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Wednesday stream 3 Session 14.00 - 15.40 Length 25 minutes
Neil MacKay
Hawarden High School, North Wales n.mackay@virgin.net
Abstract
Hawarden High School is a mixed 11-18 comprehensive in North Wales, with an LEA funded Dyslexia Resource. All dyslexic pupils in Year 11 leave with passes at GCSE, the vast majority achieving in 5+ A-Gs including higher grade passes. This presentation outlines four key areas; leadership, whole school approaches, monitoring/evaluation, and high expectation, which underpin the school's dyslexia friendly approach and empower dyslexic pupils to achieve their potential. It also discusses ways of working with subject specialists to develop dyslexia friendly approaches and techniques. Strategies will be suggested for the effective use of school development plans, addressing specific needs through INSET, setting SMART targets and the development of a culture with a "zero tolerance" of failure. Also discussed will be issues relating to setting up a Dyslexia Resource and the way that good practice, in terms of teaching dyslexics, can have positive benefits for the learning of all pupils in the school.
Context The writer first coined the phrase "dyslexia friendly schools" during a series of BDA conferences for Governors. The concept and principles were developed at Hawarden High School where, until very recently, the writer was Special Needs Coordinator.
Hawarden High school is a mixed 11-18 comprehensive school in North Wales, UK. It is a source of pride that dyslexic pupils leave with passes at GCSE, the vast majority achieving 5+ A-Gs including higher grade passes.
For the past 9 years the school has hosted an LEA funded Dyslexia Resource that provides support for severely dyslexic pupils who are placed in the school through their statements of special educational needs. The creation of the Resource has also helped the many dyslexic pupils in the mainstream of the school who benefit from the dyslexia friendly culture that has been developed over the years.
The specialist provision is called a Resource in order to acknowledge that, for the majority of their timetable, dyslexic pupils are taught within the mainstream of the school, accessing whatever special needs support is available to all. Although they are "resourced" for 5 hours each week, it is essential that all contact staff are aware of the needs of dyslexic pupils in general and the Dyslexia Resource pupils in particular. It is also essential that staff are trained in "dyslexia friendly" techniques and are supported in their efforts to meet the needs of dyslexic pupils.
Extra time for specialist tuition has been created through the disapplication, by statement, from French and Welsh. This disapplication, which is easy to achieve given the support of the LEA and the Governing body, allows pupils to access the Resource for 5 hours each week, where they are taught in groups of 3 by a very experienced and highly qualified dyslexia specialist.
However it would be wrong to focus on the Resource as being the key element of a Dyslexia Friendly School; without strong leadership, whole school approaches to special needs in general, a culture of high expectation for all and rigorous monitoring and evaluation no amount of extra resources will meet the needs of dyslexic pupils. The key seems to lie in school effectiveness because being an effective school and becoming dyslexia friendly seem to be two sides of the same coin - in fact it could be argued that it is impossible to be one without the other.
Effective schools enjoy strong leadership, value staff development and pay close attention to the quality of instruction and learning. These are schools in which all children are important, regardless of ability or need. Failure to aspire to such a culture risks alienating a significant proportion of the school population and their parents, which is hardly an effective move. The Hawarden approach has been built on the bedrock of a highly experienced and talented staff who have responded to strong leadership.
Strong Leadership
Strong leadership has established, in particular, the following requirements:
Creating the role of Faculty SENCO has been a major element in implementing whole school policy on behalf of pupils with learning difficulties. Although an unpaid role, Faculty SENCOs accept the post in the knowledge that it offers considerable management experience and opportunities to develop and grow. The role includes:
The half termly meeting always takes pace just after Faculty meetings and the Faculty SENCOs ask for concerns to be raised and shared. Issues/pupils who are causing concern are then brought to the coordinating meeting and shared with all Faculty SENCOs. Sometimes a cross curricular pattern appears and it is possible to amend targets and take coordinated action to support a failing pupil. Occasionally a problem will be subject based and the "intellectual capital" of the meeting can be brought to bear on the problem. This meeting has proved to be very popular and definitively not "just another meeting," presumably because all the issues raised relate directly to the needs of children and swift and concrete action always results.
Leadership through the School Development Plan (SDP)
Establishing the principle of "corporate responsibility" for progress of all children is most effective through the School Development Plan. This document is becoming increasingly important and is one of the main elements used by OFSTED to evaluate the management of a school. At Hawarden the SDP identifies initiatives relating to special needs in general and dyslexia in particular which are then translated into action via subject and faculty development plans. This process has been extremely useful in turning whole school goals into "grass roots" action, especially as the process of development planning requires attention to be paid to training and the allocation of resources.
SENCO as Senior Manager
At Hawarden the SENCO is a Senior Teacher and a member of the Senior Management Team. It is essential not to underestimate the importance of having a SENCO in this position in terms of the perceived status of special needs issues.
Whole School Approaches
At Hawarden it is accepted that all teachers are responsible for basic skills and all teachers accept this responsibility. It was not always thus: a common refrain used to be "I did not train to be a Special Needs teacher!" Hawarden tackles this through an on-going programme of training for all staff which focuses on awareness and cross-curricular teaching techniques. Through a rolling INSET programme, much of which is delivered in-house during whole school training days, all staff receive training in the following areas:
These areas are re-visited periodically and the school is always seeking fresh areas to develop. A particular benefit of the school's commitment to "dyslexia friendly" INSET has been the gradual development of common approaches to common problems. Thus it has become possible for all teachers to help many individuals without always giving individual help. In this context skills such as note taking, mind mapping, study reading and organisational/revision techniques act as a template to shape existing knowledge and abilities. Dyslexic learners in particular are supported to minimise their weaknesses, capitalise on their strengths and to begin to operate at an ability appropriate level. A spin off from this is that the techniques are being applied to all pupils with consequent benefits in terms of whole school teaching and learning opportunities.
Hawarden's house style has developed as teachers accept their accountability for the delivery of effective education, not only in terms of results, but also in term of appropriate and effective methodology. The circulation by the SENCO of "pen pictures" of all pupils with special needs makes it clear, for example, which pupils are not to be asked to read out loud and which pupils cannot be expected to copy from the board. While the school SENCO collates and circulates the Register and pan pictures, Faculty Heads are responsible for ensuring that the information is read and used to inform and direct teaching: this is another important aspect of corporate responsibility for pupils with special educational needs.
From the whole school perspective it is now recognised by teachers that study skills techniques taught to dyslexic pupils actually support and enhance the learning of all, particularly in the "taught is learnt" ethos of the UK National Curriculum. The investment of time in this area seems to help teachers work through the syllabus more effectively and, as the pupils become familiar with the techniques, they work faster, for longer and at higher levels of cognition. In other words the Hawarden approach supports all pupils, especially dyslexic pupils to work more effectively.
Monitoring and Evaluation
There is a saying in industry that "what gets measured gets done." Hawarden has implemented a rigorous process of monitoring and review for all pupils which has come directly from good practice established on behalf of its dyslexic learners. Over an extended period of consultation and working parties the school has developed a whole school monitoring and reporting system based on National Curriculum descriptors and delivered through IT and the school intranet system. The model used was one developed for the creation of Individual Educational Plans (IEPs) for dyslexic pupils; targets were set using National Curriculum descriptors and a process of monitoring ensured that intervention took place when needs were not being met.
The appropriateness of this model for all pupils was soon recognised and now the progress of all pupils, in all subjects, is monitored and evaluated in this way. As a result dyslexic pupils are included in the normal, everyday process of monitoring and evaluation, are subject to the same high expectation as all, and can expect the same rigour in terms of monitoring of progress and intervention.
Target setting by subject teachers is the key to the effective monitoring of progress. At Hawarden the process of target setting is well developed for all pupils, with the progress of dyslexic pupils coming under particular scrutiny. The process works as follows:
This process emphasis the responsibility of each subject teacher to secure ability appropriate progress through the use of techniques and methodology established via INSET. Having used various "keys" to unlock learning without success, the problem is more than a subject teacher can be expected to deal with and still meet the needs of the rest of the class. At Hawarden the SENCO will then become involved and a support package created.
Starting from where the child is
Teachers at Hawarden are encouraged to look "through" spelling and organisational errors in order to assess the underlying quality of the work. Therefore it is not unusual for a dyslexic pupil with currently weak basic skills to be operating in a high set/group for certain subjects. Various support systems are in use, including buddy/peer tutoring and Sixth Form support to enable dyslexic pupils who have the intellectual ability to "think" at high level within a subject to operate at this ability appropriate level.
The setting, monitoring and evaluation of targets implies a determination on the part of the school and teachers that all pupils will succeed and that positive action will follow if they do not.
Expectation
The final piece of the dyslexia friendly/effectiveness jigsaw is high expectation, exemplified by a zero tolerance of failure. At Hawarden this is exemplified by the expectation, on the part of the Head teacher, that all pupils will be entered for a majority of national examinations. This expectation puts a particular pressure on subject teachers to ensure that all pupils complete coursework requirements in order to be eligible for the exams. On consequence has been that most dyslexic pupils are encouraged and supported to complete course work during lesson time, a move which has contributed to a marked improvement in the quality of work and the meeting of coursework deadlines.
The "zero tolerance" culture effectively rules out the pernicious concept of institutionalised failure, in which a certain level of non-achievement is expected. Thus the culture of "no acceptable failure" means that the school is tenacious and pro-active in the pursuit of learning and is not afraid to ask those hard, assertive questions which lead to change. Because everyone is expected to achieve and is empowered to do so and ethos develops of respect for hard work. This is particularly important for dyslexic pupils who often have to work much harder than most in order to produce acceptable work. The dyslexia friendly school, starting from where the pupil is, recognises what has been achieved gives due praise and respect.
Changing a school for the benefit of the 10+% of pupils who are dyslexic may be a difficult package to sell to the most enlightened management team. However changing a school to make it more effective in terms of teaching and learning obviously benefits all pupils, including those with specific difficulties. If Hawarden is an effective school, as would seem to be the case in terms of exam results and the positive comments of the Inspectorate it is possibly because the education of all pupils is given equal priority. In this ethos dyslexic pupils are encouraged and supported view any apparent weaknesses in the context of clear, well-defined strengths and to become the best they can be. That is why Hawarden considers itself to be a dyslexia friendly school.
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