Gateshead 3-7 School Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT) Consortium

Gateshead 3-7 School Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT) Consortium

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Initial Teacher Education inspection report

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Provider address Lobley Hill Primary School Rothbury Gardens Gateshead NE11 OAT

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Inspection dates Lead inspector 9 – 13 February 2009 Allan Torr HMI This document may be reproduced in whole or in part for non-commercial educational purposes, provided that the information quoted is reproduced without adaptation and the source and date of publication are stated.

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registered childcare and children's social care, including adoption and fostering agencies, residential schools, family centres and homes for children. It also inspects all state maintained schools, non- association independent schools, pupil referral units, further education, initial teacher education, and publicly funded adult skills and employment-based training, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), and the overall level of services for children in local authority areas (through annual performance assessments and joint area reviews). www.ofsted.gov.uk Reference no. 080190

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Introduction

1. This inspection was carried out by two of Her Majesty’s Inspectors in accordance with the Framework for the Inspection of Initial Teacher Education (2008-11).

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Introduction

2. The inspection draws upon evidence from all aspects of the provision to make judgements against all parts of the inspection evaluation schedule in the framework. Inspectors focused on the overall effectiveness of the training in supporting high quality outcomes for trainees and the capacity of the partnership to bring about further improvements. A summary of the grades awarded is included at the end of this report.

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Introduction

3. This inspection took place towards the end of the trainees’ first assessed placement.

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Key to inspection grades

Grade 1 Outstanding Grade 2 Good Grade 3 Satisfactory Grade 4 Inadequate

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The provider

4. The Gateshead 3-7 SCITT gained accreditation in 2003 and was set up by a core consortium of eight schools and the local authority, with Lobley Hill Primary School as the Lead School, to meet local employment needs. It works in partnership with 41 schools and an Early Excellence Centre to provide primary initial teacher education for the 3-7 age range. At the time of the inspection there were 30 trainees, five of whom were male. The provider offers a primary route over one year and a flexible route over six terms. At the time of the inspection there were no trainees following the flexible route.

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Key strengths

 the highly personalised training programme and placements in high quality schools enabling trainees to make excellent progress

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Key strengths

 the innovative and creative training, delivered by highly skilled practitioners, producing highly reflective trainees with a very good understanding of how children in the 3 – 7 age range learn

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Key strengths

 the focus on the promotion of equality of opportunity and the valuing of diversity

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Key strengths

 the high levels of consistency across the partnership and excellent quality assurance procedures ensuring equality of experience for all trainees and enabling them to reach their potential

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Key strengths

 the excellent leadership and management of the course and sophisticated quality assurance systems.

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Recommendations

6. In order to accelerate trainees’ progress and attainment the partnership should:  refine trainees’ lesson planning and their lessons evaluations so that all have a prominent focus on pupils’ learning and progress.

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Overall effectiveness Grade: 1

7. Trainees overwhelmingly agree that the SCITT is very supportive, and prepares them very well to be able to teach. They were particularly enthusiastic about the visit to a London borough and about the taught sessions in mathematics. Employing headteachers and the local authority are very complimentary about the standard of trainees from the provider. They feel that they are highly reflective, and capable. Within a short time, many successfully take up management positions within schools. Trainees confirm that communication with SCITT leaders and tutors is excellent. Weekly communication between trainees and tutors enable the provider to keep very well informed about how well each trainee is progressing.

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Overall effectiveness Grade: 1

8. By the end of the course trainees’ attainment is at least good. The provider and schools are confident in applying most of the criteria to grade trainees, but some are hesitant to use the highest grade, even where this is justified. This leads to some under-grading of trainees, and consequently a lower than warranted set of grades on attainment. Nevertheless, all trainers have high expectations about what trainees can achieve and all ensure that assessments of trainees and the targets set for development lead to the best possible progress being made.

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Overall effectiveness Grade: 1

9. Trainees plan and teach lessons that are creative, stimulating and highly visual, and which meet the needs of all learners. They use a variety of teaching styles, for example making excellent use of resources such as interactive whiteboards to make learning active and interesting for pupils. They also make very good use of the school and classroom environment to ensure that pupils make good progress. The trainees, mostly as a result of their week-long placement in a London borough have a very good understanding of equality and diversity issues and of different barriers that pupils have to their learning. A very good feature of the school based training is the requirement for trainees to think carefully about how every lesson can be adapted to meet the needs of pupils who speak English as an additional language (EAL). In addition trainees are well trained to teach pupils who have a learning difficulty and/or disability. Although lesson plans are thorough not all

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Overall effectiveness Grade: 1

trainees plan for progression in pupils’ learning, although many can articulate the importance of this and are ready for this step in development. This means that only the best trainees focus their lesson evaluations consistently on what pupils have learnt and what they need to learn next.

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Overall effectiveness Grade: 1

10. The provider’s selection procedures are rigorous and consistently applied. They are very well designed to determine trainees’ capability and potential to teach. As a result, there are very few withdrawals or referrals and success rates are high. The proportion of males on the course has risen in the last three years and is above the national average, particularly for Early Years courses. Although the proportion of trainees with a minority ethnic heritage has been well below the national average, this is improving and changing rapidly. As a result of participation in a local project aimed at boosting minority ethnic recruitment into teaching in the North East, the number of successful applications and interviews has increased significantly as has the number of trainees recruited onto the course. For 2009/10, the proportion already recruited is above the current national average.

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Overall effectiveness Grade: 1

11. Excellent initial needs analysis enables trainees to access learning even before they have started the programme. Training is delivered by highly-skilled practitioners who adapt each session to meet the needs of individuals and groups within the cohort. Trainees’ attainment against each of the Standards is rigorously evaluated; so, too, is trainees’ teaching in different subjects across the primary curriculum. As a result, sessions are amended by subject tutors to focus on particular Standards or to tackle aspects of their teaching that have been observed. School placements are also highly personalised. Under the outstanding leadership of the SCITT manager, tutors pinpoint a school, a mentor and a teacher’s philosophy for each trainee’s next placement. The receiving school is then able to focus on particular Standards to move the trainee onto the next attainment grade. This highly personalised training

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Overall effectiveness Grade: 1

helps trainees to make excellent progress. 12. Resources have been very effectively deployed continually to identify innovative and creative training. Trainees, for example, are able to watch remotely a lesson in the observational classroom at the lead school whilst out on placement. All trainees observe the same lesson taught by tutors or lead professionals. Class teachers and school based tutors in partnership schools discuss the lesson in highly focussed, personalised tutorials. This training produces highly reflective trainees with a very good understanding of how children in the 3 – 7 age range learn.

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Overall effectiveness Grade: 1

13. School staff attend SCITT training sessions free of charge. The excellent training helps to improve practice and outcomes for pupils in partnership schools. Teachers, for example, accompany trainees to the London borough for the week- long diversity placement and a large number accompany trainees to Denmark to gain an international perspective on Early Years education. All members of the partnership are highly committed, very well trained and passionate about teacher training. All partners have an in-depth understanding of their roles and responsibilities in training and assessment.

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Overall effectiveness Grade: 1

14. The promotion of equality of opportunity and the valuing of diversity are strengths. All trainees receive their entitlement to high-quality training. There is no difference in the attainment or the progress of different groups of trainees. There are no instances of harassment, bullying or intimidation because of a trainee’s background or because of socio-economic factors. Investments in new technology, new training and new partnership schools have had a very positive impact on trainees’ attainment and the progress they make.

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Grade: 1

15. The SCITT has outstanding capacity to sustain high quality outcomes. Senior leaders and the management group provide excellent leadership, make very good use of internal and external scrutiny and continually seek to improve outcomes for trainees. They benchmark the provision and cross-moderate rigorously with tutors from other providers. This provides a very secure basis to evaluate impact and plan for further improvement. The placement in the London borough of Newham for example was introduced to tackle a relative weakness in trainees’ ability to teach EAL pupils and pupils from different cultures. The course was also supplemented with an additional tutorial and a training session by an EAL trainer. Trainees are now able to teach such learners confidently, and this has contributed significantly to the successful outcomes for trainees.

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Grade: 1

16. Self-evaluation is accurate and rigorous and draws on a wide range of evidence, including views of trainees and former trainees. All partners are involved. There is an especially good focus on evaluating how well trainees meet the Standards, for example by trainees uploading evidence into a web-based programme. From this, tutors and senior managers identify how well trainees attain against individual and groups of Standards. This is then used to adapt training, introduce more focussed sessions, and to personalise school placements.

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Grade: 1

17. Leaders have a track record of anticipating and driving change. Trainees’ teaching of mathematics and phonics is invariably good. In response to the Williams review into the teaching of mathematics, for example, trainees complete a directed task and focused training sessions. Trainees are aware of the review’s recommendations and its implications in school. In addition, leaders and managers have responded very well to the Rose Review and the drive for focussed phonics teaching. As a result, trainees are able to engage in high-level sophisticated debate about different forms of phonics teaching. This has improved their understanding of how to teach early reading and writing. The visit to Denmark was devised in anticipation of the national drive to improve provision and learning for younger children.

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Grade: 1

18. The provider is meticulous in acquiring excellent trainers to deliver the course. They are highly qualified and many attend national and regional committees. There is also excellent succession planning and a commitment continually to build capacity within the course tutors. The provider is proactive in anticipating change. The high level of expertise amongst the partnership is maintained because when mentors move schools their new schools are often invited into the partnership so that expertise is not lost.

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Grade: 1

19. Improvement planning is highly effective. Actions are prioritised, clearly defined, and appropriately time-scaled and emanate out of the outstanding evaluations made. The provider tracks trainees’ teaching and their outcomes in detail. These are then evaluated to provide an impetus for future course developments. As a result, trainees’ attainment and outcomes have increased in each of the last three years. Everyone in the partnership is aware of their role in improvement and leaders and managers are dynamic in their improvement of aspects of the course. In addition, improvements are identified and usually clear success criteria enable leaders and managers to evaluate the impact of the actions. However, on occasions, the success criteria are imprecise and this hinders managers’ ability accurately to measure the impact against trainee outcomes.

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Grade: 1

20. Excellent quality assurance procedures ensure that there are very high levels of consistency across the partnership. This means that the provider is able to ensure equality of experience for trainees whilst at the same time ensuring that their individual needs are met. Moderation of grades at the end of each placement is thorough. Tutors cross-moderate with tutors from other schools comparing how well each trainee meets the Standards.

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Summary of inspection grades 1

Key to judgements: grade 1 is outstanding; grade 2 is good; grade 3 is satisfactory; grade 4 is inadequate.

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Overall effectiveness

How effective is the provision in securing high quality outcomes for trainees?

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Overall effectiveness

Trainees’ attainment How well do trainees attain? 2

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Overall effectiveness

Factors contributing to trainees’ attainment To what extent do recruitment / selection arrangements support high quality outcomes? To what extent does the training and assessment ensure that all trainees progress to fulfil their potential given their ability and starting points? To what extent are available resources used effectively and efficiently? 1

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Overall effectiveness

The quality of the provision To what extent is the provision across the partnership of consistently high quality?

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Overall effectiveness

Promoting equalities and diversity To what extent does the provision promote equality of opportunity, value diversity and eliminate harassment and unlawful discrimination?

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Capacity to improve further and/or sustain high quality

Primary To what extent do the leadership and management at all levels have the capacity to secure further improvements and/or to sustain high quality outcomes? How effectively does the management at all levels assess performance in order to improve or sustain high quality? How well does the leadership at all levels anticipate change, and prepare for and respond to national and local initiatives?

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Capacity to improve further and/or sustain high quality

How effectively does the provider plan and take action for improvement?

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Capacity to improve further and/or sustain high quality

1 The criteria for making these graded judgements are in the Grade criteria for the inspection of ITE 2008-11; Ofsted July 2008; Reference no: 080128. set out in the guidance ‘Complaints about school inspection’, which is available from Ofsted’s web site: www.ofsted.gov.uk.

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