The rise and fall – and the rise again…
Fourteen years ago, in North London, as a group of young, dynamic and enthusiastic teachers of subjects ranging from ICT, Humanities and English we had a discussion about our concern at the decline of assessing students based on their use of spelling, punctuation and grammar.
I distinctly remember Jenny, our head of RE stating that such an approach will undermine the whole state sector because she believed the independent school would continue to teach it, and the end result will be an increasing divide in the linguistic capabilities between the two. Her predictions appear to have come true.
The National Literacy Strategy – the good and the bad
Over the last 20 years I have researched and implemented a whole variety of initiatives from a variety of sources. Over these years, it is also to my dismay that I have seen a mangling of approaches due to the misunderstanding of the theory. Reactionary approaches that takes both schools and students out of their social contexts.
The Literacy Strategy had some exciting new ideas for an approach to learning and how to teach literacy, but it also had its flaws. Unfortunately, over the years I have witnessed a total distortion of the strategy itself, including a literal, rather than a contextual, implementation of the ideas. As a consequence the delivery of Literacy across the key stages has suffered. It is possible to teach dynamic and interesting and creative lessons – and teach SPAG too!
The Curse of the assessment objective
Additional issues have evolved from our increased focus on assessment objectives. The approach that if it is not in the objectives, then we do not have to teach it – may apply to some areas, but ignoring SPAG, just because it is not explicitly assessed has resulted in the situation we are left in today. In some cases, we have teachers and teaching assistants who have major gaps in their grammatical knowledge because they are the products of such an approach. This is no reflection on their actual intelligence, but if they are unaware of the basics, with the major focus on SPAG increased at both KS2, 3 and 4 across the whole curriculum, not just in English, these gaps in knowledge have to be both confronted and rectified. Creating message bank comments for ‘written’ reports will no longer be enough to mask the actual, or perceived, literacy limitations of the teaching staff.
Effective leadership
Too often Literacy co-ordinator has been a bolt on for a member of senior management, or given to a relatively inexperienced member of English staff to implement. I have also sat through toe curling presentations where staff are clearly out of their own comfort zones who have led whole school Literacy CPD and who have clearly had NO training, and have very little understanding, and in some cases, a fundamental misunderstanding of the most basic of concepts.
The pendulum of change is swinging back to the importance of explicitly teaching spelling, punctuation and grammar. Ofsted’s focus on this has not truly been enough to impart true change. The swing back to explicit assessment means that schools can no longer afford to pay lip service to this. They HAVE to change, if they ignore this, their results across the whole school will plummet in 2017.
Solutions:
- A Literacy policy that is truly fit for purpose
- A marking code that is straightforward, enforceable and that all staff in all subjects understand and can consistently implement
- A marking policy that acts as a functioning guide in how to approach and differentiate through marking
- A senior teacher with extensive knowledge of literacy and how to develop it across the school – or at least someone who has had full training and understands the key concepts.
- Training for NQTs and HTLAs in how to implement literacy.
- Literacy training for all staff- with a strong focus on Super eight subjects
We are here to help:
To support schools there are a series of courses:
- Secondary Ready course for KS2 on the 10th of June,
- A course on Whole School Literacy on the 1st July.
- Closing the Gap-
- Teaching Language through Literature – for English teachers teaching GCSE
- In September and October we will be running a series of staff training session on the basics of grammar, the fundamentals of literacy and how it can be effectively implemented in the classroom, and training on how to apply a marking code for maximum impact for students.
We will also be publishing a series of resources for English staff to explicitly deliver literacy in the classroom for years 7, 8 and 9.
If you are interested in booking on our courses, please go to course outlines and book now!
C Thomas – April 2014