Pupil Mobility Project

Summary

51 schools from 26 LAs and 1 Education Action Zone (EAZ) were involved in a DfES (now DCSF) project developing, trialling and evaluating innovative strategies to narrow the attainment gap between the mobile and static populations. Schools involved experience pupil mobility greater than 20%.

One of these initiatives was the Induction Mentor Scheme. This almost unique role was adopted by 47 of the pilot pupil mobility schools and there have been positive outcomes with senior managers enabled to spend more time on strategic issues, middle managers able to focus on teaching and learning, and pupils and parents being aware of the welcome and support.   

Outcomes

The outcome for schools and pupils:

• raised attainment of the focus group.
• increased rates of progress for individual pupils.
• a narrowing of the attainment gap between the mobile and static populations.
• development of strategies which can be used across the school.
• an increase in whole school attainment over the longer term.
• effective and sustainable strategies developed through partnerships.
• access to schools and LEAs with similar or different mobility challenges.

The outcomes for LA partners:

• development of expertise of LA staff.
• networking between LAs.
• reservoir of expertise within one or more schools.
• participating schools helped to move towards the floor targets or/and maintain school improvement momentum.
• a contribution to LA attainment targets in the longer term.

The outcomes for the DfES 

• 46 schools facing challenging circumstances and five other schools (including three primaries) who have begun to surmount the challenge of mobility and thus enabled to achieve the floor targets.
• a sound basis for further work on pupil mobility.
• potential case studies for the Schools Facing Challenging Circumstances (SFCC) web site and contributions for SFCC LA and headteacher seminars.
• material for a guidance document on pupil mobility.
• effective strategies, principles and lessons for sharing with other policy teams.

Areas of focus

Participating schools focussed on either:

• development of strategies to accelerate access to the curriculum.
• development of strategies to raising attainment of the mobile population.

Specimen copies of the pupil mobility audit ( 29 Kb) and questionnaire ( 461 Kb) forms that the schools completed are available to view or download in Word format.

Projects included:

a) Development of strategies to accelerate access to the curriculum:

• short language immersion courses (maximum three weeks) to ensure pupils can access the curriculum.
• intensive reading programmes for poor readers to reduce differential between chronological age and reading age.
• development and deployment of language support assistants.
• effective needs analysis and communication of information to enable teachers to plan for new arrivals.

 b) Development of strategies to raise attainment of the mobile population:

• the Induction Mentor Scheme.
• out of hours study and additional tutoring.
• providing opportunities to write in mother tongue.
• more inclusive teaching approaches, including promotion of language development in the mainstream classroom.
• development of independent learning programmes.
• development of existing video-conferencing facilities to provide teaching in subjects not currently offered.
• tracking systems with short-term targets and awards.
• ensuring curriculum content is relevant and values pupils' previous experiences.
• building links between mainstream and supplementary schools to raise attainment.
• development of distant learning packages for pupils taking long vacations.

Mobility Conference

The project culminated with a conference at the Queen Elizabeth ll Conference Centre in London on 26 November 2003, which coincided with the publication of two documents in PDF:

• Managing Pupil Mobility: Guidance ( 286 Kb) and
• Managing Pupil Mobility: A Handbook for Induction Mentors. ( 478 Kb) 

Also available in Word format is an evaluation of the induction mentor scheme ( 178 Kb) by former HMIs Eileen McAndrew and Chris Power.

Participating schools, EAZ and LEAs ( 72 Kb)

Last updated  17 May 2008