The CTSA is committed to undertaking Research and Development projects within our Alliance to identify and/or help tackle key school improvement priorities.
One of our Alliance schools, St John the Baptist Primary School in Andover, is currently participating in the “Closing the Gap” randomized control trials which are being co-coordinated by the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) through teaching schools across England.
There are seven interventions being trialled: Achievement for All (AfA) and Growth Mindsets (leadership focus); Response to Intervention and Inference Training (Literacy focus); 1stClass@Number and Numicon (numeracy focus) and Research Lesson Study. They have chosen to run two trials in the school: Numicon with Year 1 and Inference Training with Year 3.
They are currently going through the process of Pupil Identification which involves testing all pupils and analysing the results. Target pupils will be selected according to FSM, SEN and Standardised Age Scores. The school is awaiting NCTL decision as to whether they will be a Control Group school or an Intervention school.
February 2014 Update:
St John the Baptist Catholic Primary School, Andover is a control school for Numicon. This means Year 1 will continue as normal with their Mathematics Curriculum and then be re-tested in the Summer Term.
The school is also an intervention school for Inference Training and are currently involved in the planning and training process.
For articles and further reading related to this project:
Inference Training