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Educational
definitions and key phrases
(For educational terms specifically
relating to Scotland please
click here)
As part of its work Hamilton House
maintains a team of researchers who aim to be up to date in following the latest
government initiatives in education.
The article,
Different types of schools, gives some basic definitions of schools
and schooling in the UK. Here we go into more depth on some key
educational issues that are relevant at the moment. Some (but not all) of
the information provided here is taken from official government
publications. Our aim here is not to cover every single type of school,
nor every educational topic, but rather the ones that tend to be relevant to
companies that are seeking to promote their products to schools within the
UK.
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Academies are publicly funded
independent schools set up and run by sponsors, who provide up to 20% of the
capital costs for each Academy, with the Government providing the balance and
funding the recurrent costs. Academies will provide free education to
secondary age pupils of all abilities, including provision for children with
special educational needs, and have state-of-the-art facilities through which
they will offer a broad and balanced curriculum including a specialism.
Academies are a new type of
school. They bring a distinctive approach to school leadership drawing on
the skills of sponsors and other supporters. They give Principals and staff new
opportunities to develop educational strategies to raise standards and
contribute to diversity in areas of disadvantage.
Academies are all ability schools established by sponsors from business, faith
or voluntary groups working in highly innovative partnerships with central
Government and local education partners. Sponsors and the Department for
Education and Skills (DfES) provide the capital costs for the
Academy. Running costs are met in full by the DfES.
The Academies’ programme aims to challenge the culture of educational
under-attainment and to deliver real improvements in standards. All
Academies are located in areas of disadvantage. They either replace one or
more existing schools facing challenging circumstances or are established
where there is a need for additional school places. The Department expects Local
Education Authorities (LEAs) to consider the scope for the establishment of
Academies as part of their strategic plans to increase diversity in
secondary provision and improve educational opportunities.
Each Academy will provide an excellent environment for teaching and learning
that is comparable with the best available in the maintained sector. It
will offer a broad and balanced curriculum to pupils of all abilities focusing
especially on one or more subject areas. As the Academy becomes successfully
established it will share its expertise and facilities with other schools and
the wider community.
As well as providing the best opportunities for their pupils, Academies have a
key part to play in the regeneration of communities. A new Academy will be a
significant focus for learning for its pupils, their families and other local
people. Academies will help break the cycle of underachievement in areas of
social and economic deprivation whether in inner cities, suburban or rural
areas.
Each Academy will offer local solutions for local needs. Each will be
different, drawing on the expertise of its sponsors to help develop its own
distinctive ethos and mission. Whether they involve new buildings,
refurbishment, or both, Academies will be innovative in design and built to high
environmental standards.
According to news reports in the summer
of 2004 the government is spending £5 billion on the new schools that will be
open by 2010. The first 17 academies cost an average of £26 million each, two
and a half times the amount budgeted.
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An assessment of a child's
skills and abilities usually made by a teacher in the first weeks of starting
school to help them plan lessons and measure progress. Areas covered include
language, reading, maths and social skills.
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Beacon schools
Beacon schools are schools which
have been identified as amongst the best performing in the country and represent
examples of successful practice which are to be brought to the attention of the
rest of the education service with a view to spreading that effective practice
to others. They are expected to work in partnership with other schools to pass
on their particular areas of expertise and so help others to reach the same high
standards as themselves.
Beacon Schools are being phased
out by August 2005 and are being replaced by the Leading Edge Partnership
Programme (see below).
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City Learning Centres
City Learning Centres are a key
element of the Excellence in Cities programme. They are located in the main on
secondary school sites and provide state of the art ICT-based learning
opportunities for pupils at a network of local schools and for the wider
community.
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E-Learning Credits
These are given by government to schools in England (not across the UK) to
buy products listed on the Curriculum Online web site. The money comes from the
Standards Fund, and the grant has been given for 2005-6. There is no news at
the moment on ELCs for any date beyond this.
Each year the ELCs have to be spent by August 31, although it is possible to
combine credits from two years to fund larger purchases under certain special
conditions which control the actual date of purchase.
In theory all credits must be spent on courses that are stipulated in the
national curriculum, and must be truly interactive, but there are many stories
of products being sold which do not meet these criteria. These could of course
just be gossip, and we make no allegations!
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Education Action Zones
Bodies established to raise
standards and innovate in groups of schools in disadvantaged areas. For more
details see
Zones Explained.
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Excellence Challenge
Excellence Challenge is a
programme designed to increase the numbers of young people from disadvantaged
backgrounds who apply for and enter higher education. For more details please
visit:
The Excellence Challenge website
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EiC (Excellence in Cities)
EiC is a targeted programme to
bring additional resources to schools in urban areas. It both increases the
diversity of provision for pupils and encourages schools to co-operate to raise
standards. There are 6 key strands to the EiC programme: Learning Mentors;
Learning Support Units; City Learning Centres; Beacon and Specialist schools;
EiC Action Zones; gifted and talented pupils.
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EiC
Action Zones
EiC Action Zones are a key
strand of the Excellence in Cities initiative. They provide additional support
to groups of schools within an EiC area to overcome local barriers to
achievement and raise standards of education at each participating school. For
more information about these zones, see
EiC Action Zones.
They focus on one or two secondary schools with their associated primary schools
– there are 117 zones. Some (15 at the moment) EAZs transmute into EiC
Action Zones when the funding runs out.
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Excellence
Clusters
Excellence Clusters are designed
to bring the benefits of the Excellence in Cities programme to smaller pockets
of deprivation. Like Excellence in Cities, they focus on some of the most
deprived areas of the country, using a structured programme designed to raise
standards.
A school is given a "Fresh
Start" when it is closed and reopened on the same site. Schools eligible for
Fresh Start must be in special measures, have serious weaknesses, be subject to
a formal LEA warning or (for secondary) achieving less than a 15% five A*-C
GCSEs. DfES provides Fresh Start schools with additional revenue and where
applicable, capital funding as part of a support programme.
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Federations
The term “federation” has a
wide currency, and is often used loosely to describe many different types of
collaborative groups, partnerships and clusters, even through to mergers and the
creation of new schools.
For our purposes here,
federations can be defined in two ways:
- The
definition as invoked in the 2002 Education Act which allows for the creation
of a single governing body or a joint governing body committee across two or
more schools from September 2003 onwards.
- A group
of schools with a formal (i.e. written) agreement to work together to raise
standards, promote inclusion, find new ways of approaching teaching and
learning and build capacity between schools in a coherent manner. This will be
brought about in part through structural changes in leadership and management,
in many instances through making use of the joint governance arrangements
invoked in the 2002 Education Act.
We see these as “hard”
federations as they sit at the hard end of a whole spectrum of collaborative
arrangements, and the DfES recognise the need for strong levels of trust and
confidence in order for schools to warrant the formal and binding commitments
that federation implies. The DfES is therefore keen to promote
collaboration at all levels, in the understanding that schools need to take a
measured and staged approach to cooperation and collaboration to ensure its
long-term impact and success.
The aim is that as schools move
towards structured and sustainable collaboration, we will be creating
system-wide change and actually transforming the culture of education.
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Gifted
and Talented (known as G&T)
The national gifted and talented
strategy focuses on three areas: intensive area-based programmes in
disadvantaged areas through the Excellence in Cities
initiative; resources that support teaching and learning nationally; and a new
focus on regional support, initially in London.
The gifted and talented strand of Excellence in Cities
ensures that schools introduce teaching and learning programmes and
complementary out of school hours study support programmes for their most able
5-10% of pupils. Each school has a whole school policy for gifted and talented
pupils and a trained gifted and talented co-ordinator. Schools are organised
into clusters, each with a trained lead co-ordinator, and each partnership has a
co-ordinator for the gifted and talented strand.
National Initiatives include:
- A
national programme of summer schools for gifted and talented 10-14 year olds
available to every LEA and EAZ in England. The programme ran for the fourth
time this year.
- Online
'working' guidance on teaching the national curriculum to gifted and talented
pupils, and Xcalibre, a complementary website directory of resources for
teachers.
The national Academy for Gifted
and Talented Youth was launched in February 2002 and is based at Warwick
University. The academy is intended to:
- Develop,
implement, promote and support educational opportunities for gifted and
talented young people aged up to 19.
- Provide a
nationally and internationally recognised centre from which to develop and
deliver gifted and talented education in England.
- A
year-long pilot programme began in July 2002 with a three-week summer school.
This year the summer school programme has been extended providing
opportunities for a greater number of young people. Members of the National
Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth also benefit from access to a range of
courses, support within a lively student community and a range of on and
offline services which help them to develop their potential further.
For more information on the
National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth please visit the website:
http://www.nagty.ac.uk/
The DfES is establishing a
gifted and talented arm (GATE A) of the London Challenge project, to further
improve the range and quality of gifted and talented education in the capital.
GATE A will comprise:
- A small
Pan-London Centre (PLC) proactively managing the organisational networks;
- 4-5
clusters of EiC partnerships and LEAs working collaboratively; and
- Thematic
networks linking centres of expertise and excellence from across London.
GATE A will also have the use of
a broadband network and online Managed Learning Environment for the gifted and
talented community (GTMLE) provided by the London Grid for Learning Consortium.
This communications network will be an integral part of the GATE A initiative,
enabling organisations and individuals to communicate, and providing an exciting
range of interactive learning material.
For further information on the
London Challenge please visit the website:
http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/giftedandtalented/strategyandstrands/londongt/
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Independent Schools
Schools not funded by the state
and which get most of their finances from fees by parents. The largest ones are
known as public schools.
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Key Stage (in Education)
A child's progress through
school is measured in Key Stages. The term is found throughout the UK, and
within England in particular is linked to the National Curriculum. Wales,
Scotland and N Ireland have their own approaches to a national curriculum, and
so can use the terminology in different ways.
Foundation stage covers the age
range of 3 to 5 year olds – that is before compulsory schooling. Nursery
schools in England that wish to make use of the government voucher scheme which
pays for some places in pre-school, must abide by the Foundation stage national
curriculum.
Key Stage 1 covers pupils from 5
to 7 in what are sometimes known as infant schools.
Key stage 2 from 7 to 11 in
junior schools.
Key Stage 3 covers the age range
11 to 14 – the first three years of secondary school education for many
children
Key Stage 4 covers the age of 14
to 16 – and not 11 to 14 as it says on the DfES web site of
definitions! This in England and Wales is the GCSE stage of
secondary education.
Some schools have taken to
calling the programme of A level studies for 16 to 18 year olds in the 6th
form (also known in some quarters as years 12 and 13) as Key Stage 5, but this
has no formal recognition in the DfES.
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Leading Edge
Partnership programme
The Leading Edge
Partnership programme has been established to identify, extend and spread
innovation and excellence in the secondary sector so that standards of teaching
and learning continue to improve in schools across the country.
Schools in the programme are at the forefront of the drive to reform secondary
education. Schools working within the programme will lead the way, helping to
transform the face of education in their local areas. Schools at the cutting
edge of innovation and collaboration will be selected from amongst the country's
best schools to act as a lever to transform secondary education, to engineer the
growth of collaborative learning communities and federations, and to promote
innovation, research and development to push the boundaries of current teaching
practice.
The Leading Edge Partnership programme will build on the successes of the Beacon
Schools programme. The Beacon Schools programme will be phased out by August
2005.
The programme was launched in July 2003 with 103 partnerships in the first
round.
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Leadership
Incentive Grant
1. The Leadership Incentive
Grant (LIG) is intended to:
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accelerate the improvement in standards, to bring about a
step change in pupil attainment by using the grant to build capacity for
sustained improvement
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strengthen leadership at all levels and
build the school's leadership capacity for sustained improvement. Where
necessary the grant can be used by LEAs to tackle ineffective leadership;
- stimulate
collaboration between schools to build leadership capacity
and strengthen teaching and learning throughout the school.
2. The purpose of the grant is
to strengthen leadership at all levels in secondary schools, but particularly in
Senior Leadership Teams (SLT), and to contribute to the transformation of our
secondary schools so that each school is characterised by:
- a core
belief that every pupil can achieve high standards
- effective
systems that enable high expectations to be met
- every
pupil working toward explicit targets in each subject
- every
teacher using assessment, diagnosis and data to maximise the progress of
students
- every
teacher knowing his / her impact on pupil performance, with time and
opportunity to improve his / her practice
- regular
review of curriculum, timetable and other resources to achieve high standards
- personal
support and conditions for learning for every pupil that helps them overcome
barriers to learning
- a clear
awareness of appropriate benchmarks, pockets of underperformance, and
priorities for improvement
- a strong
contribution to improving the school system as a whole.
3. Ministers expect schools to
use the grant to aim to achieve these characteristics. The starting point
should be the assessment of the quality of the school's performance and
leadership using the assessment tool provided. It is expected that most schools
will use the grant to achieve their existing priorities more quickly.
4. The grant must help to lever change where there is weak or uncommitted
leadership. That is why the eligible uses of the grant include, where
necessary, restructuring and strengthening the leadership team; and tackling
weak and poorly motivated staff, especially at middle manager and senior
levels. It can be used to purchase services that contribute to those purposes.
Priorities will differ from school to school, but are likely to include:
- embedding
rigorous Peer Review
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developing collective professional thinking and expertise to raise attainment
- improving
leadership capacity through effective CPD and school
organisation
- reshaping
the workforce and curriculum/timetable
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establishing reliable and high quality school policies and systems which raise
expectations of staff and pupils through effective data analysis,
target-setting and monitoring for individuals and groups - pupils and staff.
5. Schools will not be expected
to draw up a specific LIG Plan, but they will need to build self-assessment into
their own planning cycle. Schools will work in collaboratives; each
collaborative will draw up a plan for addressing agreed priorities which must be
approved by the DfES. Separate arrangements exist for schools not in EiC or EAZ.
A LIG Consultant is being provided to facilitate the first round of Self and
Peer Assessment. Where an LEA has concerns about a school's performance it will
work with senior staff to ensure that the priorities are appropriate.
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National Curriculum across
the UK
Each of the four parts of the United Kingdom has its own
approach to a national curriculum. Not only are the subjects studied different
in each part of the UK, so is the standing in law of the curriculum. For the
details of the curricula studied in England, Scotland, Wales and N Ireland,
please click here.
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Raising Attainment
Plan
A Raising Attainment Plan charts the key goals and
associated processes to be implemented over a two-year programme, in order to
enable the school to achieve and sustain higher levels of attainment for all of
its pupils. It is a strategic tool for a school to guide and focus energy on
strategies which improve attainment throughout the school and specifically at
Key Stage 4
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Schools Facing
Challenging Circumstances
Secondary schools where 25% of pupils attain less than 5
GCSEs at grades A-C. These schools receive additional support to improve and
to meet the targets for GCSE attainment.
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Special Measures
Schools are placed in special measures when OFSTED
considers that they are failing or likely to fail to provide an acceptable
standard of education. Fresh Start is one option for tackling school failure.
Some schools placed in special measures are subsequently closed and given a
Fresh Start, a new school is opened on the site. Fresh Start schools receive
guidance and financial support from the Department in recognition of their
particular difficulties.
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Specialist Schools
Specialist schools are required to develop a particular
specialist character and ethos and through that character to raise standards in
their chosen specialism, and more generally across the school. This should be in
partnership with their sponsors, other schools and the community at large.
Specialist schools are required to be a resource for other local schools and the
community, and to disseminate good practice. According to the
Standards Site on the internet, maintained by the DfES there are eight
specialisms: technology, languages, arts, sports, business & enterprise,
engineering, science, and mathematics & computing. In fact this
is wrong – there are also humanities and music schools, plus the original City
Technology Colleges. By the summer of 2004 the DfES had announced around
2000 specialist schools in England, although not all of them are as yet
functioning as such.
Specialist schools, once established, have to show to the
DfES that they are maintaining their higher status and are continuing to develop
their specialism in depth. Each year a small number of specialist schools fail
their re-assessment programme and lose their specialist status.
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Statutory Zones
Statutory EAZs are a partnership of schools, private
businesses and other local organisations established by the Secretary of State
under the Schools Standards and Framework Act 1998 to overcome local barriers to
achievement and improve standards of education at each of the participating
schools. For more information see
Statutory Zones.
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Sure
Start
A strategy to improve services
for children under 4 and their families in disadvantaged areas. We are
able to provide a list of Sure Start areas and projects – please call 01536
399 000 for more details.
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Targeted improvement grants – partnership funding
Schools which are eligible for the
Leadership Incentive Grant and which are not part of Excellence in Cities Areas,
Education Action Zones or Excellence Clusters will each receive an allocation of
£50,000 to facilitate and establish partnership working.
As part of
this project the DfES is acting to help each LEA to enhance their own capacity
through the introduction of the School Improvement Adviser (SIA) function. Each
LEA will receive an allocation of £10,000 for every school that achieved below
30% of 5A*-C GCSE results in either 2001 or 2002.
Funding for 2004-05 and 2005-06 will be adjusted in response to GCSE results in
summer 2003 and summer 2004, but DfES will ensure that no LEA’s School
Improvement Adviser funding falls by more than 20% from one year to the next,
however successful it and its schools are in exceeding the floor targets.
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Training Schools
The
expansion of the Training Schools programme is a part of the Government’s
plans to improve standards in education, which are described in the White Paper, A
New Specialist System: Transforming Secondary Education.
Training Schools demonstrate excellent practice across the range of teacher
training activities, especially in initial teacher training and the continuing
training of the whole school workforce. They are ambitious, imaginative and
influential in these areas. They work collaboratively with others for the
benefit of staff and pupils beyond their own boundaries. The Government hopes
that, over time, Training Schools will be accredited in all parts of England.
The establishment of Training Schools
was proposed in the 1998 Green Paper 'Teachers- meeting the challenge of
change'. The proposal was for a network of high quality Training Schools to
develop and disseminate good practice in initial teacher training, train
mentors/school-based tutors and undertake research.
The aim of Training Schools is to build up and share good and developing ITT
practice with other schools and their training providers, both within their
existing partnership networks and beyond. Successful schools will already have
shown good practice in teacher training and, with their new status as Training
Schools, they will receive extra funding, through the Standards Fund, to carry
out their training activities.
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Transformation Strategy
The EAZ transformation strategy proposes to merge EAZs
into the Excellence in Cities (EiC) initiative when statutory zones reach the
end of their 5-year statutory lifespan. The two key principles of the strategy
are to ensure that the successes of EAZs are built upon and to ensure that
additional support will continue to reach disadvantaged schools in EAZ areas.
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