A school with seriously amazing KS1 results - Lewisham

[flexybex]

Just researching information to include in a report (i.e. surfing) and came across a government publication that used Fairlawn Primary in Lewisham as an example of excellence.

This school apparently has 21% EAL and achieves 40%+ level 3 for writing at KS1.
I am gobsmacked (and depressed).

How do they do it? Anyone know the school who can throw some light on this for me? Do they run a writing scheme from nursery?

And, while I'm here, how can the average salary of their teachers be £47K?

What are the pupil numbers? Sounds like a small school, few teachers and the head's salary pulling up the average.

And that answers your results question too - although I don't think they are so amazing, tbh.

It's two form entry so not tiny. Very impressive - a lot of emphasis put on writing?

What do you need to do to get level 3 for writing at KS1?

No, just googled and 500+ pupils, so that blows my theory However, they seem to have two heads; an executive head and a head of school. So that explains the average salary position.

96% getting level 4 in KS2 VA 101.5

feenie I didn't think HTs were included in ave salary - just SLT.

They count as teachers AFAIK.

If you click on the little question mark, it says teachers and SLT - doesn't mention HT.

Aside from that, anyone know how they get a cohort comprising 21% EAL (presumably speaking another language at home) to achieve L3 in Year 2, taking into account the requirement for ambitious vocabulary?

(Please don't tell me you all get 40%+ L3....)

You don't know what language the EAL kids speak at home.

You don't know if they start school speaking English or not.

EAL doesn't tell you very much.

And their salaries will be higher because of the inner London allowance.

But as you say, teachers don't earn 47K, and Headteachers are part of the SLT. Headteachers are still teachers, even if some of them would like to forget about it for the most part .

I still don't think those stats are that unusual.

Blimey, that HT must earn a lot then!
London weighting is only just over £3k indigo!

Doesn't anyone find the 40%+ L3 writing unusual? Or is it just me being a total failure?

I'm going there in a couple of weeks for a twilight training session - I'll feedback (but I probably wont be asking them about salary)

Two heads of a school that size would earn a fair whack. Plus deputies/assistant heads. Could be two depuities and an assistant in a school that size. Two heads, deputies, and an assitant would drag the average up considerably.

We have got those kind of percentages on those kind of stats - not consistently though, admittedly.

GREAT SocksonFire.
Please find out what they do in nursery/Y1 to up the writing. They must have a magic formula that's passed me by.

You have 40% L3 writing feenie??? How do you do that?
We bust a gut to get half of that!

We do a good talking intervention pretty much the second they come in - makes a huge difference. Can't remember the name - will return when I do

Thx feenie. We have realised that talk-based literacy in YR/1 is vital - have also just taken over nursery so can target even younger chn now.

Our HT is looking at Talk for Writing in the early years - any feelings anyone? Or is there something better?

I don't think that's too astonishing, is it? I don't know the KS1 results for our school, but we have 40ish% EAL and approx 50% getting Level 5 in English at KS2.

Oddly enough it is not a particularly sought-after school, mainly because the intake is not very privileged. But by my lights, if they are getting broadly similar KS2 results to the uber-desirable schools with catchment areas of less than 500m, consisting mainly of houses in the £1m+ bracket, then they must actually being doing better for their intake than the privileged schools. Go figure.

Boys' level 5 writing results in KS2 are nowhere near as impressive (15%?). What went wrong in 2011 with KS2 boys' writing, if those sorts of L3 writing results are consistently achieved in KS1??? Or is it mainly the girls getting that level in KS1, too? Children at the school are mainly already speaking English when they start at the school, rather than having to learn it when they get there, albeit they have another language at home, btw, according to the OFSTED reports.

Actually, looks like I'm wrong and only 4% of boys got level 5 in the written tests and 13% were teacher assessed at level 5. Their results in English and maths generally are still very good, though, just haven't maintained their standards in boys' writing, if that intake was as good as the current KS1 intake!

I suspect the girls are upping the overall scores and they need to work on inspiring the boys with their writing a bit more.

Or maybe this year's results are as a result of successfully inspiring a few more boys?!! Ooh, analysing numbers can be fun (but doesn't appear to lead to the truth).

PollyM. that's impressive - can you say what programme/approach was used in the Early Years to teach children to read? Thanks.

Flexy - you don't mention FSM or SEN or anything else - only EAL.

Is that because you see EAL is the biggest barrier to getting a L3? And does that somehow become a self fulfilling prophesy?

Only 20% of kids have EAL and only 40% got L3. It is possible no EAL kids got L3. It is certainly possible that all L3 kids started school speaking English.

My school blames EAL for low KS2 writing scores. It's not true, but it's a convenient excuse. Ie it's not true that they're doing everything they can. There's loads more they could do. But while they see EAL as the problem, not the school, they'll never improve significantly.

IndigoBell - I agree that schools find EAL (or, in our case, French as an Additional Language) a convenient excuse for poor performance. It quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for the school that children with more than one language will not perform highly in written tasks by the end of primary.

While I think that plurilingual children do have a bit of an extra burden in the early years, in particular while they are learning to read, this is nothing that excellent phonics teaching and a language-rich environment cannot sort out quickly and plurilingual children can often have a vocabulary advantage by the end of primary if their two (or more) languages are related in any way. Properly literate plurilingual children also have undeniable cognitive advantages.

Polly _ You can't really compare the ks2 English scores as that includes reading. Our % scores bump up significantly at l5 from the high teens with L3 writing in ks1 writing to the high 50s with L5 English at ks2.

I commented on the eal as we seem to have a problem in the early years at school, and i would like to help them! Our eal children are able to learn to construct good sentences, but lack the richness of vocabulary to achieve level 3 at the end of y2.