The Archbishop Lanfranc School has clearly sustained its commitment to developing a "Challenge for All" culture, and it was a pleasure to visit the school, speak with your students and observe some of the lessons.
Linda Prestidge, Lead Assessor for NACE Reaccreditation
By now you will have read on Mr. Clark's blog that the school was successful in being only the 17th school nationally to be reaccredited with the NACE Challenge Award, in recognition of our ongoing efforts to provide an outstanding education for all our more able students. It is now my enjoyable task to provide more details of our successes from the recent NACE report.
On the day, the two assessors observed lessons from Ms. Nixon, Ms. Henshaw, Ms. Ahmad, Ms. Richards, Ms. Ingle and Mr. Mantillas. They were also left very impressed after looking through work from and speaking to the following students:
- Omar Harhara
- Mohsin Bukhari
- Nesha Balakrishnan
- Mykola Kalynskyy
- Tamara Reid
- Sherelle Kenton-O'Meally
- Hayley Tanner
- Francine Agyemang
- Sharmarke Ali
As required for successful accreditation, 'challenge for all' was seen in every lesson observed on the day. This was described as being "firmly embedded in planning" and "not seen as something additional". Specific areas of praise from the lessons were:
- A 'Thinking Wall' in RE and the 'Help request folder' in Maths for students to post their questions
- "Excellent teacher led questioning that prompted students to justify and hypothesise"
- "Effective use of peer assessment"
- Widespread use of "creative tasks"
- "Behaviour was exceptional and conductive to progress learning"
Even more pleasing were the comments made by students to the assessors, in a meeting that was meant to be 20 minutes but took an hour in the end, such was the volume of feedback from students! Comments made by students and fed back to staff included:
- "The school pushes us to be the best"
- "The school values us individually"
- "We have respect for being smart"
- "The school caters for one big family – it caters for everyone's needs"
- "The school is very good at spotting talent"
- "Lanfranc is the best"
Even though feedback from NACE is valued enormously, it is perhaps these comments from the students themselves that are a measure of our success in provision for more able students. It is clear that students not only gain a great deal from the additional support they receive at Lanfranc, but also enjoy this support and feel that the contributions they make in return to the school are valued.
The NACE report concludes that "there is clear vision and a culture of high expectation led by an effective and proactive Senior Leadership Team" in addition to "an ethos of high aspirations and challenge by all staff".
Although the Challenge Award is recognition of the work completed to date, we are not ready to stop striving to further improve our provision for more able students. Our next areas for focus will be working further with the parents of more able students and improving the guidance we provide to more able students, especially with options post-16.