Development of a National Literacy and Numeracy Policy

Bernadette Kiely JCSP Support Service

Junior Certificate School Programme

Background

International research has highlighted the circumstances that regularly ‘ignite’ school system reform:

• Economic crisis • A major report -Pisa 2009 • New political leadership

(McKinsey 2010) Junior Certificate School Programme

National Programme for Government 2011

• Schools will be required to draw up 5 year development

plans for schools and teachers

• To position Ireland in top 10 performing countries in PISA • Review of JC & LC –encourage greater innovation and

independent learning

• Every school will have a Literacy Action Plan • Responsibility for achieving outcomes will rest with

principal

• CDP support for principals • Pre-service training CPD for primary and post-primary

teachers Junior Certificate School Programme

Background

Recent reports:

• Reading Literacy in Disadvantaged Primary

Schools 2004

• Literacy and Numeracy in Disadvantaged Schools-

Inspectorate 2005

• Looking at English 2006 • Incidental inspections Findings 2010 • NA 2009 • Pisa 2009

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Reading Literacy in Disadvantaged Primary Schools

Eivers, Shiel and Shortt: Educational Research Centre 2004   

6,500 pupils in 1 st 3 rd and 6 th class 29% significantly underachieving Pupils whose parents agreed that they liked reading did better Junior Certificate School Programme

Recommendations

• Targets for Reading Literacy should be more realistic • Stronger focus on Literacy in all schemes • Designed to redress educational disadvantage. At least

90 minutes per day on English.

• School – wide focus on language and literacy • Literacy Co-ordinators to support a Whole School

Approach

• Pre-Service Training / In-Career

Junior Certificate School Programme

Literacy and numeracy in disadvantaged School; Challenges for Teachers and Learners 2005

During the evaluation it was evident that only a few schools acknowledged the necessity of, and gave considerable commitment to, adapting their literacy and numeracy programmes to maximise children’s potential.

Junior Certificate School Programme

Recommendation

A more systematic, school-based planning process is required to ensure continuity and progression in children’s learning. Central to this process is the establishment of specific priorities focused on improvement in literacy and numeracy within the context of a balanced child-centred curriculum. Such priorities should be agreed at whole-school level, and all staff members should include them in their individual planning.

Junior Certificate School Programme

Recommendation

• The DES publication Looking at Our School:

An Aid to Self-Evaluation in Primary Schools

should be utilised by school staffs in the process of looking critically at their schools.

P.33

Junior Certificate School Programme

Recommendation

The success of teaching and learning strategies requires the explicit prioritisation of literacy and numeracy education in which the most effective use of available physical and human resources is made. A culture of change for improvement is required in order to enhance the quality of children’s learning in a developmental and meaningful way. P. 35 Junior Certificate School Programme

Looking at English, 2006

Synthesis of English Inspection Reports 75 post-primary schools Jan 05 – May 06 Junior Certificate School Programme

Provision of English - timetabling

Leaving Certificate

• 5 lessons per week • Significant minority -6 per week

Junior Certificate – ‘considerably poorer’

• Majority 5 lessons pw in 3

rd year

• 25% of schools -4 lesson pw in all 3 years • 1

st year worst - majority offered 4 pw

• 3 lessons pw in 1

st year

• Worst offered 3 pw on 3 consecutive days

Junior Certificate School Programme

Timetabling at Junior Cycle

• Not high enough priority • Strongly focused on preparation for exam • Focus on delivery of content, not on

development of skills

• Concurrent timetabling rare in first year • Restricts movement between levels • Restricts team teaching, whole-year

activities, inter-class activities Junior Certificate School Programme

Optimal situation for English

‘The optimal situation is for students to have an English lesson on each of the five days of the week, to enable them to develop the necessary skills and competences and to provide them with regular reinforcement of these.’ (P.8) Junior Certificate School Programme

Area of weakness

A weakness was often found in otherwise substantial plans in the area of planned learning outcomes. References to aims and objectives were frequently too general to be of much practical use. In other words, they lacked a focus on the specific skills to be acquired by students in each class or year group. P.21

Junior Certificate School Programme

Good Practice

• The school management is to be commended for

facilitating four or five formal meetings per year for subject departments.

• The learning support team has structured meeting time

with the principal and deputy principal every week, and close liaison between the learning support team and the English department was evident.

• Minutes of English department meetings are kept, in

which decisions and plans are recorded. These meetings promoted team building, collaborative planning and decision making.

• Teachers are also facilitated to attend in-service and to

pursue further qualifications, for instance the post graduate diploma in special educational needs.

P.16

Junior Certificate School Programme

Good Practice

Good English departments showed the following characteristics:

• a participative approach to planning for English • the sharing of resources and of expertise, particularly in

teaching strategies

• the facilitation and promotion of good practice by an active

co-ordinator (or rotating co-ordinators)

• regular meetings, both formally scheduled and as issues

arise, with agendas and records of decisions taken

• effective systems of communication within the

department, with learning-support teachers, and with the management

• the distribution of routine tasks, such as setting papers and

preparing resources to avoid the duplication of work Junior

• an active approach to CPD P.20

Certificate School Programme

Good Practice

• There is a subject coordinator for English and the

English department meets on a regular basis. These meetings occur both in time allocated by the principal for department planning meetings and at other times arranged by the department itself. Minutes of these meetings are kept, particularly decisions relating to common plans for the term. These arrangements speak to a high level of dedication on the part of teachers and the existence of a collaborative culture within the English department. P.27

Junior Certificate School Programme

Good Practice

In a recent development, all subject departments have devised glossaries giving the meanings and applications of subject-specific terms to assist learning support and resource teachers in their work with students. P.29

Junior Certificate School Programme

Incidental Inspection Findings 2010 • Unannounced

inspections

• 450 primary schools • October 09 –10 • 800 English lessons • 500 Maths lessons

Junior Certificate School Programme

Findings - English

• Concern re appropriate teaching approaches • Oral Language • Collaborative/co-operative learning • Planning practices strongly linked to pupil

learning outcomes

• Assessment practices also strongly linked

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Findings - Maths

• Inadequate opportunities to learn through talk

and discussion (18%)

• Concern in the context of skill development, and

specifically the development of problem-solving skills that pupils in less than half (48.4%) of the lessons observed were enabled to work collaboratively

• Concern re use of resources • Concern re assessment practices

Junior Certificate School Programme

Findings – Literacy and Numeracy

Consideration needs to be given to prioritising aspects of the teaching of literacy and numeracy – and especially the use of assessment to improve learning – in the provision of continuous professional development for teachers and principals. These are important school improvement issues that need to be addressed in all schools. P. 22 Junior Certificate School Programme

Assessment Primary NA 2009 Assessment Post-Primary Pisa 2009

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NA 2009

• National Assessments have been carried out periodically since 1972 • NA 2009 saw two major changes: – Same pupils assessed for both domains – A shift in target grades (to 2nd and 6th classes) • No improvement in literacy or numeracy

Junior Certificate Programme

Findings

There was limited use of:

• documented observations, • of strategies that enable planning of instruction related to pupils’

learning needs e.g. teacher-made checklists,

• of pupil-centred strategies (e.g., portfolio assessment), • of reflective journals, • of pupil-self assessment.

WSE reports also highlight some shortcomings in these areas, noting that assessment for learning strategies are not used in all classrooms, and suggesting that the information derived from such assessments could contribute usefully to teacher planning. Junior Certificate School Programme

Recommendations

Each school should have a CPD plan that identifies key school- and individual-level CPD needs.

Those identified needs should be the criteria on which participation in CPD is based.

Junior Certificate School Programme

Recommendations

Strong leadership, collaborative whole school planning and collaborative teaching (with additional support incorporated into classroom teaching and a consistency of approach across classrooms), sharing of good practice, and using aggregated assessment data are a few of the factors most commonly reported as features of effective schools.

Junior Certificate School Programme

PISA 2009: The performance and progress of 15-year-olds in Ireland

Educational Research Centre

Junior Certificate School Programme

Overview of PISA

• Programme for International Student Assessment – Project of OECD • International survey of achievement of 15-year-old students • Reading literacy, mathematical literacy, scientific literacy • Three-yearly cycles – 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009 • In 2009, 65 countries/economies participated in PISA – 34 OECD member/candidate countries and 31 ‘partner’ countries • In Ireland, 144 schools and 3,937 students participated in PISA 2009

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Reading

•Selected countries above OECD average – Shanghai-China, Korea, Finland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan •Selected countries at OECD average – United States, Sweden, Germany,

Ireland

, France, United Kingdom •Selected countries below OECD average – Austria, Spain, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg

Junior Certificate School Programme

Mathematics

• Selected countries above OECD average – Shanghai-China, Singapore, Hong Kong China, Korea, Finland, Japan, Canada, Netherlands, New Zealand, Belgium, Australia, Germany • Selected countries at OECD average – Norway, France, Austria, Poland, Sweden, Czech Republic, United Kingdom • Selected countries below OECD average – Luxembourg, United States,

Ireland

, Spain, Italy, Greece, Israel

Junior Certificate School Programme

Characteristics associated with higher levels of reading achievement • Higher levels of student and school Economic,

Social and Cultural Status

• Home educational resources • Cultural possessions • Material possessions • Parental occupation • Educational level of parents • Number of books in the home • Higher levels of parental interaction • More positive student-teacher relations • Better disciplinary climate • Higher perceived relevance of schooling

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Characteristics associated with higher levels of reading achievement • Students in Transition Year achieved significantly

higher reading and science scores than students in all other grade levels

•Not significantly different to Fifth Years in

mathematics

• Students attending girls secondary schools

achieved significantly higher reading scores than students in all other school types

• Students attending schools with lower levels of

negative student behaviour Junior Certificate School Programme

Characteristics associated with lower levels of reading achievement

• Students belonging to lone-parent families • First generation migrant students – Native students and second generation migrant

students do not have significantly different mean reading scores

• Migrant students who don’t speak English/Irish • Students who spend more than 8 hours a week

during term time in paid work

• Students attending DEIS schools

Junior Certificate School Programme

Factors that Could have Contributed to Changes in Performance in Ireland

•Changes in the school-going population •Curriculum changes •Random fluctuations •Linking and scaling methodology used in

PISA Junior Certificate School Programme

• PISA results suggest that 17% of Irish

fifteen year-olds – and as many as one in four teenage boys – lack the literacy skills necessary to function in today’s knowledge-intensive society Junior Certificate School Programme

Better Literacy & Numeracy

•Consultation document •A draft plan, invited submissions •Good is no longer good enough •480+ responses, all will be

published

•Meetings with external groups

completed

•Positive suggestions incorporated •Launch early summer •Different title

Junior Certificate School Programme

In post-primary schools, the development of literacy and numeracy skills is not just the responsibility of teachers of English, Irish and mathematics: teachers of all post primary subjects have an important role to play in developing and consolidating the student’s ability to use literacy and numeracy. Junior Certificate School Programme

Actions to support principals in leading improvement in literacy and numeracy

• Support principals in implementing robust

school self-evaluation, focussing in particular on improvements in literacy and numeracy

• Provide leadership development programmes

for aspiring principals Junior Certificate School Programme

Focus the provision of Department-supported CPD for teachers on the teaching of literacy and numeracy and the use of assessment

• Twenty hours of CPD in literacy, numeracy and

assessment every five years for primary teachers and teachers of L1 (English/Irish) at second level

• Professional development units on literacy and

numeracy across the curriculum for second-level teachers

• Support - online, video, resources • Team of 20 advisors on literacy and numeracy for

primary and post- primary Junior Certificate School Programme

Actions to improve literacy and numeracy in post-primary schools

• Continue the development and roll-out of

Project Maths

• Prioritise the revision of the English syllabus and

the Junior Certificate English examination

• Prioritise the development of literacy and

numeracy across all subject areas and areas of learning in the revised junior cycle curriculum

• Continue to support enhanced literacy,

numeracy and language development in DEIS schools Junior Certificate School Programme

Actions to improve literacy and numeracy achievement in schools serving disadvantaged communities

• Supports for target setting will be

reviewed and strengthened to identify and enhance best practice in planning and target setting

• Develop and implement an oral language

development programme in pre-schools that are linked to DEIS primary schools Junior Certificate School Programme

Assessment

• Better assessment evidence at primary • Transfer of information at transition - report

card

• Assessment at post primary level – development

of tests

• Develop national standards of student

achievement for literacy and numeracy at five stages (infant classes, junior primary, middle primary, senior primary, lower secondary) and at various proficiency levels Junior Certificate School Programme

Summary

• Need for renewed focus on literacy and

numeracy

• More focused target setting • Use of assessment data • Systematic planning meetings- minutes etc • Regular & well structured communication

between members of departments

• Collaborative planning & teaching

Junior Certificate School Programme