Bellshill Academy Improvement Report 2016-2017

‘Raising standards, transforming lives’Bellshill Academy serves the Bellshill and Mossend areas of North Lanarkshire. The school roll in September 2016 was 640 with 62.7% of our young people living in SIMD 1-3; 23.8% of our students are in receipt of Free School Meals and 18.6% receive Clothing Grants.

Distinctive features of the school as identified by HMIe, are our courteous and friendly young people who are proud of their school, the positive school ethos and sense of community, the approaches to improving young people’s achievements, staff commitment and their active involvement in improving the work of the school, approaches to self-evaluation and the outstanding and inspirational leadership of the head teacher.

As a school we have worked hard to develop very positive and active partnerships across the wider school community and this is reflected in strong partnership working with our associated primary schools of Lawmuir, Mossend and Noble and with our partner secondary schools in the Bellshill, Coatbridge and Airdrie locality. We work very closely with our Community Learning & Development and Skills Development Scotland colleagues, our Parent Council, our Community Council and a range of other partners. We share a vision with all of our partners to ensure that Bellshill Academy continues to improve in order to provide the best quality learning experiences for all of our young people.

Essentially we aim to “raise standards and transform lives”. We have used our School Improvement Plan to shape our improvement strategies and evaluate our ongoing progress and the impact on outcomes for our young people. We are confident that our young people will benefit from our engagement in the range of initiatives offered as part of the Scottish Attainment Challenge, for example through additional staffing, the ‘Creating Stronger Communities in Motherwell and Bellshill’ programme and our plans for the Pupil Equity Fund.

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Review of progress for previous session

School priority 1:

To continue to improve the consistency and quality of learning and teaching with a clear focus on supporting the ongoing professional learning and leadership of all staff.

NIF Priority Improvement in attainment, particularly in literacy and numeracy; Closing the attainment gap between the most and least disadvantaged children.NIF Driver

School Leadership, Teacher Professionalism, School Improvement

HGIOS?4 QIs 2.3, 1.2, 1.4NLC Priority Leadership and Workforce Development; GIRFEC; Improving Literacies

Progress and impact

This session we launched our pupil driven strategy ‘Keys to success in pupils’ learning’.

This strategy aims to ensure that there is a more consistent approach to learning and teaching in all classrooms, by teachers focusing on the ‘keys to success in pupils’ learning’. Our Learning Walks approach has been further developed to incorporate the ‘keys to success in pupils’ learning’. Learning Walks, Principal Teacher and Senior Leadership Team visits and pupil learning experience surveys, confirm that we now have a more consistent approach to learning and teaching across the school. Furthermore, analysis of pupil surveys show improvements across all

departments. Analysis of parent surveys provides very positive feedback on the quality of the learning experience for our young people. The analysis for each year group surveyed, has been displayed and discussed with staff and our Parent Council.

Learning Walks, PT, SLT visits, pupil learning experience surveys and learner conversations highlight that pupils now receive more effective feedback regarding their progress and can more confidently take their next steps in learning. A significant development is that we are now able to track pupil progress in literacy across the curriculum in S1, as all departments now provide feedback on pupils’ progress in literacy. A data wall has been created and our robust tracking data for every individual pupil highlights improved attainment at all stages and in all SIMD groups. Schools leaders in NLC and from across Scotland have sought advice from Bellshill Academy in developing similar approaches in their own schools. We are delighted to report ongoing improvements to our learning environment. In addition to new Science, Art and Photography suites, our PE facilities have been transformed with the opening of our ‘state of the art’ Fitness Suite, Dance Studio and Multi Use Games Area (MUGA).

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These developments have already impacted on pupil outcomes as evidenced by improved attainment and engagement in competitions. Our young people achieved outstanding success in the NLC Dance Championships, the Dalziel Rugby Festival and local and national Art competitions. Senior students took part in a Digital Careers event and worked with industry partners on a Design Challenge, using our new photography facilities. Furthermore, our P7 Transition Project in Art this year focused on photography and T-Shirt printing.

Our fantastic new MUGA has been used extensively to host Cluster and Academy events since its opening in March. A new P6/7 transition sport event, led by senior students, took place in March and over 200 pupils participated in our Sports Day in June.

As a school we have continued to support the ongoing professional learning and leadership of all staff. A Professional Learning Hub was established to support staff in professional learning and provide an environment for greater dialogue with colleagues from across the school. During the session professional learning seminars were delivered by our own teachers and our Home School Partnership Officer during lunchtime. The seminars focused on a range of professional learning opportunities and were very well attended by staff. Feedback from staff highlights the positive impact of the seminars on the development of new teaching approaches. INSET (In-service training) provided valuable opportunities for all staff to engage in professional learning and discuss and share good practice, with a particular focus on improving literacy outcomes for our young people. Shadow Senior Leadership and Pupil Support teams were established and, increased numbers of staff engaged in formal academic professional learning and took leadership roles in a range of whole school initiatives. Our Head Teacher achieved the highly prestigious Scottish College of Educational Leadership (SCEL) Fellowship Award.

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Next Steps

To ensure that:

Our young people continue to experience a consistent approach to learning and teaching across the school.

Our young people and staff benefit from continuing to have a range of professional learning and leadership opportunities.

Our young people benefit from effective, personal and relevant feedback on their progress in their learning, including progress in literacy and numeracy.

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School priority 2: To continue to raise attainment and achievement for all our pupils in order to address the poverty related attainment gap and improve outcomes for all our young people.

NIF Priority Improvement in attainment, particularly in literacy and numeracy; Closing the attainment gap between the most and least disadvantaged childrenNIF Driver School Leadership, Performance Information, Assessment of children’s progress, School Improvement, Parental Engagement

HGIOS?4 QIs 1.3, 1.5, 2.5, 3.1NLC Priority Leadership and Workforce Development; GIRFEC; Improving Literacies

Progress and impact

SQA Performance 2016Through a process of rigorous monitoring and tracking of young peoples’ progress, there is clear evidence of sustained improvement in attainment in national examinations. Most notably at S4 where the percentage of pupils achieving 5+ awards at Level 5 (National 5), increased from 22% in 2015 to 27.7% in 2016. This was the school’s best ever performance in this measure and was above our comparator in deciles 1&2 which represent the majority of that cohort.

In S5 there was continued improvement for students achieving 3 awards at level 6 (Higher) and again this was the school’s best ever performance with an improvement from 18.2% in 2015 to 19% in 2016. The improvement in pupils achieving 5 awards at level 6 has been sustained over 6 years with 10% achieving 5 Highers in 2016.

There was however a slight decline in 2016 of the percentage of S5 pupils achieving 1 award at Level 6. The school’s robust tracking system had predicted this and targeted mentoring programmes have been put in place to improve on this performance in 2017.

In S6 the school has shown continued improvement in the percentage of students achieving awards at level 6 (Higher) and level 7 (Advanced Higher). Again we are delighted to report that these results represent the school’s best ever performance in all measures.

Our attainment trends in some subjects, at all levels, compares very well with NLC and National performances and we have achieved consistently strong performances in these departments. The school continues to use robust tracking and monitoring approaches to raise attainment and target support to individual students to help close the poverty related attainment gap. This session, Principal Teachers have worked together to develop and implement a new Assessment and Moderation policy; they also agreed a more robust approach to monitoring and tracking to ensure greater consistency of approach across the school, with a particular focus on analysing and interpreting pupil data to enable teachers to implement effective, targeted interventions. Our Principal Teachers worked in trios to support each other in analysing and acting on Insight data in order to improve attainment and achievement across the school.

Parents and carers continue to work with staff and our Home School Partnership Officer on improving

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their skills in supporting our young people with regard to home study. This session we introduced an additional Parent Study Support meeting which was very well attended. Furthermore, we conducted a focus group session with parents and developed additional study advice for parents to reflect the findings of the focus group.

We continue to offer universal and targeted Supported Study classes and Easter School and have made significant and sustained improvements as part of the Focus West group of schools. Our improved attainment is reflected in our consistently strong positive leaver destinations, reflected in increasing numbers of our young people securing places at university. Focus West data illustrates this success.

Progress in the Broad General Education (BGE)Staff have adopted a collegiate approach to planning and assessing progress for our young people in the BGE (S1 – 3). Each department uses a variety of assessment methodologies; planning and assessment of pupil work is clearly linked to the Experiences and Outcomes, Significant Aspects of Learning, progression frameworks and more recently to Benchmarks. Course plans and assessment arrangements form the basis of regular discussion at Departmental Meetings and meetings between Principal Teachers and their Senior Leadership Team link Depute Head Teacher. PTs have agreed effective moderation processes at department and whole school level. Implementation of standardised assessments has taken place and analysis of data has been shared with staff, displayed on the data wall and updated on a regular basis. Furthermore current tracking data of all pupils and course assessment and moderation information, is now available on the staff server for each department.

Wider AchievementOur young people have had the opportunity to participate in many activities and courses which lead to wider achievements. This session, we have had great success, with our students celebrating their achievements in a wide range of awards including:

1 Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award8 Silver Duke of Edinburgh Awards8 Bronze Duke of Edinburgh Awards23 Saltire Awards11 Princes Trust Awards57 Dynamic Youth Awards As well as these formal awards, our young people have participated in:Fire Reach, work experience, school shows and concerts, Charity Committee, Pupil Council, Easter School, Summer School, Paired Reading, Peer Mentoring, Senior Leadership initiatives, Eco Committee and the Malawi group.

MasterclassesTo prepare our young people for life and work, we have introduced two periods of Masterclasses per week into our S3 curriculum. The focus of the Masterclasses is employability and life skills associated with the world of work. With the introduction of Masterclasses we hope to provide our young people with the skills and knowledge necessary for success beyond school.

As well as Masterclasses for S3, all our young people have had the opportunity to experience skills for work lessons as part of their PSE and Health & Wellbeing courses.

Vocational CoursesWe continued to offer a wide range of vocational courses. Within the school and the Skills Academy, we offered Hairdressing, Beauty and Construction, and next session we are expanding on our provision and

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will be able to offer Make-up Artistry. Our S5 and S6 students have had the opportunity to study more vocational courses at partner high schools through the locality planning model. We also offered Skillforce to our S5/6 students and the Enterprise & Employability Award to our S3 & S4 students. Supporting LearnersThe school has a Principal Teacher of Support for Learning and Inclusion who along with her team works with young people who have specific learning and additional support needs. This session, we appointed an Acting PT of Nurture and increased staffing to the Support & Inclusion faculty. Throughout the session our Support Base offered a welcoming and nurturing environment for all our young people, especially for those with additional support needs. We also established highly successful Nurture groups.

ImpactWe are delighted to report that, as a result of all of the approaches highlighted above, our exclusion rate for 2016-17 has remained consistently very low and we began the session having the highest attendance rate among all NLC secondary schools.

Next Steps

To ensure that: Our young people benefit from all departments planning learning, teaching and assessment

using the key resources of Es and Os and benchmarks including literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing.

Our staff work collegiately towards achieving a shared understanding of the Benchmarks in the BGE to ensure consistency with regard to ‘achieving a level’.

Our young people benefit from all staff across the school employing a consistent and rigorous approach to the tracking, monitoring and reporting of attainment and achievement based on effective assessment and moderation processes.

Our young people benefit from effective collection and analysis of individual pupil data which will facilitate identifying gaps at class and school level and implementing targeted interventions focused on closing the poverty related attainment gap.

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School priority 3:To further develop our curriculum framework at all stages to ensure that all our young people have an appropriate learner journey and pathways to success.

NIF Priority Improvement in attainment, particularly in literacy and numeracy; Improvement in children and young people’s health and wellbeing; Improvement in employability skills and sustained, positive school leaver destinations for all young people

NIF Driver School Leadership, Teacher Professionalism, School Improvement, Parental Engagement

HGIOS?4 QIs 2.2, 2.1, 2.4, 2.6, 2.7, 3.3NLC Priority

Curriculum Framework; Improving Literacies

Progress and impact

Throughout the session, our teachers have used a range of different contexts and activities to develop our young peoples’ knowledge, skills and attributes in literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing. We have developed a whole school approach to monitoring pupil progress in literacy and teachers now have access to extensive individual pupil data which enables them to demonstrate individual progress through the Curriculum for Excellence levels.

Vocational programmes, Personal and Social Education, Health and wellbeing, and senior student leadership courses have been further developed. All our young people have been supported at key transition stages and this has impacted on improved achievement, attainment and positive leaver destinations. As a result of our curriculum review, we have been able to deliver employability skills at all stages, at whole school and departmental level. We have established a more rigorous process of gathering leaver information and have established effective links with local businesses through our Developing the Young Workforce (DYW) Champion, the Pupil Support team, Home School Partnership Officer and Careers Adviser. Our Business Breakfast and Careers Fairs were a huge success and received very positive feedback from pupils, parents and partners; we will continue to develop these in the new session. We are also delighted to report that our North Lanarkshire workforce partnerships are now established.

Throughout the session, the Pupil Support team has worked extremely hard in partnership with Skills Development Scotland and our Community Learning and Development colleagues to carefully track all potential school leavers to ensure that they have a positive destination. This continued partnership enabled us to track and target pupils at risk of a negative destination, and provide support to them in career planning. Insight data on positive leaver destinations is in line with the NLC, with Bellshill Academy at 92% and NLC at 93%. The national measure was 93% and the virtual comparator 92%. The 5 year trend shows a steady increase each year in positive leaver destinations.

The latest Focus West annual report shows that Bellshill Academy has a progression rate of 18.2% to Higher Education, which is one of the highest in North Lanarkshire. Bellshill Academy had 32 students applying for University places; 31 students were offered places, with another 27 students going onto further education. We are very pleased to report such success for our senior students.

Our increased school roll also reflects the very positive school image Bellshill Academy has within our community with a projected roll which is the highest the school has had in 10 years. Next session we will enroll pupils from 8 different Primary Schools (this is significant as we only have 3 Associated

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Primary Schools).

Next Steps

To ensure that: Our young people benefit from further development of our curriculum framework at all stages to

ensure literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing outcomes are met.

Our young people benefit from greater engagement with our partners to ensure we meet pupil entitlements as outlined in the DYW agenda.

Our staff work collegiately to review and adapt National Qualifications in line with revised SQA course and assessment specifications.

Our young people have the opportunity to experience quality IDL at all stages and will be able to apply or transfer skills in different contexts.

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NIF Priority Improvement in attainment, particularly in literacy and numeracy; Closing the attainment gap between the most and least disadvantaged children

NIF Driver School Improvement, Performance Information, School leadership, Teacher Professionalism

HGIOS?4 QIs 1.1, 1.2, 3.2

NLC Priority Leadership and Workforce Development, GIRFEC

Progress and impact

Based on feedback from colleagues, we have worked very hard to ensure that new assessment, tracking and reporting polices are now in place. As a result, we now have greater consistency in our approach to tracking, monitoring and reporting through more effective assessment and moderation practices across all departments. Pupil and whole school data is now more effectively shared with all young people and the wider school community. We have also provided greater opportunities to gather pupil, staff, parent and partner views, through a range of surveys, questionnaires and focus groups. This valuable self-evaluation evidence has been used by our School Improvement Planning group, to help identify our school improvement priorities for 2017/18.

During the session, an extensive bullying survey was developed by the Pupil Support team. In addition to the survey, senior students conducted pupil focus groups and the feedback was used to develop a new Anti–bullying policy and procedures which are now in place. Senior students delivered high quality presentations to all year groups on the findings of the survey and younger pupils, especially, engaged very well with this approach. The feedback also led directly to the setting up of a new pupil social area, which will be used next session for peer mentoring and support. Our pupils are already making great use of this space.

Feedback from parent workshops and parent focus groups, led directly to the development of a new approach to the Primary 7 Roadshow. Parents had indicated that they felt there was a need for more subject-specific information at such events, and, as a result, subject based workshops were introduced and formed the basis of the Roadshow in June. Feedback from the Roadshow was extremely positive and parents intimated that the workshop format was more informative and helpful in the final transition process.

Throughout the session we have made every effort to keep our staff, pupils, parents and our wider school community informed of our improvement journey. This has been achieved through the use of displays, newsletters, local press, parents’ meetings, award ceremonies, pupil council and twitter.

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Next Steps

Next session, our focus for self-evaluation will be on developing whole school approaches to monitoring and tracking pupil progress in literacy, numeracy and health & wellbeing across the curriculum. A key aspect of our work will be to close the poverty related attainment gap. New Pupil Equity Fund promoted posts will be established and colleagues appointed to these positions will have responsibility for driving forward progress in these areas.

Labour market information and intelligence (LMI) will be used by our extended Pupil Support team to support them in providing greater and more targeted, work- based opportunities for our young people. We will use this information to continue to improve positive leaver destinations and to further develop the business partnerships we have already established within our local community.

Tracking in the Senior Phase will be further developed to ensure greater consistency and accuracy. Our aim is to ensure that teachers provide more robust data at each tracking period so that effective interventions can be put into place at the earliest and most effective stages.

Throughout the coming session, we will continue to gather, analyse and respond to feedback from all members of our school community as we deliver on the priorities of our school improvement plan.

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Pupil Equity Fund

Bellshill Academy Pupil Equity Fund Allocation and impact

The new School Improvement Plan for session 2017-2018 has identified how the Pupil Equity Fund will be allocated next session and the impact we anticipate this will have.

Effective collection and analysis of individual pupil data will facilitate identifying gaps at class and school level and implementing targeted interventions focused on closing the poverty related attainment gap. Data includes profiling based on SIMD, attendance and HWB information. Data will be used to direct appropriate interventions to support targeted pupils. These interventions will produce evidence of pupils in SIMD 1-3 achieving at similar levels to those in SIMD 4-10. Senior staff are currently working with North Lanarkshire’s Performance Analyst in piloting a very robust tracking system which enables staff to monitor and track progress at both a strategic and class level.

Full details of our PEF strategy and rationale are outlined overleaf.

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ATTAINMENT AREA TO BE ADDRESSED

OUTLINE STRATEGY STAFFING FTE SUCCESS CRITERIA/IMPACT

Co-ordination of PEF strategy within BA

Co-ordinate: Monitoring &

Tracking of BGE to enable SLT to identify pupils who experience barriers to learning due to all aspects of poverty and track pupil progress.

Implementation of intervention strategies

Monitor and evaluate impact of strategies based on pupil outcomes

Communication of PEF strategies to SLT, staff and community

Acting DHT1.0 FTE

Success Criteria: Effective strategic planning

of all PEF strategies in line with school, LA and National rationale

Effective co-ordination of all aspects of PEF strategies and of staff engaged in intervention strategies

Effective communication of the BA approach to all stakeholders

Effective monitoring and tracking of impact based on pupil outcomes

Impact:Improved attainment, achievement, engagement (based on attendance, exclusions and participation) of young people involved.

Health and wellbeing & wider achievement

Literacy and Numeracy

The PT will work as part of the extended Pupil Support team to develop and lead Health and wellbeing and wider achievement interventions for targeted young people.The PT will liaise with partner agencies to support access to these interventions, including access to mental and emotional health support.

The PT will work as part of the Transitions Team to develop and lead literacy and numeracy interventions for targeted young people at key points of transition.The PT will liaise with partner agencies to support access to these interventions

Acting PT1.0 FTE

Acting PT1.0 FTE

Success Criteria:Young people in BGE who experience poverty related barriers to learning are supported in accessing a greater range of health and wellbeing & wider achievement interventions across the school and wider community.

Impact:Improved attainment, achievement, engagement (based on attendance, exclusions and participation) of young people involved.

Success Criteria:Young people in BGE who experience poverty related barriers to learning are supported in accessing a greater range of literacy and numeracy interventions.

Impact:Improved attainment, achievement, engagement (based on attendance, exclusions and participation) of young people involved.

Parental engagement A teacher will work as Teacher Success Criteria:

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ATTAINMENT AREA TO BE ADDRESSED

OUTLINE STRATEGY STAFFING FTE SUCCESS CRITERIA/IMPACT

Co-ordination of PEF strategy within BA

Co-ordinate: Monitoring &

Tracking of BGE to enable SLT to identify pupils who experience barriers to learning due to all aspects of poverty and track pupil progress.

Implementation of intervention strategies

Monitor and evaluate impact of strategies based on pupil outcomes

Communication of PEF strategies to SLT, staff and community

Acting DHT1.0 FTE

Success Criteria: Effective strategic planning

of all PEF strategies in line with school, LA and National rationale

Effective co-ordination of all aspects of PEF strategies and of staff engaged in intervention strategies

Effective communication of the BA approach to all stakeholders

Effective monitoring and tracking of impact based on pupil outcomes

Impact:Improved attainment, achievement, engagement (based on attendance, exclusions and participation) of young people involved.

Health and wellbeing & wider achievement

Literacy and Numeracy

The PT will work as part of the extended Pupil Support team to develop and lead Health and wellbeing and wider achievement interventions for targeted young people.The PT will liaise with partner agencies to support access to these interventions, including access to mental and emotional health support.

The PT will work as part of the Transitions Team to develop and lead literacy and numeracy interventions for targeted young people at key points of transition.The PT will liaise with partner agencies to support access to these interventions

Acting PT1.0 FTE

Acting PT1.0 FTE

Success Criteria:Young people in BGE who experience poverty related barriers to learning are supported in accessing a greater range of health and wellbeing & wider achievement interventions across the school and wider community.

Impact:Improved attainment, achievement, engagement (based on attendance, exclusions and participation) of young people involved.

Success Criteria:Young people in BGE who experience poverty related barriers to learning are supported in accessing a greater range of literacy and numeracy interventions.

Impact:Improved attainment, achievement, engagement (based on attendance, exclusions and participation) of young people involved.

Parental engagement A teacher will work as Teacher Success Criteria: