Teaching Approaches to Promote Consistent ... - Learning Wales

achievement, each of the case study schools was chosen to fall into one of threegroups:• schools with substantially more pupils achieving level 4 in mathematics overthe last three years (group Ma);• schools with substantially more achieving level 4 in English over the last threeyears (group En); and• schools with reasonably consistent results across the two subjects (group Co).An attempt was made to ensure that each group contained a range of schools. As theemphasis was on teaching approaches that were contributing to achievement of level4, the higher subject in the first two groups, and both in the third, were at least at thenational average.3.2 Sample3.2.1 SchoolsFor the selection of nine schools in the North east of England details of schools in thefollowing LEAs were obtained: Darlington, Durham, Gateshead, Hartlepool,Humberside, Leeds, Middlesbrough, Newcastle, North Tyneside, North Yorkshire,Stockton, Redcar, Sheffield, South Tyneside, Sunderland, West Yorkshire, Wakefield.A long list of schools was created taking account of the following features:• the size of the classes 3 ;• level of free school meals 4 ;• ethnicity 5 ;• average level 4 results at or above national target in at least one subject.Table 1.2 in Appendix 2 shows the long list from which the schools were chosen.The sampling exercise was undertaken in three parts. First a trawl was made ofprimary schools in the North East excluding Yorkshire authorities. When the samplefrom this data set was examined it was clear that it would not be a sufficientlyrepresentative sample. Thus a second, wider trawl was made to include a large part ofYorkshire. This provided a better sample of schools to visit. In order to check thatthe achievement pattern observed was representative of the country as a whole, a third3 This needed to be >30.4 It was necessary to have a range in order to provide a reasonable sample.5 It was necessary to try and find some schools with a varied ethnic mix.30