Governor Questions

[ConfusedGovernor]

I've just received the stats for pupils progress.

And there's one (statistically significant) group of kids who are not making progress in one subject.

Which obviously I'm really concerned about.

Those kids are already on an intervention. So I'm in effect questioning the effectiveness of the intervention. And I know the school think the intervention is really great and is a real strength of the school.

Anyone got any suggestions for what questions I should ask, how I should phrase them - and is there anything additional I can ask for? ie a more indepth report or an additional meeting or something?

I would probaly be asking in your next Curriculum meeting

How long has the intervention been in place.

Have their been any improvments if yes how much.

How do they see the intervention working in the short/medium and long term.

A more indepth report may help. We have one year group at our school which statistically very low, but they have a very high percentage of children with SEN.

Yes, just ask the headteacher your questions. No doubt they'll be concerned too and will have been thinking about it.

And talk to the chair of the curriculum committee (unless you ARE the chair of the curriculum committee...)

The curriculum meeting is this week, which is why I'm getting prepared.

The kids have been on this literacy intervention every day since Oct half term. (And are still on it). They will stay on this intervention all of this year - and next year as well if necessary.

There has been no improvement in writing - but there has been improvements in reading. (Which is why school is pleased with it)

This is the main literacy intervention and it's used extensively across the school (it's a junior school)

It is also considered to be a very good intervention. 'Best practice' type thing.

I am really not going to be popular if I question it :)

I know this intervention, and my concerns are:

• Who takes it (a TA not a teacher)
• When it's done (instead of literacy)
• As well as obviously as the fact that it isn't working.

I don't know who takes responsibility for the child making progress? The teacher? The TA? The literacy co-ordinator? The SENCO?

INSTEAD of Literacy? [shock}

I won't have this in our school - how can children catch up if they miss Literacy lessons? Any interventions should be on top.

Like Feenie, I would find the fact it is done instead of Literacy absolutely unacceptable. The whole point is that an intervention should be ON TOP OF normal teaching in a subject. So those children should be getting the literacy lessons with their class AND this extra intervention, in order to accelerate their progress.

This sounds ( at a guess!) as if it could be Fresh Start ( the grown up version of RWI!) In theory it IS meant to be done instead of Literacy. In practice I would agree, this is a hopeless way of improving levels in reading AND writing. Children need to cover the normal everyday learning that takes place in good literacy levels AS WELL AS the accelerated phonic and sentence structure that comes from FS.

We do half an hour per day Fresh Start, on top of our literacy lessons, for those that need it.

Yes, it is RWI (not Fresh Start).

It's helping with reading, but not with writing. Which doesn't really surprise me (why doesn't it surprise school?)

As a governor I don't feel I can say 'You shouldn't be doing an intervention instead of literacy'. I don't think that's my place to say.

I want to know what you guys think I can say. Without overstepping the mark.

I definitely can't comment on their choice of intervention. That's the SENCO and Literacy Coordiantors decision.

All I can do is ask (polite) questions.

I would:-

1. Tell the Chair of Govs. about the problem and that you will be a) writing to the Head and b) asking relevant questions at the next meeting.

2.1 Write to the Head Teacher telling him/her of your concerns and that you will be asking questions at the next meeting. ?a) I am concerned to see that... b) (Briefly) Why has this happened? c) What steps will be taken to address this problem??.

2.2 This means that the questions will not come as a surprise, he will not fee ?ambushed? and it gives him time to sort things out/make changes. Don?t spend too long on why this has happened but concentrate on what will be done to sort things out.

1. You may wish to ring GovernorLine 08000 722 181 and talk about the problem and ways to approach it. I find it very useful to talk to someone else who is knowledgeable and ?not involved?.

... All I can do is ask (polite) questions ...
Yep, that's absolutely right and that?s what you must do. Keep asking questions.

... Without overstepping the mark ...
Well, every now and that one may overstep the mark. Oh dear, what a pity, never mind.

If you don't ask questins there may be a problem that is not sorted out and it's the Governors that are responsible and it's the children that will suffer.

Keep on asking (polite) questions, it shows that you care.

You have been told!

I meant to include:-

... I definitely can't comment on their choice of intervention. ...
Quite right ? keep asking (polite) questions.

Make sure that the meeting is adequately clerked and that the minutes reflect the level of questionning - that evidence might be useful in the future.

And your concerns fall well within your monitoring remit - don't have any qualms about the questions.

Which year group are you referring to?

Are you positive that no progress has been made, or are you basing it just on the data produced by the teachers?

Bear in mind that the sublevels entered into data are not always accurate.

1. Year 3, for example, are supposed to progress by 1 or 2 sublevels within the entire year. There are bound to be kids who make that 1 sublevel jump in between spring and summer. They are not underachieving. It also doesn't mean they haven't learnt anything all year. They just haven't made a whole sublevel's progress.

2. most schools use teacher assessment, and most schools seem to assume that teachers know what they're doing. With writing, the marking is very subjective. We have staff meetings at least once a term to cross examine other people's marking (that's not how they sell it to us...) and I'm frequently baffled by the marking of other teachers. I don't know whether I'm a harsh marker or they're too lenient. Or both.

3. what are the other needs of these children? Are they fsm? EAL? looked after? There are lots of reasons why, with even the best interventions, they might not do as well as hoped.

4. maybe the intervention system is crap :(

The role of the governer is to support and challenge.

So, the very first thing you need to do is acknowledge the improvement in the reading. Don't get caught out by ignoring that and just dealing with your area of concern. The Teaching Staff will be absolutely demoralised if you do that.

You could ask questions about the points you raise. Also, what is being done to extend the taeching concepts throughout the day? It's no good having a 15 minute 'slot' and then ignoring it for the rest of the day. Everything needs to be reinforced all the time.

You could also ask what the average level of improvement has been in previous year groups - does this system never bring about improvement or is it just not working with this cohort.

Are they really making no progress or is it just very slow progress?

I've been given the average point progress for all year groups for all subjects and for all groups within the year (FSM, Bengali, EAL etc, etc, etc)

This number is reported in points, and is an average. So as a group they could have made 0.6 or 1.2 or 2.1 (or whatever) points progress. This half year they're expected to make at least 1.5 points progress. (Since their TA reported result in Sep)

The group I'm concerned about has made on average 0.0 points of progress. And it's a large group of kids. So it's definitely statistically significant. The group contains too many kids to say it's due to 'other reasons'

So they are really making no progress - according to their teachers. Obviously I only have TA data. (And only data for a group of kids, not for individual kids)

I'm going to go with Dam's suggestion:

1. I'm concerned about....
2. Why do you think this is?
3. What are you doing to address it?

Along with lots of positives as Lougle suggests.

Do I have to wait 6 months for the next lot of data to find out if there is any improvement?

Teachers should be continuoisly assessing progress, so there should be other data available.

We do formal assessments every term. For writing, we do it as a Big Write but we don't give them any additional resources and we mark it using the APP assessments rather than VCOP.

In May/ June we do the QCA papers.

The class teacher should have writing samples that can be assessed, and also use their own assessment for the official data entry.

As TAs are not, on the whole, trained in assessing nor are they experienced in it, I would rather see the teacher's data.

Could you ask to see the data kept by the individual teachers? Whatever system the school uses... (Bonnet, PiPet etc)

Sorry , I meant teacher assessment data (as opposed to SATs data) - not teaching assistants data. The TAs don't assess the childrens work.

So the lack of progress is between what the teacher said their writing level was in Sep, and what the teacher says their writing level is now.

If only 1 child in 20 had made 1 sublevel of progres the average for the group would be higher than 0.0.

Be open minded. Could be anything. Data leads to questions, not necessarily answers. Pose the questions and listen to what they say.

I would ask:
Are the writing assessments secure - are they based on 1 piece of work or overall performance?
If they're based on single pieces of work, were the baseline assessment and most recent assessment comparible?
How long is the programme meant to last - are they mid intervention and expected to make progress in the 2nd half or (your concern) are they continuing with an intervention that is not having an impact?
Will all children continue with the intervention or will the school try an alternative with children if they are definitely not making progress?
Is the lack of impact (if proven) being addressed?

School can't give you the individual assessments but should have scrutinised them carefully and be able to explain. Improving a child's reading standards can lead to an improvement in writing as the next step.

The normal rate of progress is 2 subunits per year, though many schools try for 3. The intervention started in October and the retests would have been in February, so we are talking 5 months absolute maximum, but realistically taking in Christmas holiday and the run up to Christmas in school it is not going to be more than 4 months. Hence you might expect with an average child to have between 2/3rds to 1 subunit increase.
The problem is that you are being given results in terms of levels when RWI has its own series of levels which do not correspond to the normal levels quoted.
However what is more important than this is that RWI is a series of work, which should be tested every 8 weeks and it should be showing improvement in the reading capability of the pupils. If there is no improvement in the reading over an 8 weeks period then that is not good, but I think from the posts that you are seeing reading improvement but not writing improvement. My understanding of RWI is that you do not start writing under the scheme until you are in set 2 and therefore that would not be till at least 8 weeks after the start of the process.
So my guess is that you are not far enough into the program to have any meaningful data to assess improvement in writing.
What concerns me is that you do not seem to have been given appropriate information to be able to interpret the results or is this that the school does not really understand what it is expecting from the system.

Is it possible that the 0.0 means that it was not assessed or even that it was a typo?? As you say it would be extreme for all 20 to make no progress at all.
The only other way to get an average of 0.0 would be for some to make progress and an equal number to go backwards. I would want to clarify before going in all guns blazing.

It is not likely to be a typo. The numbers add up. One large group of kids really has made no progress in writing in half a year.

If all kids are on the same intervention, and the intervention doesn't work, and the intervention is instead of literacy, then it's perfectly possible for none of them to have made any progress.

Admissions - these are points, not sub levels. One sub level is 2 points. So a child is meant to make 3 or 4 points a year. (12 points over KS2 is expected progress - more than that for good progress) Any group that has not made 1.5 points of progress has been highlighted in the report which has been sent to the governors.

It's a junior school. Most of the kids aren't in the very early stages of learning to read. So they should be being taught writing. And this is the progress over half a year that is being reported.

I have been given appropriate data. I'm given the number of kids working at the expected NC level and the average amount of points progress. And I do know how to interpret the data.

The only thing I don't know is how to ask the right questions so that I don't offend people but do trigger action.

I raised concerns last year, but obviously didn't do it in a very effective way. There really is a problem with writing.

If you raised concerns about writing last year, then I think you have every reason to ask the question what is the improvement in writing for this cohort over the last 12 months. If that is little or nothing then there is clearly an issue within the school, which the SLT need to be addressing. It is not the intervention that is wrong, it is something much more fundamental. The GB need to be asking the SLT for an immediate report as to what they are doing about this and the timescale for recovery.
Given that you said this RWI intervention was only put in place from October half term you need to then compare the progress made in the last 12 months with the progress made since October. From your posts you say no progress from September teacher assessments but are the school comparing like with like here? That to me is another question for the school to explain
You say that you are a junior school and that most of the kids are not in the early stages of learning to read, but what level of reading are they at? RWI Phonics is designed for Foundation to Year 4 pupils who are working at a level below national curriculum level 2A in reading. RWI Comprehension follows on from Phonics and is designed for years 2 to 4 and aims to bring pupils to NC level 3. I presume that RWI Comprehension is what the school is using as you said they are not using Fresh Start, which is designed for years 5,6 and 7 working at a below NC level 3.
You say that the school is expecting 3 to 4 points increase in a school year, which is equivalent of 2 NC sub levels, so a question that has to be asked of the school is whether this is realistic. That is an average increase for an average pupil, so would the school expect this cohort to be an average cohort or is it a cohort where the expectation level is lower?
You say that there has been an improvement in reading -does this match the expected level of improvement? If so a valid question is therefore what level of increase in writing might one expect to accompany this level of rise in reading and secondly whether the school believe there will be a time lag between improvement in reading levels and improvement in writing levels. In most schools the writing is at a level below that of the reading ability of the pupils, so a time lag would not be unexpected.

is it a cohort where the expectation level is lower? - as a governor I expect all cohorts to make adequate progress (ie 2 levels in 4 years). All cohorts are expected to make at least 1.5 points in half a year. (although not all children in the cohort - adequate progress is defined differently for a very small handful of children)

School expect the same, that's why this group was highlighted in the report.

a time lag would not be unexpected - no, their reading level might be higher than their writing level - but you would expect progress in both reading and writing. You may however be satisfied if progress was made in both subjects, but writing levels were still lower than reading levels.

are the school comparing like with like here? - it's the school's internal data. It's up to them what data they give to the governors, and how they measure writing. It's reasonable to assume it's good data.

It is not the intervention that is wrong - it is the intervention that's wrong (or the way / time it's being delivered) - but as a governor I can't say that.

It's normal RWI, not comprehension. We use it to get kids working at a W or a L1 up to a L3. It works for reading, but doesn't work for writing. Which is not surprising if you know the details of RWI.

RWI works in infant schools, and is fairly good. It's however a different story using it in junior schools. We are doing RWI instead of literacy. It is totally not surprising therefore that the cohort are not making adequate progress in literacy.

I finally managed to speak to the literacy co-ordination, and it's bad news.

The reason these kids have made no progress in writing is because they're not being taught it :( :( :(

They are removed from literacy to do RWI, but in RWI they're only taught reading not writing.

And she thought that was fine :( :( :(