Teaching Approaches to Promote Consistent ... - Learning Wales

In only one school the literacy and numeracy co-ordinators were unambiguouslyviewed as providing leadership in development of classroom practice. In this school(school C, group Co) the head teacher related one of the co-ordinators’ effectiveleadership directly to the good results in her subject. Moreover, lower performancelevels in the other subject were attributed partly to the lack, until recently, of aneffective co-ordinator. In another school at least one co-ordinator visited classroomsas a “critical friend” and had monthly meetings with teachers. This was considered, byteachers and co-ordinator, as a way of helping boost confidence, but in general regularobservation in classes did not take place. From their own accounts, the pattern inmost other schools was of co-ordinators having responsibility for maintaining anddeveloping resources, providing informal support and advice, as well as making moreformal contributions to training days or identifying training opportunities forcolleagues.Head teachers had mixed views on this, some regretting that the supply budget couldnot stretch to enabling co-ordinators to spend lesson time with colleagues, but at leastone doubting whether the co-ordinators’ management skills were well enoughdeveloped to do this.5.2.8 Special programmes and withdrawal groupsFinding 27: All schools provided additional help for pupils with SEN, and alsofor pupils identified as being near the level 4 borderline.Almost always class teachers welcomed this support. An exception was a school inwhich the Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCO) withdrew pupils withIndividual Education Plans (IEP) without any discussion with class teachers. Oneteacher described this as not being an effective way of managing pupil development.In other schools help was provided as appropriate, in a variety of ways and withconsultation with the class teacher.Finding 28: All schools were using elements of ELS, ALS, FLS and Springboard.One feature of the importance that schools place on performance in the national testsis the way in which they provide support for those students who are close to reachingthe required standard but need some extra focused help. For this purpose a variety of63