Decision Maker: Director of Learning, Opportunities and Skills
Decision status: Recommendations Approved
Is Key decision?: No
Is subject to call in?: No
Only one of the interested schools meets the
national rate for the achievement of grade 5 or above in English;
and only two of them meet the national rate for the achievement of
grade 4 or above.
The range for grade 5 or above is from 2.7% to -32.3%; the range
for grade 4 or above is from 6.6% to -34.4%. In the four interested
schools, the difference between the progress of disadvantaged
students and the national rate for non-disadvantaged students is in
a range from -0.06 to -1.41.
The interested schools cover a range of contexts and the priority
for project leaders will be their voluntary engagement.
Metacognition and working memory are key components of the new
Ofsted framework which will come into being in 2020/21.
To grant New College Doncaster £45,000
to deliver a project which will bring together 6 volunteer
secondary schools to test the effectiveness of a Metacognition
intervention with year 9 students.
The focus of the project will be retrieval practice, a key skill
which links to a wider range of qualities including resilience and
self-regulation. New College Doncaster are uniquely placed to
deliver this as they have the materials and
expertise available to carry out the trial, given they use
metacognition strategies within their current environment.
This project will test assumptions locally, building on research
undertaken by the Education Endowment Foundation. If proven to be
an effective method for Doncaster, individual schools may choose to
adopt the approaches.
There are four key objectives:
to trial, test and evaluate strategies for developing memory and
retrieval skills with a group of year 9 students in order to
prepare them for the demands of GCSE assessment;
to establish ways of learning which will not only improve long-term
memory but develop students’ ability to tackle challenging
problems and difficulties within and between
subjects;
to engage English teachers of year 9 students in the development of
their skills in disciplined inquiry, subsequently extending this to
teachers of other subjects and across
a wider range of schools;
to support schools in establishing and sustaining a culture of
student independence and resilience, leading to sustainable change
and improved outcomes.
Option 1 - Going out to tender
Option 2 - Do nothing
Publication date: 10/06/2021
Date of decision: 12/11/2019
Accompanying Documents: