Through the Pivotal Blog, we are publishing in full "Views from the Bridge" a book about the Bridge Project in Chesterfield.
We are publishing this book in chapters. Every week a new chapter will be uploaded to the blog. So make sure you bookmark this page or subscribe to the RSS feed.
If you have questions for the authors, please contact us and we will pass them on.
Get up to date before you begin this chapter.
We have already published the following:
Project Headlines and Foreword
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Assessment
My role with the Bridge Project is that of Assessor and Project Mentor. The bid for funding required evaluation of the effectiveness of the project and I was asked to lead in that work. I had opened inclusion centres in the two secondary schools where I had been the head teacher, something I had wanted to do since working in a similar provision in Wester Hailes in Edinburgh - "way back when".
I had also played a leading part in setting up the Peak 11 Pastoral Panel, a mutli-disciplinary forum for discussing challenging youngsters and dealing with managed moves (Chapter 2: Beginnings) and worked part time for Derbyshire to support similar Behaviour and Attendance Partnerships across the county. Since I had followed the progress of the Bridge Project from idea to implementation I was delighted to be asked to become involved.
For the most part, I visited the project over the first two years to observe and give feedback on what I saw. However in the autumn of the first year of operation the management group agreed that we should carry out an in-depth review, provoking a debate as to what form it should take. I researched what might be available and suitable and trawled through various forms of self-assessment including models devised by and for nurture groups or other forms of alternative provision.
Forcing myself to keep an open mind l looked at the Ofsted framework and formed the view that it would give the best basis for our review. I confess that in coming to this decision I did not at the outset think Ofsted methods would suit our purposes, but I did think it would enhance credibility to the various groups to which we were due to report, the funders: the local head teachers, the LA etc. No-one would be asking, "Where did you get this documentation and what is its provenance?"
But we agreed the assessment of "learning", could and should focus on the personal skills continuum: on self-esteem, self control, task completion, interactions with others and so on and not academic standards. "Progress" would be measured by referring back to the Boxall Profile strands (see below) and estimating improvements in them as well as data on exclusion rates and attendance provided by schools. Reporting on the quality of teaching, effectiveness of leadership, effectiveness of engagement with parents and so on we saw as straightforward and just as applicable in our setting as in any school.
The aspect which caused most debate was "Pupils' Behaviour". After discussion we decided that our judgment should be about how well staff manage and respond to the behaviour shown. Ofsted inspectors in a school will expect that the quality of the teaching, the support and leadership provided by senior leaders and so on will lead to a well-ordered environment for learning. Whilst Bridge Project staff work throughout each and every day to achieve such an atmosphere, the pupils selected to attend the Bridge have disruption in their make-up. A mainstream school will typically have a cross-section of the population, the well motivated and well adjusted in good numbers as well as some at the opposite end of the spectrum. The Bridge does not.
In Chapter 1: How Come They Look so Normal? we saw that young people do respond very positively to the second chance served up by the Bridge, to the acceptance of them as individuals and to the time and interest shown by staff.
Whilst a great deal of work in the Bridge goes into creating the conditions where the youngsters are more at ease than in mainstream, commonly much of the learning is from incidents that do occur in the course of the day. A youngster who has anger management problems will be helped by working in a calm and predictable atmosphere but will probably still deal with frustrations inappropriately. The inappropriate behaviour won't go away quickly.
The review team needed to acknowledge that The Bridge Project presents an opportunity for staff to help the young person learn how to recognise the warning signs of rising anger and how to manage his/her feelings in a less destructive way than previously. Attendance at the Bridge is not a "cure" in itself. Opportunities need to be taken to enable pupils to learn and grow from what would be deemed inappropriate behaviour in a school. Our assessment of behaviour would take this into account and the review would include a judgment of the effectiveness of those responses.
From Effective Intervention in Primary Schools, Nurture Groups, Benathan M and Boxall M (1996)
School, ...is based on the assumption that the children are essentially biddable, will be willing to entrust themselves to the teacher and will have some understanding of her expectations...
"School thus continues a learning process which began years before in the home.....
"These assumptions are not necessarily true for the severely deprived and disadvantaged children. They do not always accept the teacher as a trustworthy and reliable person, and do not attach themselves with confidence; they cannot engage with the situation and they do not learn...
I drew up a review schedule based on the prevailing Ofsted documents only to be informed that a new framework was due to be implemented from January 2012, I had been working from the previous one! Sign of the rapidly changing times!
Our hardest task when agreeing the final report was finding a balance between our liking for much of what we saw and our desire not to be over-generous in making judgments, aware as we were of our possible bias. The positive data on pupil exclusions and attendance gave us confidence. We found all of the four major aspects - pupil achievement, quality of teaching, behaviour and leadership and management to be "Good" with some outstanding features.
The Lead Teacher and his line managers drew up an improvement plan which listed the following actions (amongst others):
- Maximise student engagement in Art and Music activities to the best of the students' abilities
- Use weekly targets consistently and effectively throughout the course of the day
- Plan all targeted interventions with rigorous attention to the Boxall Profile strands
- Ensure students make greater progress on the Diagnostic Strands of the Boxall profile
- Reduce the variability in the quality of teaching at the Bridge Project
- Train staff to respond to students in a calm and non judgmental manner with a clear focus on the use of restorative skills
- Give clear expectations to each student at the start of each session
- Make feedback to students regular and targeted
- Develop staff questioning techniques to encourage students to give longer responses to explain/ justify their feelings about an issue
- Ensure that areas of underperformance are managed
- Ensure that the Bridge Management Group and Lead Teacher addresses the medium and long term goals of the project
A second full-scale review was held in November 2012 following the same protocols and Ofsted based framework as before.
All categories were judged to be outstanding. The improvements seen came as a result of the staff and leadership's work on the actions listed after the first review (above). They had built on their sound intuitive, instinctive and commonsense approach to the young people and their issues by adding rigour, consistency and well-founded planning for the individual.
This work forms the basis of Chapter 9 "From Intuition to Method".
The Data
Schools were asked to provide information for each pupil on the number of fixed term exclusions and attendances for the periods before and after the time spent in the Bridge Project. Schools also complete the Boxall Profile (below) for each pupil they send to the Bridge Project and these strands are assessed at the end of the Bridge Project experience and again by schools one month after reintegration.
The data collected on Bridge Project pupils supports the review judgments.
Headline data
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Two boys were permanently excluded from the same school towards the end of their reintegration period (Chapter 11: Not Always Successful).
The Boxall Profile
The Boxall Profile is a two-part check-list to be completed by staff who know the child in class. It provides a framework for the precise assessment of children who are failing in school and helps teachers to plan focused intervention.
From a Nurture Group Network description paper:
The Boxall Profile developed as part of the nurture group movement. Nurture groups were started in Hackney, Inner London, in 1969, the response of Marjorie Boxall, an educational psychologist, to the high levels of distress in primary schools at a time of great social upheaval and teacher shortage. Boxall brought into school a different way of looking at the behaviour that was getting in the way of the child's progress ... She understood the difficulties presented by most of these children as the outcome of impoverished early nurturing.
Boxall Profile Data for Bridge Project Pupils at August 2013
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Cluster 1. Organisation of experience
A. Gives purposeful attention
B. Participates constructively
C. Connects up experiences
D. Shows insightful involvement
E. Engages cognitively with peers
The items in column A to E are of increasing complexity and reflect levels of engagement with the world and awareness of others. For example, unless the child attends to what is going on (A) s/he will not score well on the later columns. A child who scores in the range found in children without significant emotional and behavioural difficulties, which is shown by shading at the top of each column, is making good progress. High scores in all columns describe a child who is organised, attentive and interested, and is involved purposefully and constructively in events, people and ideas.
Cluster 2. Internalisation of controls
F. Is emotionally secure
G. Is biddable and accepts constraints
H. Accommodates to others
I. Responds constructively to others
J. Maintains internalised standards
As in Cluster 1, there is a sequence in the columns. For example, a child who is deeply insecure is unlikely to be able to accept constraints, will have difficulty relating to others and will be uncertain of the standards that should have been internalised.
Overall high scores describe a child who is emotionally secure, makes constructive, adaptive relationships, is able to co-operate with others, and has internalised the controls necessary for social functioning.
A high score on Developmental Strands is good: children needing nurture group or other special help have low scores.
On reading the Development Strand data for Bridge Project pupils we see that their levels (red) as assessed by their mainstream schools before entry were below the normal range (purple to green). In all strands improvements were made to the extent that at the end of their time in the Bridge Project, pupils were assessed to be within the normal range (comparing dark blue with green). On return to school, not unexpectedly, there was regression after a month but scores were still above those seen before the Bridge Project experience in all but column E - "engages cognitively with peers".
Diagnostic Profile
Section II, the Diagnostic Profile, consists of items describing behaviours that inhibit or interfere with the child's satisfactory involvement in school. They are directly or indirectly the outcome of impaired learning in the earliest years. The Section has three clusters, ‘self-limiting features', ‘undeveloped behaviour' and ‘unsupported development'.
Cluster 1. Self limiting features
Q. Disengaged
R. Self negating
Cluster 2. Undeveloped behaviour
S. Makes undifferentiated attachments
T. Shows inconsequential behaviour
U: Craves attachment, reassurance
Cluster 3. Unsupported development
V. Avoids/rejects attachment
W. Has undeveloped insecure sense of self
X. Shows negativism towards self
Y. Shows negativism towards others
Z. Wants, grabs, disregarding others
On the Diagnostic Profile, high scores are a sign that the child has problems. Columns are of different heights because they are based on different numbers of items.
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On reading the Diagnostic data for the Bridge Project pupils we see that their mainstream schools assessed them as having high levels of the strands which "inhibit or interfere with the child's satisfactory involvement in school". All strands show improvement by the end of the Bridge Project experience and most continued to improve after reintegration to mainstream school.
However, even after twelve to sixteen weeks of the Bridge nurture experience and four weeks back at school, assessment figures for the diagnostic strands show that the pupils are still judged to be outwith the normal range. A very important message for those involved with their reintegration.
There are three strands in particular which show regression after return to school -
Column X - shows negativism towards self
Column Y - shows negativity towards others
Column Z - Wants, grabs, disregarding others.
.... the behaviour underlying high scores in the later columns is more directed at others. It is likely to lead to organised and internalized anti-social behaviour patterns that because they bring the child satisfaction are difficult to change and so urgently need early and skilled intervention.
As a lay person my theory about these three and in fact about all of the diagnostic strands is that they represent deep loss and low feelings of self worth which usually stem from a lack of early nurturing care. Sixteen weeks is not going to make a great deal of improvement to these entrenched views of self or to the behaviour which flows from that view of life and of self.
From the Boxall Profile:
Trust must first be established and the students need for warmth and approval may then become evident; s/he becomes attached and is open to learning. However, without early and effective intervention the prognosis is likely to be poor because the student has developed a well organised way of being that increasingly brings satisfaction and power. Giving up these immediate, primitive and powerful benefits to gain the approval of an adult who initially means nothing to him/her is a long, arduous process, both for the student and the adult. Behaviour which starts as a defence becomes an entrenched pattern, the longer it is allowed to persist.
These figures might just sum up the impact of the Bridge Project.
We have created an environment which troubled young people like to attend because they feel wanted and valued. This period of thoughtful, planned, systematic nurturing care from a group of sympathetic and skilled adults does make a difference to how they see themselves and consequently to how they act and behave. For most it has made enough of a difference to allow them to return to school and to cope. For a few, the nurture experience has been too short in duration to make the progress needed to adjust to the demands of mainstream school. There has been a continuing tension between enabling a continuous throughput of young people who will benefit from attending the Bridge Project and giving the staff enough time to effect lasting change with individuals. It is a question of increased numbers or more depth.
Chapter 11: The Daily Programme gives more detail of how Bridge staff used the Boxall Handbook as a reference point and as a resource for much of their daily work.