Government pledges extra sport for schools

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport announced an increase in funding for school sports.

Key points:
- By 2012 high quality coaching and competition will be on offer to all school children in all the main sports like cricket, tennis and athletics.
- Sport England also announced the first phase of government plans to offer young people more sport outside of school. The £36 million ‘Sport Unlimited’ scheme is designed to attract into sport those young people who do not take part in sport regularly. It will set up 4000 taster sessions across England in non-traditional sports, including cycling, sailing, kayaking, American football and dodgeball. The nationwide scheme will be available from the beginning of this new school term.
- The extra investment was put in to offer all 5-16 year olds five hours of government funded sport a week, two in school and three out. All 16-19 year olds will be offered three hours of out of school sport a week.

World Class Education Systems

The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) commissioned McKinsey & Company to develop a comparative fact-base for an analysis of the performance of England’s education system and high-performing systems overseas, drawing on its international benchmarking framework.

Key points:
- The world’s highest-performing education systems share three mutually reinforcing attributes:
1. high challenge: high expectations of pupils and fair evaluation of schools and other parts of the system
2. high support: enough resource and capacity-building to meet those high expectations
3. aligned incentives: incentives and consequences that induce schools and other parts of the system to meet expectations

When benchmarked against international comparators, many school reforms implemented in England are shown to be world-leading. However, they are not yet delivering consistently world-class teaching for every student, in every classroom in every school. Following significant improvements attainment can be seen to be levelling off, and evidence suggests performance still has a stronger link to socio-economic background than is the case in the world’s best systems.

Most aspects of England’s schooling system can be rated as ‘good’, or ‘world-class’. One exception to this pattern is high expectations for student achievement - a key attribute of high performing systems – which is rated as ‘fair’.

There is also evidence that academic content and standards are not fully meeting the demands of employers and universities.

Strengths identified in the English system include:
- Devolution of resources to schools and three year budgets
- A focus on turning round or closing failing schools
- Intervening in poorly performing local authorities
- Reform of teacher training and best practice marketing of teaching as a profession

The analysis identified scope to strengthen performance in other areas, including the consistency of classroom teaching and the quality of professional development, and the ability to codify and scale up best practice.

Survey of school break times

This study aimed to provide current information on break and lunch times in primary and secondary schools in England and Wales. The research was based on survey responses from 1566 schools and 1300 pupils (from a separate survey of pupils undertaken in 19 schools). This study was funded by the Nuffield Foundation and updates similar studies undertaken in 1995 and 1990.

Key points:

- The duration of all break times added together tended to decrease as children got older with 91 minutes at KS1, 77 minutes at KS2 and 69 minutes at secondary school. As a proportion of the school day break times took up 24 per cent at KS1, 21 per cent at KS2 and 18 per cent at secondary. These figures indicated a decrease from the previous surveys undertaken in 1995 and 1990.

- Pupils were very positive about break times (particularly the lunch break) and the majority felt that these times should be lengthened (particularly at secondary level) or remain the same.

- Primary schools valued break time as an opportunity for pupils to get physical exercise and to socialise. Secondary schools tended to regard break times in more functional terms as providing time for eating and drinking and giving teachers a break.

- Pupils in primary and secondary schools valued break time as free time for them to do what they want and as an opportunity to socialise and get physical exercise.

- Schools and pupils were in agreement that the main problem at break time was poor behaviour but pupils also noted insufficient opportunity and space for fun activities, and time to eat.

- Staff supervision of break time was three times higher in primary than secondary schools. Supervisory staff numbers and ratios to pupils were similar to those reported in 1995.

- Secondary schools were less likely than primary schools to offer formal training and support for supervisory staff, and tended to rely on informal arrangements instead.

- The majority of primary and secondary schools were neutral to positive about the suitability of school grounds for break time activities. Over half of secondary schools had CCTV in the grounds and the school.

- Nearly all schools reported that they organised clubs and activities for pupils during break time and after school.

- Most schools allowed facilities to be used by the local community but only a minority reported that these are used on a daily basis.

Peer relations at primary school

This report by the Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning
explored friendship patterns and children’s general relationships with their peers between the ages of 8 and 10 and examined how children’s early development (ages 3 to 4) may predict their later development in terms of social behaviour including likelihood of becoming a bully.

Key Points:
- Three quarters of the sample belonged to one of three positive friendship groups - positive, many friends (48 per cent), positive but fallout with friends (18 per cent), and positive but few friends (10 per cent). Normal 0 false false false

- The remaining quarter of the sample had poor social relationships characterised by few friends and a higher prevalence of bullying and or victimisation than the other groups.

- Victims and bully/victims had poorer social relationships than other children, and were more likely to have limited early language skills and social development. Difficulties (e.g. low self-esteem, depression, antisocial behaviour) had existed from age 3 to 4 through primary school years and were most acute for bully/victims.

- Socio-demographic influences on friendship were complex. Children from the positive, many friends cluster were more likely have privileged backgrounds and victims more disadvantaged backgrounds. However, bully/victims did not significantly differ from the other clusters in terms of income and maternal education, although their parents were less likely to be married.

- Some friendship-patterns had a strong gender bias with positive, few friends and bully/victims more likely to be boys. The other groups were more balanced.

New Relationship with Schools Policy

This Research Brief presents the summative findings from the national evaluation of the New Relationship with Schools (NRwS) policy.

The policy, announced in 2004, was recognition of the need to streamline and improve the relationship between the then Department for Education and Skills (DfES), Local Authorities (LAs) and schools; ensure closer alignment of national and local priorities; and address ‘bureaucracy’ as an ongoing area of concern at both the primary and secondary phases of education.

Key points:
- The evaluation demonstrates that a number of the strands of NRwS, both independently and collectively, have supported a move towards the intelligent accountability framework envisaged when the policy was first announced. There is also evidence that these developments are contributing to improvements in quality and standards for some schools and LA areas, particularly in the secondary sector.
- The outcomes achieved place LAs and schools in a good position to respond to some of the challenges set out in the recently published Children’s Plan, including those associated with preventative school support, challenge for coasting schools, improving attainment for specific groups and engaging parent’s in their child’s learning.
- There is a need for continued efforts at national level to work towards more coherent
policy development and delivery across all ECM services and ensure schools have the capacity and necessary support to respond to the significant developments currently affecting the sector. There is also the potential for greater value to be achieved from addressing some aspects of consistency and effectiveness associated with school self-evaluation, data availability and the School Improvement Partner (SIP) programme.