Blog by Sonia Blandford
The Achievement for All national conference brings together experts, teachers and leaders from across the education world, from early years to post 16, to explore how we can collectively make a difference to all children and young people. Together with Oxford University Press, we’re delighted to be welcoming an exceptional group of speakers, practitioners and representatives from the Department of Education, including Sir Kevan Collins CEO of Education Endowment Foundation, Dame Alison Peacock CEO, Chartered College of Teaching and Andy Cope of The Art of Brilliance.
At the conference delegates will focus on evidence informed strategies for:
- Achieving best value and highest impact from your Pupil Premium allocations
- Improving resilience, outcomes and employability for all children and young people
- Improving staff well-being and morale.
Key Concepts / Strategies addressed in this special conference edition of Every Child Journal are:
- Building “core strength” in all children and young people
- Improving progress and reducing exclusions
- Achieving best value and highest impact from your Pupil Premium allocations
- Improving resilience, outcomes and employability for all children and young people
- Improving staff well-being and morale
- Every Child Included.
In this editorial, I will provide an introductory analysis as to how every child can be included by following the 4As framework, developed from practice across the seven countries featured in the publication launched at the conference, Achievement for All in international classrooms.
Jim Collins is not normally referred to in any education editorial. Jim Collins spent many years looking at businesses and researching what made them great. His conclusion, greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice and discipline.
If we are to aspire for every child, if we are to have aspirations, it’s a conscious choice. In schools and early years settings we all know that we need to develop a culture of high expectations for all children – that’s every child, every day, every lesson in every week. Aspiration is for every child to have an understanding, a belief inside them that they can achieve, that they can succeed, it’s the ‘I can’, an understanding as to how they reflect on themselves in a positive, meaningful way. Aspiration is not thinking about what they are going to do when they leave school or college, and it is not about thinking that they are going to be the best dancer, the best footballer, the best singer or the best popstar. Aspiration is about the here and now – the ‘I can’.
Access is what is needed for aspiration to happen. Access is the ‘I do’. As teachers, we will have to think about what the barriers are for every child and how we remove them. Now it could be something quite simple like they haven’t got a pencil, they haven’t got a pen, they’ve forgotten their book. So, rather than spend time – which is learning time in schools, colleges and settings – focusing on what they haven’t got, focus on what they have got. They are there with you in the classroom. If we are to have aspiration, which is in practice, high expectations, we should put the ‘can do’ and the high expectations on ourselves. In terms of access, we need to break down those barriers which often prevent some children from accessing all opportunities that the school, college or setting must offer. It’s the ‘I do’.
The ‘I do’ also refers to activities outside the classroom. When you look at your football teams, your netball teams, your performing arts groups, the singers, dancers, those who put on art exhibitions, those who go out on trips – does that involve every single child? Does every single child have the opportunity to say ‘I do’?
Enabling all children to access learning is focusing on a behaviour, which is as much the behaviour, and behaviours, of the teachers and the culture of the school as it is for the child. A positive culture, a positive behaviour around every child would, I suggest, then lead to a positive behaviour in the child and, as I have already referred to, the participation in wider school life.
If aspiration is ‘I can’ and access is ‘I do’, as teachers we have to think about what is actually being achieved, what is being attained. Attainment is ‘I have’, building that inner core in the child – from ‘I can’ to ‘I do’ to ‘I have’. Attainment is ‘I have done something’. Beyond attainment is knowing what achievement feels like, ‘I have achieved something’. Nothing breeds success more than success, enabling children to develop positive relationships with others because inside themselves they are developing that very strong core. Achievement is the final ‘A’, in a series of As from aspiration to access to attainment to achievement – achievement is ‘I am’.
Moving from ‘I can’ to ‘I do’ to ‘I have’ to I am’. If we follow that through every day with every single child, we will succeed – and every child will be included.
Editor
Professor Sonia Blandford