Year Of Numeracy 1997

Raising Standards in the Core Skills

You may be aware that the City Council and TEC have made a successful bid to the Government Office for funding from the Single Regeneration Budget, focused on improving numeracy and literacy underpinned by IT. The 1997-98 Business Plan for Core Skills Development was approved by the Core Skills Partnership Board on 18th November 1996. Funding through this SRB is provided retrospectively by the Government Office on the condition that we do two things: first, we are required to develop a coherent strategy for improving professional development for teachers, other adults supporting schools and parents in relation to literacy, numeracy and IT, and that secondly, we adopt a strategic approach to improving literacy and numeracy achievement levels amongst pupils and young adults.

This strategy is jointly being developed by several different departments within the City Council, and within Birmingham TEC and, of course, the Education Department is playing a major role in this. We are now at a stage where our initial ideas for improving literacy and numeracy, especially through professional development and support, have been agreed with the Government Office and our own local Core Skills Partnership SRB Board.

The strategic plan for improving literacy and numeracy across the city has the aim of involving all schools over the six and a half years that funding will be available. This work will be supported by the model of School Improvement planning currently being developed in the city.

The Strategy in Outline

We are suggesting a two-pronged approach to support schools in improving achievement levels in literacy and numeracy.

1) Professional development for :

Primary phase newly qualified teachers
Primary English, mathematics and special needs co-ordinators
Key stage 3 teachers with responsibility for literacy, numeracy and special needs
Newly appointed Head Teachers

We also plan to make training available to a much broader range of teachers and school managers.

2) School focused work targeted on raising standards in literacy and numeracy within the following age cohorts:

Children in early years and Key Stage 1
Pupils in Year 5 through to Year 7 (spanning the KS 2-3 transition)
Students in 14-16 and post 16 provision

Available performance information indicates that intensive support for these cohorts will have a disproportionately positive impact upon raising achievement.

Work in Early Years and Key Stage 1 in literacy will build upon current successful development work grounded on reading enrichment programmes. This intensive school-based support and development has been shown to be very effective and has had a marked impact on pupil achievement levels in reading and general literacy. You will also know that Birmingham is one of twenty Local Education Authorities involved in the National Numeracy Project. We plan to extend this initiative to many more schools building on the model being developed through the Numeracy Centre programme. Again this intensive work within schools is already having a very positive benefit and impact upon pupil achievement levels. All of this work in literacy and numeracy will need to be underpinned by the appropriate use of Information Technology and so we are currently exploring ways of enabling schools to have access to resources to help children to use IT effectively in this way. Work at the A level/GNVQ phase will focus in conjunction with the Careers and Education Business Partnership and Birmingham TEC, in supporting embedding core skills into a range of programmes.

As you can see, the strategy has been developed in order for us to target raising standards but also to secure the resources from the Government Office in the first place. What will need to be determined by us in consultation with schools is which particular schools will be involved in the programme initially so that we are able to phase the development work over the years of the initiative. Decisions about which schools come into the project will be made on the basis of whether the project goals meet with the school's own development priorities and the extent to which the school is able to match fund from their own budgets to enable greater overall impact of the development work. It is likely that schools involved in this work will be involved in development for a period of 2-3 years in a quite intensive way with the LEA working closely with those schools.

Martineau Education Centre, Balden Road, Harbome, Birmingham B32 2EH

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