Eastbourne Primary School aims for excellence through high quality teachers and learning outcomes. The school recognizes the impact of socioeconomic disadvantage on students and the moral imperative to address their needs. Research shows that effective teachers use evidence-based methods, have high expectations, understand each student's starting point and monitor progress. The school implements a "critical learning path" approach where teachers collaborate in teams to precisely identify individual student needs, plan targeted instruction, and reflect on results. To increase precision and engagement, teachers provide small group and individualized instruction based on formative assessment data. The school is strategizing to enhance resources like technology and collaboration spaces to further support personalizing learning at students' points of need.

1. Eastbourne
Primary School
High Quality Teachers, High Quality Learning, High
Quality Outcomes
A vision for excellence for our community.

2. Some Context:
Victorian Education- PISA 2009

3. The Vision:

4. The Strategy:

5. Eastbourne Primary School:
socio-economic background

6. Socio-economic disadvantage: a
moral imperative to get it right
Raudenbusch (2009), cited in Dinham. (2010)

7. The impact of the teacher

8. So… what do good teachers do?
 Trade-based vs evidence-based
 We know what works!
 e5
 Hattie
 Early Years
 International agreement
 A clinical approach: diagnose need, intervene based on
evidence-based methods, monitor impact of intervention
 Collaboration and making the data visible leads to
greater consistency: ‘more like the best’

9. Prof Geoff Masters (ACER)
 High Expectations
 The belief that all students can improve
 Clarity About Learning Intentions
 Knowing what improvement/progress looks like
 Starting Point for Learning
 Knowing where learner is at
 Evidence-Based Methods
 Knowing which teaching strategies/methods have proven to
help students make progress
 Monitoring and Feedback
 Knowing whether or not teaching is working, how much and
for whom

10. Personalising Learning
Precision: to what
extent does the
learning match the
individual’s point of
need?
Engagement: to what extent is
the learner participating
behaviourally, emotionally and
cognitively in their learning?
High
Engagement,
Low Precision
High
Engagement,
High Precision
Low
Engagement,
Low Precision
Low
Engagement,
High Precision

11. Personalised Learning: Imagine
how hard this is!
The average teacher begins each lesson with only
generalised knowledge of what students know and do not
know and where to focus instruction and provide instruction
so that each student’s learning needs are met. As a
consequence, teaching in classrooms lacks the kind of focus
and precision needed…
Teachers know this and are all too conscious of the gap
between what they believe about learning and the
practicalities of making it happen in the busy classroom…
Given the realities of the classroom and the logistics of
interacting with 30 or so students day in and day out, it is
almost impossible for these conditions to be met for all
students on a consistent and sustained basis.
- Fullan, Hill and Crevola (2006)

12. ‘Critical Learning Path’
• Identify area of need
• Build developmental progression
• Develop assessment method and data display
•Plan, facilitate and monitor student-centred
learning
• Reflect on effect of instruction

13. What does it look like?
 Teams of 2-3
teachers
 Meet during class
time to plan
 Professional
Learning Team
Leader: facilitates
the process
 Assistant Principal
‘coaches’ the team
to higher
engagement and
precision

14. What does it look like?
 What are we teaching?
 How will we find out where
students are currently at?
 Where are they at?
 What can we do to help the
student make progress
(learn)?
 Who is making progress?
Why?
 Who isn't making progress?
Why not? What can we do
about that?
 How much progress did we
make over the period? What
can we learn about effective
teaching from that?

15. Finding the point of need…
 Use of pre-assessments
to diagnose, and
subsequent
assessments to monitor
student progress
 Students can see what
they have to do to be
successful

16. Increasing Student Engagement
 Helping
students set
goals that
are specific,
measurable,
attainable
and relevant
 All students
are
challenged
and
supported to
make
progress
 Growth is
reinforced
and
celebrated

17. Teacher-Directed, Student-Centred Teaching
 Small-group explicit instruction: students with the same goal working to
achieve their next step
 Independent practise of current level to develop fluency, understanding
and application
 Feedback to the learner about where they are at, what their next step
is, and how they might get there.

18. Teacher-Directed, Student-Centred Teaching
 Small-group explicit instruction: students with the same goal working to
achieve their next step
 Independent practise of current level to develop fluency, understanding
and application
 Feedback to the learner about where they are at, what their next step
is, and how they might get there.

19. Success so far…
Use of effect size to measure impact
of interventions
A common scale to determine the
impact of our changed actions and
attitudes

24. Next steps…
 Strategic resourcing to fit with the ‘engagement-
precision-collaboration’ vision
 Technology: iPads in junior school for independent learning
to free up teacher for more precise instruction, media
production space for students
 Space to meet in collaborative teams with access to wi-fi
and data projection
 ‘Sharepoint’ networking technology to enhance collaboration
and storage of assessment data and curriculum planning
 Further refinements to the timetable to facilitate
collaboration
 Increased planning time for teacher teams to further
increase precision and point of need instruction (common
literacy and numeracy times)