Narrowing the Learning Gaps – guidance for research schools

1. Managing the collection of data – an overview

Hello and thank you to you and your school for agreeing to collect learning behaviour data and contextual data on all of your year 6 students.

Here’s a quick summary of what you’ll need to do at whole school level:

• Identify someone who will oversee the collection of data – maybe a senior leader or one of your year 6 team
• Download a copy of the master spreadsheet (see opposite)
• Make a copy of this spreadsheet for each of your year 6 classes
• Help year 6 teachers to complete the spreadsheet for their class (see sections 2 and 3 below)
• Collate the class spreadsheets into one master spreadsheet (section 4)
• Send your completed master spreadsheet to TLO for detailed analysis (section 5).

2. Gathering learning behaviour data

Each Year 6 teacher should:

• Download and print a copy of the learning chart (opposite) for each of their year 6 students.

[Hint – It is better to use the A3 option if you have an A3 printer.

If not, use the A4 option which prints the chart over 2 A4 sheets.]

• For each student in your class, colour in cells in the chart that describe the student’s secure learning behaviours.
  • the colours of the rows carry a meaning linked to students’ attitudes and emotions. If you need a quick reminder take a look at the table in the toggle box below.
  • If you’re unsure about what constitutes secure behaviour, read section 2a (below) for further information.
• Start at the foot of each column and work upwards, stopping once the behaviours described are clearly beyond the student’s current skill set.

If you need more detail on how to go about this, go to sections 2 and 3 of the full, online Narrowing the Learning Gaps resource.

2a. What is a ‘secure’ behaviour?

For each cell in the learning chart, ask yourself;

• ‘is the student like this in most circumstances – does the cell describe what they usually do?’
• If yes, colour the cell.
• If no, or if they only do it occasionally, leave the cell blank.

So – ‘secure’ means ‘they can do this and they do do this’.

2b. Creating learning behaviour ‘scores’

Once the learning charts have been completed to show a ‘learning profile’ for each student, it is time to convert that ‘profile’ into a ‘score’.

Consider each column in turn:

• Score zero if nothing is coloured in or the very bottom row (the Grey phase) is coloured in;
• Score 1 for each of the coloured-in cells in the purple, blue and green phases;
• Score 2 for each of the coloured-in cells in the yellow or gold phases.

For example, the ‘score’ for the learning profile opposite would be 2:2:0:4:5:5:8:6:3:10:1:3.

For each student, you will end up with 12 ‘scores’, one for each of the 12 learning behaviours.

Record each student’s ‘scores’ in the bottom row of the learning chart.

2c. Entering learning behaviour ‘scores’ on the class spreadsheet

Once you have created learning behaviour ‘scores’ for all of the students in your class, open the spreadsheet for your class.

For each student, enter their name in column B, and transfer their 12 ‘scores’ into columns D to O.

Save the file.

3. Gathering the contextual data

The contextual data may well be things that the class teacher already knows, or perhaps this data will be generated from your admin system.

In either case, proceed as follows :-

On the class spreadsheet, find the tab at the bottom called ‘contextual print only’.

This tab cannot be edited, but you can print it so that you can record your contextual data. If you have completed step 2c (above), your print-out will already be populated with your students’ names.

Firstly, add the basic contextual information that the class teacher will already know:

• Class Code: a unique identifier for the student’s class. You can use any symbols you like here, so if your class is called 6 Beech, use ‘B’ etc. Just be sure that no other year 6 class is using the same code;
• Boy: enter ‘y’ if a boy, leave blank if a girl;
• Girl: enter ‘y’ if a girl, leave blank if a boy;
• Pupil Premium: enter a ‘y’ if the student attracts PP funding, leave blank if not;
• SEN: enter a ‘y’ if the student is on your special needs register, leave blank if not;
• EAL: enter a ‘y’ if the student has English as an Additional Language, leave blank if not;
• G&T: enter a ‘y’ if the student is identified as being Gifted and Talented, leave blank if not;

This data goes into the first 7 columns of the grid (see opposite).

3a. Considerations in relation to ‘lower / middle / higher’ attainment

Entering the attainment data:

Lower / Middle / Higher attaining: enter a ‘y’ in just one of these 3 columns, and leave the other 2 columns blank (but read below for guidance)

Guidance:

This step almost certainly requires to be coordinated centrally. You are aiming to split your entire year 6 cohort into three evenly balanced groups – the lower attaining third, the middle attaining third, and the higher attaining third.

• No need to be too precise – plus or minus one or 2 students either way will not matter.
• Whoever is overseeing the collection of data will need to consider how this can be most easily achieved.
  • Do you have centrally held attainment data that can be used?
  • Or could you ask each year 6 teacher for information –
  • if yes, how will you ensure a consistency of approach?

Record these judgements in the next 3 columns of the grid (see opposite).

3b. User defined categories – to identify any school-specific issues you might want feedback on

Entering the ‘User defined’ data:

• User Defined #1: enter a ‘y’ if the student is a member of this #1 subgroup, leave blank if not;
• User Defined #2: Repeat if the student is a member of the #2 subgroup (but read below for guidance)

Guidance:

It’s up to the school to decide whether it wishes to use these ‘User defined’ categories.

If you do, it will be up to the person overseeing the data collection to decide what these ‘User defined’ categories are.

For example:

• Suppose you have a suspicion that students from a particular ethnic background are under-performing their peers, you could choose that as one of your user defined options;
• Or you might be interested in looking at the learning behaviours of those students who survived lockdown relatively unscathed compared with their peers;
• Or you might have another issue that would be of interest to you!

Decide if you wish to take advantage of the ‘User Defined’ option. If yes, decide what the criterion is for each of the ‘User Defined’ options.

Enter the data in the final 2 columns of the sheet – see opposite.

3c. Entering the data in the class spreadsheet

Open the spreadsheet for your class, navigate to the ‘data collection sheet’ tab, and enter the contextual data in columns Q to AB for all of your students.

Remember that, aside from your class name, all entries will either be a y (yes) or left blank.

Save the spreadsheet and give a copy to the person overseeing the data collection.

The person overseeing the process should:

• Open the master spreadsheet, ensuring you are on the ‘data collection sheet’ tab;
• Open each class spreadsheet in turn, highlight the data in columns B to AB, right click, copy, and paste the data into the master sheet;
• Repeat with each year 6 class in turn, pasting the data for each class starting in the next empty row;
• Save this master spreadsheet.

Make a copy of the master spreadsheet you created in section 4 above, but in this new copy we suggest that you delete all of the student names. While the names may be of use for your internal in-school purposes, the names will be irrelevant to TLO’s analysis and the removal of student names anonomises the data and removes any confidentiality issues.

Of course you should keep a copy of your own Master spreadsheet with the student names in, just in case you want it later.

For example, you might want to interrogate this data against your end of year assessments in the future.

You could look at end of KS levels against learning behaviour data. For example, comparing the behaviour ‘scores’ with the final Maths grade. This means you would be looking at learning behaviours in relation to a particular aspect of the curriculum.