This document discusses corporate parenting in education in Scotland. It begins by outlining the Scottish government's vision of corporate parenting, which is for all services to work together to promote the interests and rights of looked-after children. It then explains that corporate parenting duties were established by law in 2014, requiring formal partnerships between all services responsible for looked-after children. The duties include developing and reviewing corporate parenting plans. The document poses questions for educators about how corporate parenting affects their work and partnerships. It emphasizes that closing achievement gaps for disadvantaged children is a priority that requires targeted interventions and a focus on improving teaching quality, leadership, family engagement, and children's wellbeing.

1. Corporate Parenting in Education
Elizabeth Morrison
CELCIS Education Conference
3 May 2018

2. • Corporate Parenting – what does it
mean for education?
• Achieving excellence and equity for
all children: our core mission
• Questions and discussion
Overview

3. Scottish Government vision
Improvements in experiences and lives of looked after children and care
leavers will be achieved through corporate parents working together, in
partnership with children, young people and families, to promote their
interests, uphold their rights, and safeguard their wellbeing
Corporate parenting – it’s everyone’s job!

4. • Corporate Parenting duties were set out in statute in Part 9 of the Children and Young
People (Scotland) Act 2014 and were commenced on 1 April 2015.
• Corporate Parenting is described as the formal and local partnership needed
between all services responsible for the needs of looked after children, young people
and care leavers.
• Partnerships are paramount to make sure we become effective and consistent
corporate parents - working together and sharing relevant information to enable
looked after children and young people and care leavers to achieve the best
outcomes they can.
• Corporate parents are required to prepare, consult on and publish a corporate
parenting plan and keep this under review. They will also be required to report to on
how they are exercising their duties to Scottish Ministers, and Ministers are required
to report to parliament every three years starting from April 2018.
• Statutory guidance to support Corporate Parents to understand their legal
responsibilities within the scope of their other functions is available on the Scottish
Government website
As an educationalist, do you know that…

5. • What does this mean for the ways in which you work with other
professionals caring for children?
• How does this impact on the ways in which you plan to meet children’s
needs?
• Have you considered corporate parenting as part of your work on
Ensuring Equality, Wellbeing and Inclusion (quality indicator)
Are you aware of the corporate parenting plan in
your locality?

6. • What does this mean for the ways in which you work with other
professionals caring for children?
• How does this impact on the ways in which you plan to meet children’s
needs?
• Have you considered corporate parenting as part of your work on
Ensuring Equality, Wellbeing and Inclusion (quality indicator)
Corporate Parenting: priorities

7. “Closing the gap” is a shorthand
expression for all of our work to
interrupt the cycle of
deprivation and the impact on
children’s progress and
attainment.
Our defining mission ‘closing the gap’

8. The priorities
Excellence
and
Equity
Raising attainment (universal)
and
Closing the gap (selective intervention)
Generic/ universal improvement planning won’t close the
gap (eg raise attainment in writing)

9. Scottish Attainment Challenge in action….
• Learning and teaching
• Leadership
• Families and Communities
Organisers
• Literacy
• Numeracy
• Health and Wellbeing
Interventions

10. Local Shop Learning
‘If you were running a supermarket instead of a school and saw
that 30 out of 100 customers each day left your shop without
buying anything, you would think about changing your inventory.
But that does not happen easily in schools because of deeply
rooted, even if scientifically unsupported, beliefs that learning can
only occur in a particular way.’
Lord Knight of Weymouth, quoted
Education Britain: The Journey to Education Reform,
Education Foundation 2014

11. • Attainment
• Attendance
• Exclusion
• Engagement
• Participation
5 key indicators – closing the gap

12. Leuven Scale of Involvement
Level Engagement Examples
1 Extremely low:
the child shows hardly any activity
* No concentration: staring, daydreaming;
* An absent, passive attitude;
* No goal-oriented activity, aimless actions, not producing anything;
* No signs of exploration and interest;
* Not taking anything in, no mental activity
2 Low: the child shows some degree of
activity which is often interrupted
* Limited concentration; looks away during the activity, fiddles, dreams;
* Is easily distracted;
* Action only leads to limited results.
3 Moderate: the child is busy the whole time,
but without real concentration;
* Routine actions, attention is superficial;
* Is not absorbed in the activity, activities are short lived;
* Limited motivation, no real dedication, does not feel challenged;
* The child does not gain deep-level experiences;
* Does not use his/her capabilities to full extent;
* The activity does not address the child’s imagination.
4 High: there are clear signs of involvement,
but these are not always present to
their full extent
* The child is engaged in the activity without interruption;
* Most of the time there is real concentration, but during some brief
moments the attention is more superficial;
* The child feels challenged, there is a certain degree of motivation;
* The child’s capabilities and its imagination to a certain extent are
addressed in the activity.
5 Extremely High: during
the observation of
learning the child is
continually engaged
in the activity and
completely absorbed
In it.
Is absolutely focussed, concentrated without interruption;
Is highly motivated, feels strongly appealed by the activity,
Even strong stimuli cannot distract him/her;
Is alert, has attention for details, shows precision;
Its mental activity and experience are intense;
The child constantly addresses all its capabilities: imagination
mental capacity are in top gear;
Obviously enjoys being engrossed in the activity.

13. • Attainment:
• CfE Levels or NQ data in literacy and numeracy by SIMD quintiles
• The gap between the most and least, ie SIMD 1&2 and 9&10
• Use of virtual comparator school, local and national statistics
• Wider indicators:
• Attendance, exclusions, participation rates
• Achievement awards within the school and community
• Leaver destinations
Agree and define what the gap looks like in your school context.
How do we identify the gap at school level?

14. • Expected progress for all
• Excellent progress for many
• All SIMD bands proportionately represented in the ‘excellent’
• In other words, no pattern of lower attainment for children in
lower SIMD bands
What can be done within lessons to close the gap? Make sure it is not
all about ‘extras’, such as study support.
How do we identify the gap at classroom level?

15. What are the barriers to learning in your
community?
Quality of learning and
teaching
Lack of aspiration

16. Importance of parents and families
• Number of words spoken to children by adults by the age
of 36 months
• In professional families: 35 million
• In other working-class families:20 million
• In families on welfare: 10 million
• Kinds of reinforcements:
positive negative
• professional 500,000 50,000
• working-class 200,000 100,000
• welfare 100,000 200,000
Dylan Wiliam – Attainment Challenge
Masterclass - 2016

17. The importance of learning and teaching
“The major source of student
variance lies within the person
who gently closes the door
of the classroom door and
performs the teaching act.”
“The remarkable feature of the
(research) evidence is that the
biggest effects on student learning
occur when teachers become
learners of their own teaching.”
John Hattie “Visible Learning”

18. Interventions for Equity
Improveattainmentinliteracyandnumeracy
LearningandTeaching
Improvehealthandwellbeing
FamiliesandCommunities
Interventions for equity
The key priorities are:
The primary levers for change are:
Interventions should focus on:
1. Early intervention
and prevention
2. Social and emotional
wellbeing
3. Promoting healthy
lifestyles
4. Targeted approaches
to literacy and
numeracy
5. Promoting a high
quality learning
experience
6. Differentiated
support
7. Using evidence and
data
8. Employability and
skills development
9. Engaging beyond the
school
10. Partnership
working
11. Professional
learning and leadership
12. Research and
evaluation to monitor
impact
Leadership
 Improve employability skills and school leaver destinations

19. Challenge limiting beliefs and casual assumptions
which kill aspiration
‘We’ve tried that…’
‘We already do that…’
‘I’d love to do that but…’
‘It won’t work …’
‘It won’t work with our children…’
‘It won’t work with these children…’

20. Corporate parenting in the classroom means
giving all children opportunities to succeed – all
children benefit from inclusive practice
What experiences do you want all children in your
learning community to experience?

23. Equality = SAMENESS, Equity = FAIRNESS
• You need to fill the support gap before you close the attainment gap
• Who is quietly underachieving in your school?
• Low attaining children often spend a lot of time with support staff – are you
monitoring the impact of this?
• Training and professional learning for support staff: are they helping to
create independent learners or ‘velcro’ children’ ?
• Avoid ‘intervention add-ons’ We need well planned pathways
• This is a social mobility agenda: what about highly able children?

24. the ability to
dream and set goals
for the future,
while being inspired
in the present
to reach those dreams.
The importance of aspirations

26. Know what impacts
Metacognition
Effective Feedback and Marking
Skilled Questioning
Informed Task Design
Collaborative Learning
Memorability
Expectation (Growth Mindset)
Education Endowment Fund website

27. Follows instructions
Must get it right
Wants the answer
Follows the teachers logic and tries to get
it right
Follows teachers pace
Answers teacher questions
Is grouped by the teacher
Is rewarded upon completion
Is given a mark, level or grade
Is assessed by the teacher
Focus is on becoming a better performer
Is concerned with status and pecking order
Makes decisions
Must have a go
Wants the method
Learns incrementally and by trial and error
Controls own pace
Answers own questions
Elects who to learn with
Is rewarded by effort
Interprets their own mark, level or grade
Assessed by the teacher, themselves and
peers
Focus is on becoming a better learner
Is concerned with progress and capacity to
improve
IndependentDependent

28. Is it really good enough?
• Constantly talk about standards
• What you permit you promote
• Do better than before: quality of feedback
• Doing the right things, for the right reasons, in the right way
everyday
• Excellence in what we say, write, do and make
• Dreaming with determination (Hargreaves 2015)

29. What would we hope to see?
QI 3.2 – Raising Attainment and Achievement
Staff track children’s progress well in literacy and numeracy to ensure that
children have maximum opportunity to improve their attainment year on
year. Where there is a risk of attainment slipping staff take appropriate and
prompt action. There is a clear focus on closing the equity gap and raising
attainment across the school. The school has made a very positive start to
engaging families in children’s learning to help raise attainment and reduce
the equity gap.
• Most children are achieving CfE levels in literacy and numeracy. There is
no pattern between lower attainment and children who live in poverty.
• The school can demonstrate improvements to equity for all learners
using a variety of data and evidence. This includes direct observation in
classrooms and ways in which learners engage and participate in
learning.

30. Role of leaders of learning at all levels
• Create the best learning environment: high challenge, low anxiety
• Change the destiny of the children who need us most. Nature gives us the
‘bell curve’ of attainment levels. If we don’t change the bell curve we are
not doing our jobs properly!
• Very high quality learning and teaching closes gaps. Average learning and
teaching doesn’t
Dylan Wiliam 2016

31. Thank you
https://education.gov.scot/improvement
http://bit.ly/saccommunity
@attainmentscot @elmmorrison