Little Thurrock GEMS Royal Dubai School, Essex, UK School, UAE

Introduction to the schools

Learning Ladders Case Study | 1

CASE STUDY:

Little Thurrock & GEMS Royal Dubai

School, Essex, UK

School, UAE

How Learning Ladders has impacted assessment at home and abroad

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Little Thurrock School

LAYTON CLELAND Year 5 and Assessment Lead Little Thurrock School, Essex, UK

"I've been with Little Thurrock School for 20 years and have enjoyed my time here so much. I started as Maths Lead, before switching to Assessment Lead, then moved onto Year 5 and 6 Phase Lead ? I'm now Year 5 and Assessment Lead. Since I've worked here, the school has been through a number of Ofsted inspections, the first was deemed Satisfactory, then Ofsted changed grading which got rid of the Satisfactory grade. As a result the next Ofsted deemed us RI (Requires Improvement). Over the last few years the ethnic diversity of the school has changed hugely; it is still predominantly children from a white British background, but since 2012, a third of our children are now from an African background, alongside Eastern European. As a school, we get on well with parents and guardians and our last inspection was rated Good."

GEMS Royal Dubai School, UAE

ADAM HASSOUN Assistant Principal GEMS Royal Dubai School, UAE

"Our school started using Learning Ladders in 2015 with over 1000 pupils from more than 64 nationalities on roll. I've been with GEMS Royal Dubai School for 8 years. During my employment at GRDS I have fulfilled the roles as Head of PE before moving into the senior leadership team as Assistant Principal with key responsibilities in Assessment, systems and data. Since my time at GRDS I have supported the school through a number of KHDA inspections, resulting in continual school growth. The school has moved up three overall judgements from a Good to Outstanding rating in that time; this was maintained in our most recent inspection. The school follows the English curriculum and its highest nationality populations are British and Emirati."

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What were your challenges before Learning Ladders?

LAYTON CLELAND

Little Thurrock School

"I think one of the issues for us ? and I suspect other schools ? has been Ofsted moving the goalposts. The school has had three headteachers in the last 15 years, and writing has always been a bit of a challenge for us. Our last Ofsted inspection highlighted our middle leadership and writing skills both need to be worked on.

The influx of different ethnic mixes is something that enriches our school, but also brings its own challenges. We are a Local Authority school, so we admit children who can be quite challenging. As a result, we've had mixed successes based on the variety of students who join us. Our staff turnover is low with teachers retiring being the main culprit for changes, rather than staff moving on or feeling dissatisfied.

Post levels, we wanted an assessment tool that didn't impact on teachers' workload; for example, continuously inputting data. Learning Ladders was simple to use and, as it was a new product, it didn't have any of the `levels issues' we were trying to move away from. We felt like fish gasping for air at times, receiving little help from the government, and were at a loss for what we should do next."

LEARNING LADDERS SAYS...

Both of these schools decided to make bold, brave changes to the way they conducted assessment and worked day to day. They didn't have to do this, but knew that to support their students and maximise the progress achieved in classrooms, they'd have to embrace a period of change, disruption and adjustment. The goal in both cases was to move forward into a modern, post-levels education space, and we helped them achieve this.

ADAM HASSOUN

GEMS Royal Dubai School

"We were using our previous assessment tool, as some of the other schools in our GEMS education group were also using it; as the Assistant Headteacher, I was the one whose role it was to implement it but, as time went by, we started to look at new options.

There were some issues that arose after inspections due to a lack of specific and measurable evidence of progress; inspectors didn't like our previous platform very much and were quick to tell us that it wasn't really doing the job of aiding assessment. We decided it was time for a new curriculum, a policy overhaul and to start approaching assessment differently. Our previous assessment tool made some changes to their platform, but it looked more like a rebranding than a new way of approaching things. Therefore, we knew we needed to find a new system; we needed something that would grow with us and meet our needs, such as introducing an Arabic script.

Changing the assessment policy and system was the biggest challenge we faced. It was a huge amount of work to change teacher and student understanding of the policies, curriculum and school systems. We made a bold move to address everything in one go and hopefully other schools will not have all of these aspects to change at the same time. We felt we had no-one to turn to for support and no-one else was doing the same as us; they were just tweaking.

In 2014, we cleaned the slate and introduced a new curriculum. Teachers had a bit of a wobble ? which is to be expected when there are big changes introduced all at once ? but this came with a new set of expectations, positivity and hope for the future of our school. We acknowledged it would take time to get there, set the new systems in practice and get the results we wanted."

Learning Ladders Case Study | 3

Why did you choose Learning Ladders?

Learning Ladders Case Study | 4

LAYTON CLELAND

Little Thurrock School

"Very simply, it provided us with a framework for life without levels. We used Target Tracker before we discovered Learning Ladders and found they were slow to change at first. Then they changed to a best-fit model which didn't work for us.

We started to look around and found Learning Ladders. We looked at what other schools were doing and saw a variety of approaches going around, in terms of how formative assessment was being practised. Our policy now is that every half term we do assessments in Reading and Maths through an agreed assessment process.

At the time, our main reasons for choosing Learning Ladders were:

? The ease of use ? T he flexibility to add rung/statement

changes to our curriculum ? L adders at Home giving parents

access to articles ? T he ease of understanding the

colour-coded system ? T he ability to see, at a glance, pupils

who are working at greater depth ? Ofsted are looking for this; they want to see children deepening their understanding."

ADAM HASSOUN

GEMS Royal Dubai School

"The bespoke element was a huge pull for us. Other options we looked at weren't bespoke and we knew we wanted to change for our own individual context, such as adding a parent portal and accurate measuring of progress, which were really important to us.

With our new curriculum, measuring progress was the largest challenge, without merely recreating levels. From the start, we liked how this worked in Learning Ladders and they really knew their stuff. Other options we reviewed were in their early days and we just felt weren't established enough. Learning Ladders seemed most developed against other new platforms; whilst others had a few nice features, they just weren't thorough enough. Learning Ladders was looking at the new post-levels era, presenting an alternative without just being a levels-replacement system.

Another great thing was that everything was nicely joined up and all in one place; before, we'd been using a paper matrix for the children's objectives, then inputting subjects into our previous assessment tool, and finally sharing with parents in a different format. Learning Ladders is much simpler, less time-consuming and comprehensive."

LEARNING LADDERS SAYS...

Both schools felt they'd used other products on the market that were branding themselves as revolutionary in assessment. The reality was these products were still focused on previous levels - and data-driven functions. With Learning Ladders, both schools found a system which offered the least amount of disruption to teachers, pupils and parents, yet an assessment method that was a catalyst for positive change.

Learning Ladders Case Study | 4

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How did you include teachers, students and parents when rolling out Learning Ladders?

LAYTON CLELAND

Little Thurrock School

"At Senior Leadership Team level, we had many discussions and staff meetings, but SLT ultimately decided the route we would take. The first term we tried a gradual approach model to get a feel for how it would work in classrooms and found this didn't get any negative feedback from staff.

We held parent meetings to explain how assessment would now be tackled, using Learning Ladders and through trialing. We told them it wouldn't go live until Christmas, so they didn't expect anything immediately, and we soft launched in September. Parents asked questions such as `What level is my child at?', `How does `no levels' work?', or `What is my child doing in school?' There was definitely an ethos switch which was slow and steady but, as time went by, they started to understand. Parents stopped comparing what levels their children were at in the playground; we found it was all about managing the expectations of both our staff and parents. Before we knew it, there had been a shift in the school and it felt like everyone was pulling in the same direction.

Parents now have access to their child's learning; when we update the system, it stops teachers creating, publishing and printing reams and reams of paper to hand out. It also means everyone is kept informed and everybody has ownership of learning, from teachers to parents to the pupils themselves."

ADAM HASSOUN

GEMS Royal Dubai School

"We wanted to further engage parents, so this was one of the main incentives for using Learning Ladders; the Parent Portal is so effective. We conducted parents' conferences for those who wanted to talk through any questions, concerns and had a demo of how it would work in our school. The translation tool was particularly useful for our school. We'd tried some software before to help translation become easier for our students and families ? over 60 languages are spoken in our school ? but nothing had been as accurate as this. The algorithms created by Learning Ladders mean that the quality of translation is really high, enabling parents to access students' homework more effectively and at the click of a button."

"We engaged teachers by trialing Learning Ladders with only one teacher in each year group to begin with, using it alongside our previous system so that it was slowly phased in. These staff then had other teachers onboard one by one to get the ball rolling for them and act as mentors. We were already practising engaging children with their own progress, so this wasn't a total philosophy change for them. Sharing targets has been a long-standing part of school life at GEMS Royal Dubai School but it has now become a much easier and more measurable process."

LEARNING LADDERS SAYS...

The Parent Portal seems to be one of the biggest pulls for schools using Learning Ladders. The importance of parental involvement in progress can't be underestimated, as studies have proven over and over again, which was the driving force behind us creating a really effective hub for parents.

Learning Ladders Case Study | 5

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