Pupil Mobility

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St John's Church of England Primary School, Birmingham

Context

St John's Church of England Primary School is a designated one form entry school situated in the heart of Birmingham. It is in Ladywood, by any standard a deprived area of the city with a highly mobile population. Three quarters of St John's pupils are entitled to free school meals and a quarter are on the SEN register. Sandra Bailey, the headteacher, describes a school facing challenges, and needing time to establish a rapport with children and parents who often have complete mistrust of 'the system'.

In 1999 the school was deemed to require Special Measures and the main issues were around raising attainment and pupil progress. Sandra Bailey again:

"I now realise that I didn't have the data to effectively combat the raw, bald evidence of national tests. After the shock, I started gathering the evidence which would show that the school was adding value in the education of its pupils. In our circumstances, the effect of mobility had to be pinned down and understood without becoming an excuse for low expectations."

The school successfully came out of Special Measures on 22 November 2001.

Type of mobility

Some children stay at St John's for the whole of their primary life while others stay only a few days. Using the JPL formula, the school is constantly above 35% and in some years pushes towards 50% pupil mobility. The reasons as described by Sandra Bailey are simple to understand; the consequences difficult to deal with. The simplicity is that virtually no family with a choice lives in the school's catchment area of impoverished housing stock a moment longer than it must; others, with nowhere else to go, are forced by circumstance into the area. The difficulty is in finding ways to deal with the pupils' chaotic experience of refugees, broken families, adult unemployment, social services, hostels and cheap rented accommodation amongst others.

Target setting

Sandra Bailey describes her school's approach to target setting:

"Shorter-term targets for each pupil are in many ways more important to us than the end of key stage targets agreed with our LEA.

"Skills targets are set for every child at the beginning of each term and parents - remarkably, two thirds accept our invite to these sessions - are encouraged to take an active part. The children are very aware of their own needs and each is asked for a target that he or she would like to achieve. Of course, children whose parents do not come still have their discussion time with their teacher. One of my jobs is to find the funding and supply teachers to cover for these meetings!

"In addition to the skills targets, each pupil has a termly target in maths and English based on National Curriculum Levels. Our teacher assessments of progress at the end of each term are the basis for the next term's work in the classroom and our Performance Management Information.

"Over a longer period, we use a simple block graph to track each pupil's development of skills and concepts across the National Curriculum from their entry and then at the end of each term until they leave.

"Statutory target setting is, of course, reviewed annually and we set the targets on the basis of pupils in school at the time. The LEA adviser has a very good grasp of the implications of this for our eventual results and their analysis.

"Improved use of data from our own short-term targets and from the LEA's comparative data is helping us to plan the next stages of each pupil's learning and to evaluate the effect of our work. Our 'core goup', the children who stay the course for seven years, are our 'standard measure'. We can now analyse the core group's achievement gains (individually and collectively) across the two key stages and by comparing those figures with the whole group we can put bald results into a context, demonstrate pupil progress and illustrate the effect of pupil mobility.

"Teachers, pupils and parents are clearer about progress and attainment and we all realise that end of key stage results are a team effort in which everyone is a key player. The result is more closely focused teaching and a rise in the standards of attainment in both key stages. This year (2001) our Key Stage 1 results show that pupils are performing at national expectations and our Level 4 Key Stage 2 performance has improved significantly in the past year, especially but not only for our 'core group':

"Though this is a fairly straightforward system, it relies on accurate teacher assessment and a good working knowledge of the National Curriculum. Good training and thoughtful management are required!"

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