This document outlines an agenda for a leadership development programme focused on closing achievement gaps. It discusses exploring the importance of closing gaps and strategies leaders can use. Key points include identifying gaps in socioeconomic status, gender, and ethnicity. Leaders are encouraged to analyze data, think strategically, and take action to improve outcomes for disadvantaged groups and reduce variation in teaching quality. Reducing gaps contributes to individual, social, and economic benefits.

1. Closing the Gap
Developing Leaders Programme
Biddulph High School
Monday 4th December

2. Aims
To explore the significance of
"Closing the Gap" in Leadership:
Why is it important?
What can be done?
How do you do it?
To understand your Leadership
Competencies (developing “self”).
To explore and refine your
Leadership Challenge.

3. Leadership

4. Strategies to improve learning…

5. How many uses for a…

7. Changing Paradigms:
What are the implications for:
• Teachers?
• Leaders?
• The education system as a whole?
Is this too idealistic, or should leaders think in
this way?

8. Leadership Competencies

9. Self reflection…
Think about the characteristics of an effective leader.
• Which characteristics do you have?
• Which characteristics do you need to develop
further?
Choose one characteristic that you need to work on –
how could you begin to develop this when you go
back to school tomorrow?

10. Educational
Excellence
Operational
Management
Strategic Leadership
Delivering continuous
improvement
Modelling excellence in
leadership of teaching
and learning
Learning focus
Serving others
Broad organisational
understanding
Partnership Working
Inspiring Others
Information Seeking
Analytical thinking
Relating to others
Holding others to
account
Developing others
Self-awareness
Personal drive
Integrity Resilience and
emotional maturity
Conceptual thinking
Future focus
Impact and influence
Level One & Two
Competencies

12. Sutton Trust (2011) report 'Improving the impact of teachers on
pupil achievement in the UK: interim findings'.
The biggest single variable (30 per cent) that explains in-
school variation is teachers: teaching strategies, professional
characteristics and classroom climate explain the disturbing
levels of variation in some schools. Achieving consistency
means eliminating variation and that in turn involves
identifying the non-negotiables, ie aspects of teaching and
learning that have been identified as essential to raising
performance and achievement. In very broad terms, high-
performing schools are schools with the lowest levels of
variation, ie the highest levels of consistently outstanding
practice. The leadership of subject or phase teaching has to
start and end with the issue of consistency and variation.

14. Effective Teaching...
“The difference between a very effective teacher and a
poorly performing teacher is large. For example during one
year with a very effective maths teacher, pupils gain 40 per
cent more in their learning than they would with a poorly
performing maths teacher. The effects of high-quality
teaching are especially significant for pupils from
disadvantaged backgrounds: over a school year, these
pupils gain 1.5 years’ worth of learning with very effective
teachers, compared with 0.5 years with poorly performing
teachers. In other words, for poor pupils the difference
between a good teacher and a bad teacher is a whole
year’s learning.”
Sutton Trust, 2011, p2

15. Why close the gap?
• What do you understand
about closing the gap?
• Why do we need to close the gap?
• How do we close the gap?

16. Why close the gap?
What do you
understand
about closing the
gap?
Why do we need to
close the gap?
How do we close the
gap?

17. Why close the gap?
Closing the gap means…
• Identifying which groups are least successful
• Reflecting on the causes
• Taking action
• Improving their wellbeing
• Bringing attainment levels closer to national
norms.

18. edgehill.ac.uk
What are the Three common
gaps?
Identifying your gaps…

19. edgehill.ac.uk
Three common gaps:
-Socio-economic
-Gender
-Ethnicity
Other
Identifying your gaps

20. Economic
This gap, at 54% using the family socio-economic
position (SEP), is described as "astonishing" by the
researchers reporting it…
• 7 X the gender gap
• More than 2/3 bigger than the ethnicity gap
• In the richest 1/5, 75% of students reached 5A*–C, including
English and Mathematics, while in the poorest 1/5 the figure
was 21%
• Pupils with SEN are more likely to be eligible for free school
meals than those without SEN.
• Of pupils with statements, those with a primary need type of
behaviour, emotional and social difficulties are most likely to be
eligible for free school meals.

21. Economic
If you want to know how well a child will do at school,
ask how much its parents earn. The fact remains, after
more than 50 years of the welfare state and several
decades of comprehensive education, family wealth is
the single biggest predictor of success in the school
system
Hatcher ... 2006

22. Gender
• At over 7%, this gap is the smallest of the
three
Boys are:
• Two-and-a-half times more likely than girls to
have statements at primary school.
• Nearly three times more likely to have
statements at secondary school compared to
girls.

23. Ethnicity
• This gap, at around 32% is 4x wider than the
gender gap. The highest-performing group is
Chinese (75.1 %) and, excluding traveller
children, the lowest-performing is black
Caribbean (43.5%)
• Black pupils are most likely to have SEN at
primary school and special educational needs
without statements at secondary school.
Chinese pupils were least likely to have special
educational needs at both primary and
secondary schools.

24. Other common gaps
• In-school variation
• Between-school variation
• Between other vulnerable groups such as
 mobile pupils
 pupils with special educational needs
 looked-after children

25. edgehill.ac.uk
Involving:
-Vision and ambition for your pupils and school
-Analysis of evidence (statistical and others)
-Strategic thinking
-Tactical planning
-Operational drive
-Capacity building
-Partnership building
Closing the gap is a core leadership responsibility

26. Your Leadership Challenge

27. The RAISE Quiz!
1. What percentage of pupils at Biddulph High
School are white British? What is the national
percentage? (P9)
2. What percentage of pupils achieved a C or
above in 5 GCSEs including English and Maths
in 2013? What is the difference between this
and the national average? (P17)
3. What percentage of pupils achieved a C or
above in Core Science in 2013? (P22)

28. Internal data
• Why do we need internal data?
• What should this look like?
• How do we use it?
• What are we going to do about the
findings?

29. Rationale Data Communication
Timeline Leadership
development
Review

30. • What have you done today (seen, heard, discussed)
that you are going to develop?
• Are you going to discuss the leadership challenge
with your Faculty ……
Reflect & Review
Consider the session this afternoon, the data input,
leadership challenge and gap tasks. Where do you
go from here? Spend 10 minutes jotting down some
notes in your learning log

31. Speed dating…
Describe yourself…
(your competencies)
What are your interests…
(for closing the gap)
What are you hoping to
get out of this
relationship?
(out of this project)

32. In School Variation (don’t use)
1. What is the biggest single variable (30%) that
explains in-school variation?
2. As a Middle leader how would you go about
eliminating variation?
3. What would be your ‘non-negotiables’ to
ensure the highest levels of consistently
outstanding practice?

33. edgehill.ac.uk
Why close the gap? (don’t use)
Closing gaps is a contribution to three distinct though
overlapping ambitions that any society should expect of it’s
education service:
private returns, the personal benefits to individuals, often
expressed in terms of income, occupation, wellbeing and
health
social returns, often expressed as improvements in general
health, social participation and social cohesion
economic returns, generally thought of as increases in
employment and labour productivity