Centre stage papers – Days 3, 4 & 5: Extending the vision

Bridgemary’s model of student support

 

 

Bridgemary Community Sports College is an 11 to 16 mixed comprehensive school, with 1000 students, in Gosport, Hampshire. It is situated in the most socially deprived ward and has 40% of its students on the Special Needs register. In 2005 we developed further the ‘Ability not Age’ curriculum, where students are placed in a group per subject, according to their ability level.

Changing the curriculum structure in such a radical way meant that the traditional pastoral model wouldn’t meet the needs of the students. We needed to develop a support structure and systems around our students to allow them to progress. The remodelling agenda gave us an opportunity to restructure the whole college around personalising learning. The college structure now has the student at the centre and has created the conditions that support student progression tailored to their individual needs. Below we offer you a small ‘flavour’ of what we have created to address the personalising agenda in our college.

One team that was created to replace the traditional pastoral model of heads of years was the student support service. This is a team of specialist support staff whose role is to:

• be part of the college community that enhances opportunities, raises aspirations and heightens achievement for our students, their families and the community
• look at ‘the child’, identify the need and then decide on the appropriate action in order to remove the barriers that prevent them from achieving
• help meet the Every Child Matters agenda
• actively contribute to the college’s evaluation process.

Figure 1: Bridgemary community sports college student support services provision

Using specialist non-teaching staff allows us to focus on providing tailored provision for the students who require it. It has allowed us to work with parents and outside agencies more efficiently and effectively was the case than the old model, and be able to give the maximum time available to each student’s needs rather than try to ‘juggle’ welfare help in between a teaching commitment.

The identified students are offered a case worker, who meets with them once a week to review their plan and make necessary alterations/improvements. The students are offered a variety of strategies that are provided internally or by a number of outside agencies as a result of a multi-agency meeting. An Intervention Plan (IP), Pastoral Support Plan (PSP) or an Acceptable Behaviour Contract (ABC) is then developed in partnership with the student, his or her family and relevant agencies. The Student Support Service also make available more generic opportunities for groups of students, for example, Self Esteem, Young Carers and Anti-bullying. In addition, the team has a high profile in the college, walking around and dealing with incidents that prevent the majority of the students from learning. Attendance is also within their remit.

One ‘unique’ member of the team is a full-time police officer. We pay a substantial amount of her salary and Bridgemary is her ‘beat’ during the school year. Her presence as part of the team has had a positive effect and our college is seen as a safe learning environment. She also plays an active role in mentoring students, running the prefect system and monitoring the closed circuit TV system. Our attendance figure has also improved, thanks partly to her truancy sweeps! The community perception of a police officer on a college site is very positive. Many see it as a key factor in creating a safer learning environment. Our police officer plays a central role in our communications with feeder schools and the local community. Over the short period of time she has been in post, we have become the envy of several local schools, who are keen to follow this initiative.

A Quality Assurance team is also part of the structure. This is a team of coordinators made up from Assessment, Secondary Strategy, Gifted and Talented, Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCO), Personalising Learning and Learning Liaison, whose roles are to:

• monitor and evaluate the quality of identified provision across the college
• where necessary, liaise with external agencies and ensure the information is communicated internally
• audit delivery and keep up to date data on progress
• evaluate the impact on learning, identify, plan and implement any changes needed
• in consultation with the Staff Support team coordinator, identify and help deliver any staff development needs
• organise, if required, any cross-curricular learning opportunities for students
• work together to achieve consistency in application.

The Quality Assurance team is made up of coordinators of Assessment and Secondary Strategy. The Personalising Co-ordinator is responsible for internal and external mentoring and the delivery of a structured programme based on ‘Learning to Learn’. The training of the mentors is delivered by the Education Business Partnership. At present, we have 11 business mentors who work with identified students who need support from adults other than teachers.

The Learning Liaison Coordinators are responsible for the monitoring of the academic performance of students across all subjects. They work with the Student Support Manager to ensure that the needs of every student are met and academic performance is positively affected by interventions. A key focus of their work is to look at learning from the students’ perspective. They are therefore skilled in many strategies that ensure that student voice is heard in key decision-making forums.

The issue of transition between key stage 2 and key stage 3 is one that we have also tried to address with the development of an Access Learning and Achievement team led by a primary trained teacher. Their role is to teach identified students who enter the college with a SATs total of nine or less and require a different approach to learning, and also to work with our feeder schools to ensure a smooth transition. The team work with the primary schools on a number of projects throughout the year in order to help identify, and get to know, the students’ individual needs before they come to Bridgemary. The primary schools test the students in year 4 to help with the identification of support needed. We also have the students in college for two days a week for the last three weeks of the summer term. This time is used to help the students get to know the college but for us to develop the correct individual learning programmes before the first day of term. This academic year identified year 6 students will be starting their transition programme after completion of their key stage 2 SATs (Standard Assessment Tests).

Structures and systems will only work if there is communication. We have developed a communication structure that allows all teams to inform each other of any developments and concerns. Lack of consistency and poor communication are often the main reasons things don’t succeed in our college. Moving to the use of support staff, instead of teachers, for pastoral roles initially caused certain staff in the school to raise a concern about how communication would occur. One way we have overcome this is the introduction of the weekly student review panel. The Student Support Manager, SENCO, Assessment Co-ordinator and the Learning Liaison Co-ordinators meet to discuss identified students and decide how their needs will be met and which team will be responsible for the student’s progress. This is then relayed back to staff through either written communication or the daily staff briefings.

The examples above are only a small part of how we have restructured in order to meet the personalising learning agenda as we see it. Each school and college must develop their own systems and structures to meet their students’ needs, however, we would welcome any thoughts you may have to help improve and develop the structure and systems we have introduced.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ms Cheryl Heron is Principal of Bridgemary Community Sports College, in Gosport, Hampshire, United Kingdom.

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