase in exam results (in the four year period) in 2005. This paper aims to explain why the school believes mentoring has been at the core of making this jump.

Mentoring at the college aims to identify those students who are at risk of not achieving their potential, and to support them to reach it.

The mentoring process starts at the end of year 10, when students who are academically at risk are identified. These students, with their parents then meet with the head of mentoring, Danielle Gott. At the start of the process, their student progress data, and the reasons for being identified for mentoring, are explained to them. If students are identified for mentoring – it is compulsory they try it. If, after trying it, and/or they start to achieve their potential, students can opt out.

Regular meetings are held, every other week, for 30 minutes, between mentors and mentees. Students are rotated out of different lessons to attend, so that any one subject is not affected too much.

Mentors set targets for the students to go away and achieve. These are very subject specific and are based on what the student has identified as the issue. In our experience, most students are acutely aware of what they need to do to improve.

For some students, mentoring is a short sharp blast of sessions to address a particular issue. For others, it is a more lengthy affair, lasting the whole academic year through to their exams.

The mentoring team consists of paid mentors (who mentor the bulk of our academically at-risk students) and volunteers (who often mentor students with other needs). In total, we mentor about 40% of the year group.

The mentoring meetings largely draw discussion material from the student's data.

The school has developed its reporting systems so that valuable feedback can be shared with the students and mentors on a regular basis. We now have a termly progress check, which allows teachers to feedback to students whether they are on track to achieve their minimum expected grade at the end of the GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) course. This is communicated to students as a simple minus, equals or plus. Equals and pluses are indicators of achievement; while a minus is a potential signifier of underachievement. It is the minuses that the mentoring relationship explores in further detail. This builds on self-evaluations that are completed in tutor time.

We are therefore aiming to use the data to tell a story about each and every student:

• using it as a way to initiate discussions about subjects and achievement;
• using it as a starting point to widen discussions with our students.

The approach we have taken has had some startling and varied responses from students. However, it has given us a meaningful and valuable way to talk face-to-face, on a one-to-one with students.

Meeting with students in this way has raised some interesting and, at times, challenging issues, which we've all had to work to solve or improve. Sometimes students have told us things we'd rather not hear (for example, feedback on the learning environment in some of our class rooms). However, tackling their concerns head on and not sweeping them under the carpet, has demonstrated that we want to listen and act on what the students tell us. Students are starting to feeling empowered and this is creating a learning culture in the school that is a fitting tribute to our efforts to establish AFL (Assessment for Learning) within the college and our corporate strap line, ‘together we achieve'.

Our mentoring scheme compliments our raising achievement activities. We have made sure that the target group of students we are mentoring attend the activities – after all, it is this group that have the most to gain. For example, we offer revision clinics, revision evenings, coursework catch up and improvement, as well as study skills workshops.

During the course of mentoring, we inevitably touch on post-16 choices; and for many students this is a driving force in them to realise why they need to achieve their potential. Mentors are able to guide students on possible pathways and refer them to Connexions for further advice, if needed.

Throughout the mentoring/raising achievement programme of events, students are asked to give their feedback through surveys, so we can listen to their ideas and use all of their responses to improve what we offer them.

It is the students' feedback that is driving our future developments. It is hoped that we will continue to see a steady improvement, aiming for 60% + 5 A-C GCSEs in another two years, when our cultural change should really start to have an impact.

 

 

The feedback from our students (2005-06)

At the end of each academic year, we have been asking our mentored students to complete a questionnaire to help us improve our mentoring scheme. These are just some of the overwhelming positive statistics:

• 86% felt mentoring helped them cope with school work;
• 77% felt mentoring helped them improve coursework;
• 92% felt mentoring helped with their revision;
• 91% felt mentoring had given them more confidence;
• 87% felt mentoring made them want to make more of school;
• 92% of mentored students rated our scheme as satisfactory or better.

The strengths of mentoring at City of Ely Community College

• A great team of volunteer and paid mentors
• Training/meeting with mentors twice yearly
• Working with an agency, such as CEBLO (Connexions), that is able to build volunteer mentoring contacts
• Clear mentoring aims
• Clear record-keeping
• Solid systems in school to be able to identify where the mentoring need is
• Involvement of parents
• Close links to other raising achievement activities
• The will to listen to students
• Providing mentors with as much information as possible throughout the year and giving them copies of study support materials that they can use
• Production of a termly newsletter that helps mentors to be aware of current issues in the year group and gives them ideas of suitable topics of conversation; in this way their meetings can raise timely issues with students.
• Using mentoring as a vehicle to support and give students the valuable skills they need to complete their GCSEs successfully.

The weaknesses

• One major issue we have yet to resolve is how to feedback targets set in mentoring meetings.

• We have trialled a mentoring booklet (but this was another document to remember) and writing in planners, but subject staff don't necessarily check every planner.

Future developments

Our priority in the coming year (2006-2007) is to find a way to communicate targets set in mentoring meetings to teaching staff.

Conclusion

Mentoring at City of Ely Community College achieves a graceful balance between encouraging students to recognise and achieve their potential, whilst still supporting them and helping them identify specific ways in which they can do it.

Mentoring can be a positive and beneficial experience for students and school alike, adding a personal and meaningful aspect to the learning experience.

 

Mrs Danielle Gott has been Raising Achievement Coordinator and Mentoring Manager at City of Ely Community College for the last two years. Prior to this role she was a head of year. Her post is non-teaching and includes raising achievement initiatives, managing the mentoring of year 11 students, Progress File, ILP (Individual Learning Plan) and Aim Higher.

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