The Hayling College: An EFA Case Study

The Embedding Formative Assessment programme is a priority at The Hayling College – for classroom practice, CPD, staff wellbeing and autonomy, and reducing workload…

The mantra of The Hayling College is “Happy, Healthy, High Performing” and this applies just as much to the staff as to the pupils.

The 11 to 16 comprehensive school, which is judged as good in all areas by Ofsted, has around 530 pupils on roll and is situated on Hayling Island in Hampshire.

The school’s mantra come perhaps as no surprise given that the headteacher since September 2021 is Martyn Reah, who many will know as the creator of the #teacher5aday wellbeing movement.

Created more than eight years ago, #teacher5aday promotes five actions – Connect, Notice, Learn, Volunteer, and Exercise – to help teachers prioritise their wellbeing and the wellbeing of their colleagues and students.

Since then, #teacher5aday has given people a place, especially via social media, to share ideas about how to improve staff and student wellbeing.

Mr Reah is also one of the driving forces behind Pedagoo Hampshire, a CPD event which looked at improving teachers’ development and wellbeing holistically and which, after the disruption of Covid, returned in full force with a meet in September.

For Mr Reah, CPD and wellbeing are natural bedfellows, and he sees his school’s work on the SSAT Embedding Formative Assessment (EFA) programme as key for both staff wellbeing and classroom practice. It is also helping to keep workload in check.

Mr Reah had experience of EFA at his previous school and wasted little time introducing it at Hayling. Work began in January 2022. He explained: “EFA is the number one thing we are doing. If I invest properly in CPD of the staff, then wellbeing improves at the same time.”

Embedding formative assessment

The EFA programme builds on more than 20 years of research into formative assessment by Professor Dylan Wiliam and Siobhán Leahy.

It improves teaching and learning across a school by supporting teachers to trial and refine formative assessment strategies.

Teachers meet monthly in what are known as Teacher Learner Communities (TLCs) to discuss potential formative assessment techniques and lessons learned.

In between sessions, teachers conduct lesson observations and feedback to each other. Students meanwhile are engaged in peer and self-review techniques.

An evaluation by the Education Endowment Foundation involving 140 secondary schools found that learners made the equivalent of two months’ additional progress in their Attainment 8 GCSE score, while those in the lowest third for prior attainment made more progress than peers in the top third.

Those on the programme feel that the TLCs improve practice by allowing “valuable dialogue” between teachers and “experimentation with formative assessment strategies”.

EFA @ The Hayling College

Key to the programme’s implementation at The Hayling College has been the make-up of the TLCs.

Assistant Headteacher for Teaching and Learning Lorraine Mason has been leading the EFA work at the school: “We have a wide range of subjects and a wide range of experience and career progression in each TLC. We wanted people to feel comfortable so that we could have really focused and professional conversations.”

The school sought volunteers to lead the TLCs and each one consists of 11 colleagues or so. The TLC model provides “support and accountability” and supports “a change in classroom habits”. And as well as the regular TLC meetings, there are now regular conversations in the staffroom, classroom drop-ins, and regular peer observation and reviews.

Ms Mason continued: “There is a buzz through the staff. In terms of materials, everything is provided by the SSAT, but at the same time we can change it to adapt to our needs.

“Teachers have been picking and choosing what works for them, for their students, their subjects, and their classes. It’s all backed up by research – we know it works.”

At the time of writing, the TLCs at Hayling had met five times and teachers have been enthusiastic about visiting one another’s classrooms to see the different EFA strategies in practice, as well as following up these visits to celebrate what went well and to have professional discussions about potential improvements.

One fascinating aspect for Ms Mason has been discussing how different formative assessment techniques work with different students: “Activating our learners works really well with my year 10s, but it does not work as well with my year 7s.”

Mr Reah agrees that the EFA work is all about professional conversations about what will make the difference for teachers and students. He added: “It’s about changing habits. We have to ask – what are the things that will make a difference in my teaching, my subject, and for my students? “We will get to the end of the two years, and we will all be able to articulate what is special about this school in terms of teaching and learning.”

Coming back to staff wellbeing, EFA for Mr Reah is a key part of his work to change workload practices. Giving staff purpose and autonomy has been vital – teacher autonomy being one of the factors most closely related to job satisfaction, retention, and wellbeing (Worth & Van den Brande, 2020).

Mr Reah said that “EFA is the constant that cuts all the way through” this work. As well as improving teaching and learning, his ambitions for EFA include supporting teachers in taking ownership of their CPD, offering leadership opportunities, building a stronger sense of community in schools with collaboration and common goals, and cutting workload.

He explained: “The programme builds on the community spirit within our school. We are working as a team to improve outcomes for our students by focusing on the ‘main’ thing. This deliberate investment in our development is an investment in our collective wellbeing.

“Working in our TLCs provides supportive networks within our school. With no hierarchical structure to these groups the ethos that has developed allows true collaboration. It is more than okay to admit things have gone wrong which is when the true learning conversations happen.

“The spaces which have developed are honest and safe and are the antithesis of the ‘clipboard’ high-stakes lesson observation model. Taking away that stress directly reduces workload and improves wellbeing.”

And Mr Reah is also keen to see an impact on workload with a “do less better” mindset running through the EFA and TLCs. He continued: “With our new way of looking at assessment we now have a ‘do less better’ mantra which relates directly to our EFA work and the school development plan. Using formative assessment well will dramatically cut the burden of marking and allow for immediate feedback based on helping our pupils improve in the moment.”

As well as continuing the TLCs this year, the next steps for Ms Mason will focus on promoting the reasons behind formative assessment further with students and families. She sees developing this shared language of teaching, learning and progress as key.

Another goal is to enable learners to take responsibility for their own learning, including through peer and self-review techniques, and learners understanding why and how formative assessment works. This is valuable knowledge for young people to develop.

Mr Reah, meanwhile, hopes to use Thomas Guskey’s five levels for evaluating CPD (Guskey, 2000) to help assess the full impact of EFA over time, including helping colleagues to identify the aspects of the programme that have been most effective for their teaching.

He concluded: “EFA is high-quality, and it has been well-thought-through. It is about investing in people and in their CPD. It’s about hitting that balance between support and challenge.”