​How to use this exemplar to improve practice

Consider this example in relation to practice in your own context and use the film clip and materials to support professional dialogue.

Improvement questions

• To what extent do you have a shared understanding of what progression looks like?
• To what extent do monitoring and tracking processes allow us to demonstrate improved attainment for children facing barriers to their learning, including poverty?
• How well do Senior Managers ensure that structures and processes are in place to allow these tracking and monitoring activities to take place?

Downloads

PDF file: Planning meeting document (48 KB)

PDF file: Tracking meeting document (53 KB)

Excel file: Record overview document (40 KB)

What was done?

Livingston Village Primary School in West Lothian has developed a range of approaches to monitoring and tracking progress and achievement at different levels which is centred around dialogue on pupil learning. Within the classroom, teachers regularly engage in discussion with children about their on-going classwork.

Dialogue focuses on how well learning intentions and success criteria have been met, target setting and reflection on progress towards these, focussed reflections through learning logs and profiling activities and key pieces of assessment/evidence.

Teachers engage in dialogue with each other about pupil learning through formal and informal moderation activities, focussed professional dialogue discussions and planned collegiate activities. Teachers are supported by senior managers, to improve outcomes for learners through structured planning meetings, tracking meetings and a range of quality improvement activities.

These discussions focus on how well pupils are learning as well as how we know this whilst identifying children who are on track to achieve, consistently working at a higher level and those at risk of underachieving. Appropriate interventions to support and challenge individuals are planned and then subsequently, the impact of these evaluated to inform future next steps. The senior management team record overview information on individual children to enable a whole school perspective of progress, trends and focussed analysis.

This data is also used to support future school improvement priorities.

Video: Monitoring and tracking in Livingston Village Primary School

Why?

This activity was undertaken to ensure the needs of all children in the school were being met but in particular those children at risk of falling behind including those from disadvantated backgrounds.

What was the impact?

Impact can be seen in the following ways:

• targeted use of resources to focus support where it is most needed
• effective identification and removal of barriers to learning
• improved outcomes for all children