Case Study 10

The Use of CoPE Awards at KS4

Context

CoPE was introduced in 2005-2006 in response to difficulties in trying to raise exam performance levels in the school.

The school’s catchment area is part of South Bristol which is predominantly white working class – a mix of council estates and privately owned homes in an area with little unemployment, but most adults doing low paid work. The area had been part of the manufacturing engine of Bristol in the early and mid-20th century, but factories had closed, big employers had been lost and most of the pupils’ parents now relied on service industry jobs, small-scale self-employed trades and low paid night work. Parents had low aspirations for themselves and for their children. They often expressed the view that they hadn’t needed much education, so why should their children. The pupils had few ambitions and were just keen to get out there and start earning, but with no very strong views about what a good job would be.

In terms of indices of social and educational deprivation in the area, the DETR index of multiple deprivation in the wards covered by the school were in the bottom quarter of the figures for the city and the country, but not the lowest 10%. However in terms of the index of Educational Deprivation four of the five wards covered were both the four most deprived wards in Bristol and in the bottom 10% of the national figures. These figures indicated low adult skill attainment levels, poor take-up of post-16 education, low application rates for HE, poor primary school attainment levels and high absenteeism in primary schools. All of the feeder primary schools had poor scores in respect of the Fischer Family Trust data which is used across Bristol schools to try to show value added in terms of school results. Most of the pupils on entry to secondary school had poor functional literacy for their age group.

The school had suffered a gradual loss of staff – newly qualified teachers coming in, but not staying for very long and looking to `move out a ring` in terms of local schools in the concentric circle around Bristol. This instability did not help pupils build relationships and confidence.

The fact that many parents had more than one low paid job meant that they were often not effectively “parenting” their teenage children. An example of this was a parent who boasted of their real level of concern for their child by saying that they always made sure they were themselves home by 10 so they could check the child had gone to bed so as not to be tired for school. It was symptomatic of this that the Head Teacher had had no parental reaction or engagement with the switch to CoPE and he thought most parents would be unaware of it.

The history of introducing CoPE

The school had done poorly in several OFSTED inspections and had been close to special measures when the Head Teacher came to it in 2002. Teacher morale was low and there were some immediate problems of discipline and attendance which he worked on. Having tried all the usual measures and attention to detail to get the schools results up the Head had decided that he needed to try another tack. This new initiative was not best timed because the school had secured PFI funding for a new building which was being put up in 2005-6 and the site was (and to some extent still is) disrupted. The new school building is good and has already raised morale and school pride.

The Head Teacher had looked at other school improvement schemes which had `rescued` schools by switching large numbers of pupils to the BTEC route and just letting GCSE results go by the wayside. He had not been happy with that and felt it wasn’t a principled approach. “For me there were some key values about hanging on to GCSEs and trying to use CoPE as the glue that will hold together our work with the rest of the curriculum. It just might give us the chance to hold on to pupils and keep them engaged for just long enough to get some GCSE results out of them.”

Selection for CoPE

The scheme had been introduced around Christmas 2005 with the Head Teacher and another teacher attending ASDAN training. Four other teachers had become involved in the programme with the 44 pupils. The Head Teacher said they had selected the pupils for CoPE on the basis of pupils who would either not make 5 A-C grades in GCSE or were strong in 3 or 4 subjects but never had the breadth.

The Head Teacher has not so far considered the value of CoPE for higher achieving pupils although this aspect would have a place in his future plans. Its use up to now had been seen as a rapid remedial measure to get the school “out of the danger zone”.

Selling it to the pupils

The Head Teacher emphasised the application of key skills in the workplace. This was the only aspect pupils were attracted to and they seemed surprised later on as they realised that they were going to get some GCSE equivalents out of it. In selling it to the staff he took the line that this might help to improve the overall GCSE league table performances, and along the way instil a structure into the pupils that might help them get the three or four other GCSEs that were possible. These were not aspects that the pupils would have related to at all.

Advantages of the scheme

The beauty of the framework is that you don’t need a curriculum. The focus is all on process and recognising what they are doing already.” The Head Teacher thought the system had raised the levels of GCSE achievement even amongst those who hadn’t got the CoPE award, but the evidence for this was largely intangible. He thought he had seen signs that working in this way had given them some space to think about learning and how to do things which they might have applied elsewhere.

Another aspect of the scheme had been getting them to prepare for and to take (and re-take) the Adult Literacy Skills Tests on-line. The beauty of that was that for some of them this enabled them to get some kind of achievement a few months before GCSE – perhaps their first taste of getting any kind of award and he had noted the impact of that on their motivation. That aspect wasn’t part of the CoPE scheme itself but it had made him think about the advantages of getting a taste of success earlier on and this would inform their longer-term use of CoPE.

A big plus for him (and the pupils) was that it allowed them to use achievements and interests outside the school setting – especially in sport, music, IT or voluntary work with children.

Disadvantages

It had been very rushed. The timetabling did not allow much continuity in terms of relationship building with the teachers doing it. The time allowed for project work had been very tight and more fell by the wayside than he would have liked. Because the pupils were introduced to the system relatively late they had had to backtrack into coursework which had been done in the autumn of 2005 to re-jig that as evidence for the CoPE assessment. They had not had the time or the staffing to allow anyone to try for Level 1 qualifications with CoPE, which many of those who apparently ‘failed’ would have been able to manage. The way they had done it was not as powerful as he hoped it would become in terms of shaping the thinking and studying skills of pupils in ways which would support their GCSE work. For most of them it came too late this time.

Teacher skills required

In some subjects there is a natural focus on improving performance or developing processes (including thinking skills and self-review) – subjects such as PE, Art, Design Technology – in which case those teachers better understand the CoPE process. The challenge is for more ‘academic’ subject teachers to grasp learning and learning improvement processes. But the Head Teacher sees this as a key direction for teaching skills to move in. It was the direction that teaching was about to go in the late 1970’s and it got stalled by the attention to curriculum content. But there is now a wider acceptance that learning how to learn is crucial for the learner and being able to improve performance is critical for the teacher.

This first run had hit against the need for a number of teachers to understand the detail of the standards for assessment. They had several times found that the pupils had started on a piece of work without quite enough understanding of what sorts of evidence they would need to be able to gather. He thought this would be easier now they had experience with it, but they need to make sure teachers understood the standards which were a new approach for most of them.

Links with work experience and/or employers

The school uses the work experience process run by Connexions locally, and the planning and reflection logs there are very similar to the CoPE framework, which is helpful. In the longer term this will make it possible to use work experience as an ingredient in the CoPE programme as evidence will be able to be collected for both purposes. But this was not possible in any general sense with the first cohort because of timing being almost a year after the work experience. However two of the portfolio examples looked at did include a unit based on going back to the work experience record to use it as evidence.

The school has no direct evidence of employer views on CoPE. In a general way the Head Teacher recognised that “functional skills are important to employers and we’re always being told pupils don’t have them, so this ought to be useful”. The school does not have very strong employer links yet, although a couple of larger firms were in touch with them.

The next steps in rolling out CoPE

This year they have done a wider analysis of the borderline candidates and started the process earlier. Whereas last time he relied on taking pupils out of a curriculum subject (French) this time he was expecting to achieve many of the units through curriculum subjects such as PE, PHSE, Design and Technology. The idea was to use the CoPE “Plan – Do – Review” format for key aspects of subject course work – especially where group work or planning skills were needed. Only some of the core elements would then be covered in a separate CoPE slot in their timetable. One advantage of this was that they would be working with subject teachers who knew them and could guide them better. The CoPE approach would be more embedded into school work generally.

As a consequence of needing to engage quite a few more staff in using the CoPE methods the Head Teacher had decided it wasn’t realistic or necessary to train them all up with ASDAN and instead he had designed and developed some highly interactive training materials on the school computer system which could be used to familiarise more staff with the CoPE approach. However he would need to increase the number of staff who were trained assessors in the school (at present two) and he thought they would build up to five of them using some of the teachers who had been involved this last time but had not been trained. His hope was that bit-by-bit the approach would shift the understanding of more teachers in terms of the reflective learning process amongst pupils and ensure better results all round.

Plans for the future

This year will involve an expansion of the cohort and a chance to start the process earlier, but it will still be essentially with year 11. However the aim is that preparation will be made for 2007-8 to absorb CoPE into the mainstream as follows: Level 1 CoPE will become part of Key Stage 3 – both giving pupils a chance to achieve something and get an idea how it works, whilst giving the school better information about how these pupils work best and what their needs might be in years 10-11. The process will be part of building the “learning skills” of years 7-9 and will be based on new work already being done in the feeder primary schools to focus on “learning power” amongst pupils. Level 2 will eventually sit alongside Key Stage 4 with the idea that everyone should have got it before they reach GCSEs. The aim is therefore that the framework itself will then support a lot of the course work and GCSE work so driving up qualification levels even with the conventional curriculum.

He hopes that by 2008-9 there might be scope for a small number of gifted and talented pupils to start on CoPE Level 3 in year 11 so developing study skills which will be useful in A Levels and perhaps completing the actual Level 3 qualification during their first year of A Level studies.

AimHigher links

Since they need to address the low levels of university applications in South Bristol there is a strong commitment to a well-developed local AimHigher programme. They use the school database to identify potential pupils for the scheme looking for ability and disadvantage. There is a programme of visits, master classes, target setting and individual coaching. There have been visits to local universities for both pupils and their parents. The programme is strong on developing study skills and motivational work.

Pupil examples

Examples provided by the Head Teacher:

“You can’t always tell whether it’s making a difference if you don’t know the pupil well yourself. There was one girl `C` who wasn’t getting on all that well with CoPE and I didn’t think she would get it (she didn’t) but one of her class teachers said to me ‘Oh you’d be surprised at the difference in her in class. Since she started CoPE she’s got much better at taking part in discussions in class, at waiting her turn to speak, at getting her point across and coping with it when people disagree with her. You would be surprised at the change.’ ”

“There was this special needs pupil, a boy, almost 16, and just interested in getting away from school and working in the building trade. His CoPE project was to plan and repair a garden shed belonging to his Dad’s mate. One task was around communication and I suggested he work out the materials he would need and ring up a couple of suppliers to enquire about costs. It became obvious that he was not used to using the phone or talking to adults in this way and he was clearly very scared. I talked him through it, coached him in how the conversation might go and he had all the measurements etc but he kept putting off doing it. In the end I sat him down at my desk reminded him of what he was doing and gave him a building supplier’s number. Tense and sweating he phoned up and then as the conversation developed the guy at the other end asked him questions – about sizes and what exactly he needed – all of which he’d thought about – and as it went on it was clear the guy at the other end was treating him like another adult unaware he was not quite 16. He began sitting upright and speaking more clearly and got all the information he wanted. When he put the phone down he turned to me and smiled and said “Well that was OK”. For him that turned out to be a turning point with regard to confidence and self-esteem.”

“I didn’t collect specific feedback from them at the end. Perhaps I should have done. What I remember was the utter delight of achieving 5 A-C grades and being able to go on to college to do what they wanted to do even if it was still quite a low aspiration.”

“One thing I did find was that some kids are fearful about over-reaching themselves and trying to be more ambitious than their own families. It sounds odd to you and me perhaps, but for some of them trying to outdo your mum and dad was seen as disrespectful – and I don’t quite know what to do about that”

“We didn’t get any parent reaction. I guess you’d say they were ambivalent: some were thrilled by the achievement of A-C grades; some weren’t even aware that their kids were doing this and didn’t understand the difference.”

Evidence of 3 completed portfolios

N female:

There was an example of small group working (preparing entries and photos for the school year book but being used to show group working skills and planning skills). The four of them met and set up tasks and one of the group `A` was absent from school for a meeting so `N` noted: “I rang her up afterwards at home to check how she was getting on with her bit of it so it didn’t hold the rest of us up.” Later `A` was absent again and `N` noted: “I decided this time it would be better to ask `P` another girl in the group to ring her up so `A` knew we were all being affected.”

There was a nice example here of her using some voluntary work she did as evidence of citizenship and community work skills. Although quite hostile to school in some of her other comments she revealed that she spent an evening a week working with a Beavers troop of younger boys. There was lots of material here and considerable insight into the needs of young children. Not surprisingly her work experience, which was also used as evidence here, was in a primary school working with 7-8 year olds and she had high praise from the teachers at the school for her skills with little children.

M male:

`M` did not do well at academic subjects and couldn’t wait to leave school. The CoPE programme discovered that his ambitions in sport (long obvious to the PE teachers) concealed a wish to become a lifeguard and/or a swimming coach. In fact the Head got him to use finding out about lifeguard qualifications and planning how he would get one as a key activity for CoPE and he achieved the basic award. He went on to do some voluntary work alongside a coach at the local swimming pool teaching 8-9 year olds to develop their swimming style. His comments showed how much he enjoyed this and how much thought he had put into understanding the children’s point of view.

As part of his PE course work (used in CoPE) he was involved in planning and delivering some basic coaching skills for new Year seven pupils on the sports field. His work showed how much he enjoyed this and the teacher’s feedback was very positive.

He too took part in some group work on developing a section of the school year book and encountered some of the problems of uncooperative pupils in his group. He wrote: “I was the keenest one in the group and seemed to be the only one who wanted it to happen. It was important that it be fun and we did have some laughs, but the others didn’t seem to care if things got done or not.” He got quite cross and told them what he thought at various points, but in his review he wrote: “I could have asked them more calmly. When I chased them up I kept finding they hadn’t done anything. I must learn to be more assertive and take control a bit more in the future.” This was one of the examples where the Head said that had they had longer and a closer teacher-pupil relationship they might have been able to work on that more. His spelling and written work in his evidence portfolio was very poor but there were sparks of enthusiasm throughout the portfolio.
`M` did his work experience with a general builder – basically some quite heavy labouring and long hours. He commented: “It was harder and more tiring than I expected. I think I’ve decided not to be a builder but to go for the sports coaching instead.”

W male:

Another sports enthusiast, `W` did the Junior Sports Leadership Award in his PE course and used a reflective log on this in which he wrote: “I learn best by actually doing the task.”

He used these interests to help run a Sports Festival for years 7-8 on the school fields one Saturday and, according to the PE teacher who observed it, he showed considerable flair in managing groups of younger pupils.

When undertaking the school yearbook task there was a group session in which he was due to formally “chair” the meeting of four pupils. He asked to plan this with the Head and learnt that the Head plans all meetings with a simple agenda matrix on which he can take notes as well as check that he’s on course with the meeting. `W` took to this and prepared his own matrix for the meeting and made clear that he wanted to clarify what they were doing, what they had each agreed to and what he was going to write down. The observer evidence showed he allowed some joking in the discussion but kept pulling them back to task and at the end he made them all agree to a summary of who was going to do what. His own review said: “I underestimated how long some of these tasks would take and didn’t realise some of the others needed reminding of what they were supposed to be doing, but we just about got it done on time.”