News
Well-designed classrooms can boost the learning progress
Road safety charity urges schools to join Brake’s Giant Walk
Brake, the road safety charity, is encouraging primary school teachers to register for Brake’s Giant Walk, to promote the benefits of walking to school and to help teach road safety. This annual event takes place on Wednesday 10 June 2015, and already 45,000 children from over two hundred schools are registered to take part. Every year this great event sees tens of thousands of children learning about road safety in their classroom, promoting the benefits of safe walking and cycling to school, and walking to call for safer driving in their community. This year, to date, 90,000 pupils are registered to take part planning to walk over 47,000 kilometres and Brake is calling for more teachers to sign up today and get involved in this important event.
Brake’s Giant Walk involves children across the UK taking part in a short walk of a minimum of 500 metres from their school gates to call for safer roads around their school and to promote safe walking and cycling. The event is a great focal point for schools to teach road safety in class using resources and advice from Brake – road safety can be used to teach lessons on a range of subjects. Schools can use their walk to call on drivers to slow down in their community or call for other local road safety measures. The project also raises funds for Brake's work to improve road safety and care for families devastated by a death or injury on roads, because most schools fundraise on the day.
Brake’s Giant Walk empowers children and schools to make their communities safer, healthier, and greener, while preventing devastating child casualties.
Julie Townsend, Brake deputy chief executive, commented: “Brake’s Giant Walk is a great way for schools to call for safer roads in their community for children to be able to walk or cycle without fear or threat from traffic. Every year as part of this great event schools use resources and support from Brake to run fantastic lessons across a variety of subjects around the theme of road safety and active travel. It’s a chance to teach children about road safety and why walking is healthy and eco-friendly, and also to call on local drivers to make a big difference by slowing down to protect children on foot and bike. We’re urging schools to sign up now to take full advantage of the resources and support Brake offers to help schools get involved.”
u01484 550061
ugiantwalk@brake.org.uk uwww.brake.org.uk/giantwalk
6
For the first time, clear-evidence has been found that well-designed primary school classrooms can boost learning progress in reading, writing and maths. This is according to the results of the HEAD Project (Holistic Evidence and Design), funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and undertaken by The University of Salford. Published recently in a new report - ‘Clever Classrooms’ - the research reveals how differences in the physical characteristics of classrooms, such as air quality, colour and light, can together increase the learning progress of primary school pupils by as much as 16% in a single year.
The research shows that the impact of moving an ‘average’ child from the ‘least effective’ to the ‘most effective’ classroom can increase the “average child’s” performance by as much as 1.3 sub-levels of the national curriculum in a single year. This is significant given that guidance from the Department for Education says primary school pupils are expected to progress by 2 sub-levels in a single year. In total, the study collected performance statistics for 3,766 pupils.
The Salford research team, led by Peter Barrett, Professor of Management in Property and Construction from the University’s School of the Built Environment, spent the last three years collecting pupil data and carrying out detailed surveys of 153 classrooms from 27 very diverse schools across three local authorities: Blackpool County Council, Hampshire Council and the London Borough of Ealing Council.
This is the first time that clear evidence of the effect on learning progress of the overall design of the physical learning space has been isolated in real-life situations. Individual factors including air quality have been studied in the past, but how individual factors come together as a whole for real children, in real spaces, has proven difficult to quantify. Lead Researcher Professor Peter Barrett, said: “The research identifies many simple, quick and cost-effective ways for teachers to change their classrooms to make a real difference to a child’s performance in reading, writing and maths. We’re not talking about major investment on behalf of the school or local authority - quite the opposite - simple choices in how classrooms are used and evidence-based decisions when schools are being built. “I hope our ‘Clever Classrooms’ report will become a valuable asset for teachers and school designers across the UK and can make a real and lasting impact on children’s learning progress at such an important stage in a child’s development.” Speaking about the findings, John Coe, Chair of the National Association for Primary Education (NAPE), said: “It is unusual and refreshing to welcome research which considers the impact of primary school design upon the lives and learning of young children. Perhaps surprisingly, the findings indicate that the salient features of the whole school do not matter most to pupils. The most powerful impact is made by the physical design of the particular classroom in which they spend such a vitally important time with their teacher. “The researchers, by differentiating design features from aspects of teaching and learning, show that considerations of daylight, temperature and air quality have the most influence on children’s progress. The children’s feelings of ownership of their surroundings are also important as is a classroom environment which is neither over stimulating nor unduly calming. The research offers sound sense and teachers, putting children first as always, can improve their classrooms without spending a lot of money.”
National charity supports Ofsted’s findings
Potential Plus UK (established in 1967 as The National Association for Gifted Children) has expressed its disappointment at the findings of the new Ofsted report that highlights that this country’s most able children are not being supported in some schools.
According to Denise Yates, Chief Executive of Potential Plus UK, “If the failure reported by Ofsted was about any other issue there would be a national outcry. “This cannot be an issue laid at the door of schools alone, with so many teachers working hard, and with no budget, to support these children. “But in some schools there is no focus on supporting high potential learners, little training for teachers to cope with their educational needs, and a naive belief that these children will succeed “no matter what”.
“Ofsted has shown that this approach is nothing short of a disaster; a patchwork of different kinds of provision, a lack of ambitious expectations and a postcode lottery for parents.
“We need a framework in place which clearly recognises best practice in schools, along with a greater understanding of how to support these children with high learning potential before it is too late.”
www.education-today.co.uk March 2015
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44