Children and Young People –
Good Practice: How a school improved its exam results by focusing on good behaviour
Tuesday, 14 June 2011
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Last year 100 per cent of pupils achieved the equivalent of five A* to C grades at GCSE at London's Sir John Cass school
Sir John Cass school's head teacher Haydn Evans (centre) says that encouraging outstanding behaviour is key to success
Project Sir John Cass Foundation and RedcoatChurch of England Secondary School, Tower Hamlets
Funding Receives £10m for more than 1,500 pupils, including 665 sixth-form pupils
Purpose To ensure all pupils achieve their personal best
Background Sir John Cass school in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets serves families in an area of high deprivation. More than 60 per cent of pupils are eligible for free school meals, most are from ethnic minority groups and about 83 per cent do not have English as a first language. About a quarter of the children have special needs, although only a few have statements. Nevertheless, the school, which is rated "outstanding" by Ofsted, achieves excellent results and is the second most improved school in England, according to the Department for Education.
Action The school is a specialist languages and business enterprise college and has seen much investment in facilities and technology. Yet head teacher Haydn Evans believes the foundation for success has been an emphasis on behaviour. "We're an inner-city school and we need that good behaviour if we're going to raise achievement," he says.
The school's approach to fostering good behaviour includes closing the school during the day so pupils remain on site at lunchtimes. "This means children are under close supervision through the whole day," explains Evans. "We also separate girls and boys for recreation. It means the girls have their own space and enables the boys to participate in the sports they want to do at break time." Staff - particularly heads of learning and the senior leadership team - are constantly on the look-out for behaviour issues. "There is unobtrusive presence about the school throughout the whole day and that creates the environment for good behaviour and means the teachers can focus on teaching," says Evans.
Other keys to success include the way the curriculum is structured to offer different pathways. Pupils can choose to pursue an academic or more vocational route or a mixture of the two. "It means the curriculum is much more tailored to their needs," says Evans.
He also says the school's policy of closely monitoring individual pupils' performance and intervening swiftly if they are underachieving has made a huge difference.
This includes looking out for discrepancies in performance in English and Maths. The theory is that children who do well in one subject should be doing well in the other. "If students have a discrepancy of more than a grade then there is clearly something going wrong," says Evans. Targeted intervention in English and Maths involves one-to-one sessions with expert tutors. "In the tutorial sessions they go through the work done in lessons and there is basically nowhere to hide," says Evans. "We have found one session per fortnight does the trick."
Outcome The school was rated "outstanding" by Ofsted in its most recent full inspection in 2008. An interim assessment this year found standards had been maintained. The 2008 report found students entered the school with average levels of attainment. "They leave in Year 11 with the majority making outstanding progress, thus gaining good foundations for their future education or employment," it stated. It said the success of the school's behaviour policy was reflected in the "very low level of racial incidents and exclusions for a school of this size".
In 2010, 100 per cent of pupils achieved the equivalent of five A* to C grades at GCSE in any subject yet the school continues to set new targets, including prioritising literacy and numeracy and increasing the number of pupils gaining a level two qualification in maths and English. In 2007, just 33 per cent of pupils achieved five A* to C grades at GCSE, including English and Maths. That figure went up to 45 per cent in 2008, increasing to 55 per cent in 2009 and was 75 per cent in 2010.
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