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School profile

Pentrehafod School is an English medium secondary school on the east side of Swansea. Just over 30% of the pupils are entitled to FSM, 7% of pupils are statemented, 37% have been identified as having SEN, and 9% speak English as an additional language. After receiving an unsatisfactory/adequate judgement from Estyn in September 2012 and being placed into the Significant Improvement category, they have since made excellent progress and been removed from monitoring having largely addressed all four recommendations made by Estyn.

As a Challenge Cymru school Pentrehafod have made a number of changes over the last few years, the most recent of which has been a focus on using the announcement of a new curriculum for Wales as a springboard to prepare the school and the pupils for the better education heralded by Professor Donaldson’s review “Successful Futures”.

What were we asked to support?

Pentrehafod curriculum development team asked us to support the school to identify what actions the school should take now in order to ensure pupil outcomes under the current curriculum structure were improved, but actions that also prepared school, pupils and particularly teaching staff for the promised changes outlined by Donaldson and now fully accepted by Welsh Government. During an initial consultation meeting we discussed what work the school had already done and what more they could do with our support with the proviso that whatever was developed as part of the support package would have improving pupil outcomes as its driver.

Pentrehafod had already adjusted their timetabling to enable Humanities subjects to be taught within an interchangeable 10 lesson block, so this had created the potential for History, Geography and RE teachers to work together on a thematic teaching approach that would replicate the Humanities area of Learning and Experience from the new curriculum.

The school requested our support to help create a thematic approach to planning and teaching within the Humanities department with an eye on replicated this approach across other new curriculum Areas of Learning and Experience at a later date. So, both the practicalities and the theory of the development process needed to be addressed.

What did we do?

The training was broken into three distinct elements:

  1. Getting it Right for the LNF – The new curriculum for Wales is underpinned by Literacy and Numeracy skills as well as digital competency. Pentrehafod wanted our support to review what they were doing for the development and progression of LNF skills within their current curriculum to ensure that school practices and pedagogy ensured excellent outcomes across the curriculum. We helped their strategic team to review what they had done so far and put together an action plan for the rest of this academic year.
  2. Strategic Development of thematic teaching in Humanities – Pentrehafod wanted this training to look closely at the process of how thematic teaching would be developed effectively in the secondary sector. They also wanted the support to explore the implications for Humanities specialists when considering which Literacy and Numeracy skills enhanced their subject, their own confidence in teaching and assessing these skills, and what Humanities skills are common to all three subjects.
  3. Staff training in thematic teaching & collaborative planning – The final stage of the support process was to take the renewed understanding of best practice for the LNF, together with a secondary specific thematic teaching process and a truly cross curricular approach to the Humanities subjects and deliver this information in a step by step staff training session for Humanities staff in order to begin the process of creation of thematic teaching.

Expected Impact

The curriculum development team now have a clear action plan to ensure the process of underpinning the entire curriculum with 2 key skills, namely Literacy and Numeracy. This process could now be replicated for digital competency.

Both the curriculum development team and Humanities staff understand the process of thematic teaching at secondary level, and have had the chance to trial and review their teaching, planning and assessment processes well in advance of the curriculum changes.

Outcomes at GCSE for all subjects will improve as subject specialists focus on Literacy and Numeracy skills that enhance their subject skills, and improve standards.

The changes needed to embrace the challenge of building a better education by adopting the Donaldson Review recommendations, will be implemented in school in a manageable, achievable timescale, that really gives staff a chance to excel and develop in a collaborative atmosphere.

Next steps for the school

The curriculum development team now need to review the progress made, listen to the evaluations of staff and pupils and refine and develop their practice, taking into consideration which of the evidence based teaching strategies introduced in the support process has been most successful and has had greatest impact on pupil outcomes.

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