Next Practice in Resourcing Personalisation - John Cabot Academy

Personalising transition

This school already has a robust personalised course for the whole of Year 7. In Years 9 to 11 students work on a co-constructed curriculum, and pathways for learning have been developed in a range of subjects. In Years 11 to 13 students work on AS/A2 and vocational studies. The school is aware that students who are motivated by the learning programme in Year 7, dip in engagement throughout Years 8 and 9, reviving again in Years 11 to 13. They want to work with these Year groups to develop a complete structure of 24/7 provision. Their field trial will involve students from Years 8 and 9 providing them with a structured learning programme that gives them elements of choice against set learning targets. They will be able to study in different areas of the school negotiated with a learning mentor. To further aid the personalised learning programme students will also have a series of e-learning days where they will be entitled to work from home or in school. They will structure the pilot to become a bridging programme between Year 7 and Year 9 flexible programme, and will use a rigorous QA to evaluate how well the Year 7 programme prepares students for the flexible learning programme in 8 and 9.

Innovation in schooling is often related to the context of the project. Within the culture of John Cabot Academy, as they move to federating with a more challenging school in 2008, the principle of this level of independent learning has interesting and ground breaking potential for motivating students who are working in an environment where the reliance of total teacher led learning is not always the most appropriate model. The challenge in the federation is to raise attainment levels quickly, and it is anticipated that a model of anytime-anywhere learning such as the one described here, to be at the core of this experience.

Year 7 students at John Cabot Academy no longer follow National Curriculum - instead they spend the year working on a Learning to Learn programme, the Cabot Competency Curriculum, that has its origins in the RSA Opening Minds Programme. The Year 7 curriculum is focused upon Learning to Learn, Managing Information, Managing Situations and Managing People. Its full value may be seen in the way that the students who have followed this curriculum over the past two years are now more autonomous learners, and are taking more responsibility for their own learning. This was confirmed by the HMI visit in December 2005. All students in year 8 make their first GCSE/BTEC choices and study for the accreditation in year 9 and 10*. This is removing the artificial Key Stage barrier and is moving towards a vertical curriculum model. Tutor groups are becoming vertical to reflect this, with a year 7 School, a year 8-10 School and a year 11-13 School changing the learning culture across the 11-19 spectrum. This model will be at the heart of the Academy Vision, now that the College has converted from being a CTC to an Academy.

(* BTEC Performing Arts, BTEC Sport and Leisure, AIDA, GCSE French, Law, Astronomy, Statistics, Humanities, or Product Design)

In years 10 and 11, students have co-constructed their own curriculum model, taking learning pathways that create a journey that resembles a London underground map rather than a single ‘motorway' route. As students mature between year 9 and 11, they can move between the pathways to take new options or new courses within the original choices. The pathways are built around the following learning areas:
• English and Maths
• Science
• Science, ICT and Technology
• Personalised Learning-Arts/Sport/MFL/Humanities/Enterprise
• Vocational

All students in the College have a learning mentor who manages with the student and their parents an Individual Learning Plan (ILP). Teachers have a 40 minute period of mentoring on their timetable each week and in this time they meet with 2 students to update and modify the ILP. This level of one to one support has been invaluable in tracking and supporting student development, and is the basis for the new idea. The College will build upon the flexible framework that already exists. At the moment, all students have 45 lessons of contact, in other words their whole week is teacher led and driven. They will develop an idea that the College's leadership team have seen in the USA (San Diego HighTech High) and in a number of schools in Scandinavia, where students spend part of the week working independently in our learning centre or in classroom spaces across the site, having negotiated the work they will complete with a learning mentor.

The VLE has been in place for 2 years, and many students and staff use it to develop the 24/7 learning agenda. This project would begin with a pilot in 2007 that would test the thesis that the existing year 7 programme is producing independent learners. In the pilot stage a target group of students will be allocated the equivalent of half a day per week who would learn both on site and from home, using the VLE as a tool for accessing and uploading curriculum projects, coursework and research materials.

The cohort for the pilot in 2007 will be drawn from year 8 and 9, so the impact of SATS to GCSE and GCSE to AS Level can be measured over time. In year 10 we have a group of students taking AS Level Critical Thinking and this group would be used alongside year 9 students who have been taught the competency curriculum and who will have started their first GCSE. If we can prove that this is a valuable way to work within our accelerated programme then we can extend the model to other parts of the College.

See a map showing the locations of all the Next Practice in Resourcing Personalisation field trial sites. 

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