Up close and personal

Teachers at two primary schools in Redbridge in east London agree that working together to develop a programme for 'personalised learning' has been an amazing experience.

Darshan Kaur, a Year 5 class teacher and the co-ordinator for personalised learning at South Park Primary School, says, "You become very focused on what you're teaching and you're always asking the pupils what they've learnt, so you start teaching to their needs."

Jane Hadrill, headteacher at Mayespark Primary School, agrees: "Sharing practice in a structured way has given us a lot of support and strength, and having the opportunity to observe each other's lessons and exchange work has been fantastic."

Essentially, personalised learning is about recognising the needs of each pupil, helping them achieve and reach the highest standards possible and removing barriers where necessary. This means that teaching and learning should be tailored to the needs of each individual child because every pupil has different learning needs, and strengths and weaknesses.

Components include assessment for learning (which allows teachers to spot the strengths and weaknesses of a child); effective teaching and learning; and curriculum entitlement and choice (delivering a broader, freer curriculum). Other components focus on personalising the school experience, which includes listening and talking to pupils; guaranteeing any services they need; and improving schools' ethos and environment.

Networking

South Park and Mayespark are members of the Redbridge Networked Learning Community, which was set up to help schools and the local education authority focus on personalised learning.The network is split into four hubs, each working on a different aspect of personalised learning in partnership with researchers from some of the UK's leading universities. South Park and Mayespark are part of the Assessment for Learning (AfL) hub and are working with Cambridge University and King's College London. The other hubs are working on how pupils can 'learn to learn', the impact of a rapidly changing student population and children operating at lower levels of the curriculum.

From his work supporting Redbridge's network, Peter Dudley — a project manager at the National College for School Leadership — is convinced collaboration creates greater capacity. "Rather than try to solve problems alone, teachers are able to design lesson plans together and then observe each other's lessons to see what works," he explains. Douglas Rae, South Park's headteacher, says teachers are starting to email each other lesson plans and share ideas and information. "Teaching can be quite a lonely profession, so observing is a great way of getting feedback and serves you well in terms of professional development," he says.

The AfL hub recently held a conference,  Giving Our Pupils Their Say, which brought together students from Years 5 to 9 and teachers from 14 local schools. Neha Kansagra, a Year 5 pupil at South Park, found it an eye-opening experience. "It was a bit scary to start with because they were all much bigger than us," she says, "but we got to hear about how they learn, and then they listened to us properly too." Mayespark's deputy head, Sally Walsh, was pleased with the result. "It was amazing to see how clearly students could talk about their learning, and great to hear what was going on in other schools."

Peer-marking

An important part of personalised learning is feedback and assessment. Using editing, peer-marking and self-assessment techniques, pupils correct each other's work before it's given to the teacher. Miss Kaur recently took the learner's place during AfL training when she had to write about her holidays. "You're under pressure so you start worrying about your spelling and punctuation. It helped me to see why it's so helpful for the children to share work with a partner first." In addition, pupils no longer get grades but receive comments and 'three stars and a wish' — the wish being a point for improvement.

Teachers share learning objectives at the start of each lesson, using a cartoon character called WALT, which stands for What I Am Learning To. Higher up the school, they employ WILF (What I Am Looking For) to focus on a particular area for improvement, such as adjectives or spelling. Saifuz Zaman, Year 5, says this has made a huge difference. "Before, it was a bit difficult to understand what we were supposed to be doing. Now, our teacher starts the lesson by telling us the WALT."

At Mayespark, teachers are using open-ended questions so they can assess children and differentiate whole-class activities. It has made a huge impact on how the pupils approach learning, says Ms Walsh. "Through asking open-ended questions about strategies they were using to learn, within six weeks children could explain their strategies for working things out. And this was with Year 2!"

The schools personalise other aspects of school life too, with regular surveys and interviews to find out what children think about school and about how they are learning. Mayespark's pupil-run newspaper, the Mayespark Mail, ensures that the students' voices are heard and celebrates their achievements. Meanwhile, at South Park, the student council has a representative from each year.

Ethos and environment are equally important. Mayespark's playground has an old bus-stop called the 'Friendship Stop' and an informal buddy system with older children nominated 'Playground Friends'. At South Park, Year 5 pupils read to Year 2, encouraging support and friendship between year groups, and there's an 'Oasis Room' offering extra pastoral support.

Both schools have large numbers of pupils with English as a second language, so access is an important issue. South Park has several ethnic minority achievement consultant (EMAC) teachers and, with pupils arriving from Kosovo and Albania, the school has sought out bilingual teachers to help families engage fully in school life. The school also plans to send letters to parents in community languages.

Although it's too early to see a direct impact on results, both headteachers are in no doubt that their pupils have embraced the chance to talk about learning — some more than others. "One of the boys in my class told me he thought it would be a good idea to have a buzzer on my desk so that when he needed help, he could buzz me immediately," says Miss Kaur with a wry smile.

Further information

This content was published in July 2004 and may not reflect current policy