How to strengthen your GCSE English and maths strategy

By Pauline Hagan OBE, FE adviser at the FE Commissioner’s Office, and former FE senior leader

It is a good time for leaders with an English and maths strategy to review and strengthen it and for those without to formulate one in readiness for the new college year.  

In recent months, I have worked with colleges on strategy in English and maths, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to share some of my learning and reflections, which I shared in my blog last week. What follows is a practical method for developing a “strategy around the table” with participation from the principal, senior leaders, teams and those with day-to-day responsibility for the progress, achievement and wellbeing of learners. Key stakeholders in schools and employers can also be involved, but a small core group is a good place to start.  

I have found that the leadership and physical presence of the principal at the table is critical in honest appraisal, resourceful thinking and mutual understanding the wider picture and the needs of the resit student. Honesty and trust are key: if there is an elephant in the room, it is better to welcome it and explore it from every angle. The questions and areas for reflection are suggested as starting points.  

Step one: ask difficult questions and answer them with evidence

What elements of your existing resit practice are working and how do you know? What does your data tell you about progress and achievement by age, sector, prior attainment? How confident are you of the effectiveness of the current delivery model?

What elements of your practice are not working and how do you know? Honestly reflect and review your practice. Is the learner experience one of consistency and quality? How many learners have regressed from grade on entry?  

Take a long hard look at evidence of teaching quality, recruitment and retention. Do staff have the energy, skills and qualities to improve progress and achievement?  Are classrooms relationship-rich? What is needed? What are the resource implications?  

Step two: vision and ambition  

What is your vision and ambition for English and maths, both in terms of progress and attainment? How will leaders articulate and communicate this across the college, in the community and with stakeholders? How will you engage with stakeholders so that they will mirror the vision and ambition when they talk about college, to students, staff and others? What professional development will teachers and others need to enable them to understand and model the vision and ambition? What are the resource implications of this?

Step three: model

How will your model support the vision and ambition for progress and attainment?

What model is best for ensuring that English and maths are intrinsic to study programmes? To centralise or to de-centralise.  What evidence and information would inform this decision? How will this support messaging around employment and progression? What decisions do you need to make around grouping? Will this link to decisions about the November resit? Who will be accountable for learner progress and achievement? How will you make this explicit? What does the evidence tell you about vocational contextualisation, and how much? When? Who? And why? If you do this already, are you seeing impact?  

Step four: systems

How can systems support vision, ambition, progress and achievement? How will timetabling ensure a rock-solid start, and ongoing consistency? How will diagnostic assessment inform learner placement in classes? How will it be used to track progress from starting point visibly and regularly? What systems/ dashboards do you need to make sure that every adult in the learner resit journey is involved in, accountable for and cognisant of progress? How will systems enable live information about learner progress and wellbeing to ensure swift action and intervention?  

Step five: engagement  

How can engagement support vision, ambition, progress and achievement?  

How can you engage with learners so they feel known and valued before they enrol in college? How can you ensure early, positive and information-rich encounters?  Who do your teams need to build relationships with? How can the early weeks reduce anxiety, fear, low self-esteem and risk of early withdrawal and potential NEET? What needs to happen in the learning journey to make resit students feel valued and supported? How will you ensure a sense of belonging so that resit students thrive, attend and participate?  How will the adults interfacing with learners wraparound them to reframe their narrative, show interest, celebrate progress and work together to understand, support and motivate?

Step 6: teaching

How will teachers support vision, ambition, progress and achievement?

How will you ensure relationship-rich classrooms where students feel valued and cared about? How will your knowledge of your learners support impactful teaching strategies which build confidence, knowledge and skills? What decisions need to be made on sequence and structure, use of exam papers, mocks, and deployment of mastery, metacognitive approaches and adaptive teaching?  What methods will you deploy to address missed milestones and exam anxiety? What needs to happen to ensure learners experience consistency and high quality?  

Answering these and all the other questions that inevitably arise will give leaders a platform and an evidence base to formulate an English and maths strategy, and equally to revisit an existing strategy to strengthen impact. There is huge scope for reward in strong leadership in English and maths, and the role of the principal in leading strategy from the front brings purpose and clarity. The principal is the “north star” and when they embody vision and ambition, the accountability, structures, models, systems, expectations and behaviour will follow.

I sometimes think of English and maths progress and achievement as a little like compound interest. Every learner with improved attainment has accrued personal gain and will take this into their adult, family and working lives where there will be a wider and deeper societal gain. This, in turn, can help break the pernicious link between background and educational attainment which often persists intergenerationally. This is social justice, another good reason for leaders to initiate a strategy, lead and direct it and oversee its implementation. Elephants notwithstanding.