One of the most important aspects of education that hardly anyone talks about…
So what is the Practice Gap? I first heard the term, in the context that I use it here, from Katie Ashford speaking on Raising Expectations for SEN (Special Educational Needs) pupils at the Michaela Mistakes event in June 2017. She used it to mean the gap between how much someone is practising something compared to how much they need to be practising in order to achieve a higher level of proficiency. In the context of schools, there are really two aspects to consider:
- The gap between what any pupil is doing compared to what they need to be doing to achieve greater proficiency.
- The gap between both the amount and the quality of practice expected of and completed by low attainers versus the amount and the quality of practice expected of and completed by high attainers.
And at a more macro level,
- The gap between how much one school is asking/supporting its pupils to do versus another school.
As ever, my particular focus here will be on reading and SEN, but the core concept clearly pertains to every subject and ALL children.
I was reminded of Katie Ashford’s talk more recently when I listened to a ‘Professor of Teacher Education’ discuss his dyslexia research which consisted of interviewing several dyslexic secondary students about their education. It was clear that some had had unforgivably awful experiences at school that we should undoubtedly learn from. What concerned me, however, were the conclusions he drew and the potentially disastrous recommendations for teachers.
“They hate reading aloud,” he told us. “They hate being put on the spot, they hate the pressure that creates, and teachers really need to avoid that”. The clear message was that you shouldn’t ask dyslexic children to read out loud nor, from other comments in the same talk, write or read too much.
This isn’t uncommon advice regarding SEN children, indeed this is common practice in many primary and secondary schools. So why do I call this ‘disastrous’ and why, if you truly have your pupils’ mental health and well-being at heart, should you be doing the opposite of what this professor recommended?
I am going to start by liberally quoting from a talk Jo Facer gave as part of the ResearchEd at-home conference in 2020. Facer’s talk was framed around lessons she’d learned from the errors she felt she’d made in her teaching career. What stood out for me were her observations and experiences around reading and SEN children.
As mentioned, a strong thread was learning from mistakes, and Facer explained how she used to plan all manner of interesting and engaging activities for her pupils and explained why:
I think it stemmed from my training, but it also stemmed from really low expectations, which is really hard to admit. When I visited the school I would teach in, someone there said to me, “These children can’t just sit and read and write. They won’t do that.” And I believed them… I believed that these children were different. These children couldn’t handle really difficult work. And so, I really underestimated what they could do, and I just thought that I had to entertain them every lesson.
Facer’s main recommendations were radical, ditch the most commonly used lesson planning props, PowerPoint/worksheets/activities, for two sides of A4 that included all the content needed for that lesson, and to do the same for every lesson. Significantly and deliberately, this would involve a lot of reading. She described a typical session:
They read something, we talk about it, I ask a load of questions. They ask a load of questions and then they write something. And it really is that simple.
This idea is quite a departure from what happens in most UK classrooms so there were many audience questions regarding the two sides of A4, not least from those with a particular concern for EAL and/or SEN pupils. Facer’s response neatly encapsulates the truth, and dilemma, that lies at the heart of this piece:
The thing that’s amazing about giving children a lot of reading to do is how rapidly it improves their reading.
After crediting Dan Willingham and Doug Lemov with informing her thinking, Facer went on to explain the impact on SEN pupils and how they were supported:
I accept that it can be really hard, … two sides of dense texts, that’s really, really hard. What we tend to do … some of that text, we would italicize so that it’s not the crucial bit, so there’s a bit less reading, but they still are reading a lot. And it’s important that they read a lot because otherwise, we’re just continuing to deprive our weakest readers, of the opportunity to practice reading … it’s difficult, but if you set the expectation, ‘we all read aloud’ and then you support children……. with SEN learners I would just give a slight tweak in that the first few times you ask them to read aloud. First of all, look through the reading, find all the really simple sentences, like the four-word sentences and highlight them. I would even write the kid’s name on top of it. So, I as a teacher know there’s no way that kid can’t read that bit aloud… And then the other thing is, with some children, they’re really anxious and you do, just at the first few times, you go over to them, and you whisper “I’m going to ask you to read the sentence. You need to be ready. And they like having that preparation. And it’s amazing, how little of that they need before they then will just read aloud.
Facer described a seminal moment when she had realised that her low expectations were holding her pupils back:
I taught…a nurture group year 10 class…I’d heard some of them read aloud before. They struggled with really basic words that they just couldn’t decode. They were just guessing, they sight-guessed the words. So, I used to read at them a lot, and in this amazing lesson, this kid starts reading at the same time I’m reading. And I, I always think like if I’ve been in a worse mood, I might have told them off and be like, what are you doing? You’re making fun of me, but I wondered what was happening. And I just kept reading and then I just got quieter and quieter and the kid kept reading and then they read and then they stopped and they were like, “I’m done now Miss.” And so I read again, and another child from this little nurture group, again, chimes in and starts reading. And for me, that was a real moment of, I have underestimated these children. Like I thought they couldn’t do it, but they could. And they literally showed me they could. And so I get that children really struggle with reading. I totally get that. But I think they can read more than sometimes we ourselves think is possible.
Much has been written on the adverse effect of low expectations, “no one rises to low expectations” . Most of us likely understand this in theory, but when faced with the real distress experienced by many SEN children when asked to do something they find too challenging, the response is often to lessen or even completely remove the challenge, rather than to work to support the child in reaching that challenge. We are not being lazy, we feel we are being SEN informed and kind, indeed, even righteous in doing so. But the result is that SEN children are typically given differentiated (lesser) tasks aiming towards different (again, lower) expectations without acknowledgement that, in effect, lowering expectations and removing challenges risks further disabling children and limiting life chances in a way that was not predetermined by their learning difficulties.
In her talk on SEN: Raising Expectations, Katie Ashford introduced the concept of the ‘Practice Gap’ and its role in ensuring a truly inclusive school culture:
So what can be done … to try and build a truly inclusive culture in a school? Step one, go and observe a top-set class, how much writing are they doing every lesson? How much reading? How many questions are they answering? How focussed are they? That’s what you should be aiming for, whatever you see in that room, that is what you should be aiming for with your bottom-set kids. The truth is, they need even more practice than the kids in the top sets.
At the individual level, it may look like this:
At Michaela, if a kid is struggling to learn new things in maths, for example, we don’t ask what’s wrong with that kid? He must require some kind of assessment and a label to be attached to him immediately. We ask how much have they practiced it? Have they been doing extra math homework every night? Have they been 100% focussed in every single lesson? Have they missed any lessons? What is their attendance like? Are they listening to everything the teacher says? If not, what can we do to close that practice gap? We speak to them, we get the parents in, we get their form tutors to talk to them, we prioritize checking in on them first, every lesson.
Practice and making sure that every kid gets as much practice as possible, that is our first port of call every single time. If none of that works, then we look at giving them extra lessons, shifting things around the timetable, calling on reinforcements from other members of staff, we move mountains to make sure that every kid gets as much practice as they need. In an inclusive school, there is no such thing as a practice gap.
High expectations and plenty of practice are never more crucial than in reading. A few months earlier Ashford had also given a talk about ‘Reluctant Readers’. She estimated that pupils at her school, through challenging class-reads (e.g. To Kill a Mockingbird, Dracula, the Hunchback of Notre Dame), Facer’s two sides of A4 in every subject, reading clubs etc, read approximately 10,000 words a day. Again, Michaela’s approach can only be described as fundamentally different from the norm. And that’s deliberate, because, in Ashford’s opinion the approach to encouraging reading in most schools amounts to an apologetic tinkering around the edges that she equated to “giving somebody a Neurofen when what they need is a heart bypass”. “Not addressing the core of the issue, not really getting to the heart of what’s going on.”
Ashford summarised their approach as follows:
Rather than starting from the principle that reading is boring and should be made fun, We believe in making reading a habit. The impact of the combination of these strategies is massive. Our school feels like a place of reading, where children think and talk about books often, and where success in reading is the norm. No child is too shy to read aloud. No child fears or severely dislikes reading. No child avoids reading at all costs. All children read every day. All children come to love it and see its merits. And all children understand the power that books can have to change their lives.
Fundamentally, the solution is not to remove the challenge but to support children to meet that challenge and create a culture in which it feels safe to do so and normal to try.
Every kid writes long essays in English and humanities. Even a child with moderate learning needs, who was not able to write simple words like dog and farm when she arrived, can now write paragraphs with confidence. Our SEN kids can focus for entire lessons. Put their hands up, make contributions, feel secure enough to make a mistake in front of their peers, and have a go at something they find hard, and keep going. Even when they find it difficult, especially when they find it difficult.
It would be easy to visit the school and make the mistake of believing that (the) knowledge curriculum, a bit of reading here, a few knowledge organizers there, will be the difference between success and failure for SEN pupils. And whilst those things are absolutely necessary, they are not sufficient. The difference for these kids lies in the culture you create. Over the past few years, I’ve come to see that culture counts most for SEN pupils, culture eats strategy for breakfast, and establishing the right culture, a truly inclusive culture is the difference between watching your SEN kids flunk or fly.
SEN: Raising Expectations
Ashford made another crucial point, that it isn’t just about practising skills it is also, and perhaps even more fundamentally about practising necessary learning behaviours:
When I say more practice, I’m not just talking about drilling them in times tables. If a kid struggles to concentrate for more than a few minutes, for example, they just need more practice at it. They need more reminders. They need more opportunities to learn how to stay focused, a habit coach to guide them through it and help them stay on the right track and stay in the room. They need their teachers to have the highest expectations of them of their every action, and never to make excuses like I did, for their lack of energy or effort.
SEN: Raising Expectations
This reminded me of a study by Sigbert Prais (2001). Prais and his team (three LEA school inspectors/coordinators for the teaching of English, a chief inspector and a social researcher) visited schools in Switzerland focusing on low-attainers. Swiss and British high attainers were very similar but Swiss low attainers performed as well as British average attainers while British low attainers lagged far behind; Prais and his team wanted to know why.
For context, while we usually associate Switzerland with chocolate-box mountains and affluence, the schools Prais and his team visited were in inner cities and other deprived populations with high immigration and pupil turnover. Despite the challenges these schools faced, however, compared to the UK, Prais noted that Swiss lower attainers gained nearly three additional years of learning in the course of their approximately 9 years of compulsory schooling, a 30% faster rate of learning than their English counterparts.
Much of that Swiss advantage in learning to be observed at secondary school has to be attributed, not so much to what is taught and has been learnt at the secondary stage, but to schooling at earlier ages -in terms of successful emphasis in early primary schooling on high reading attainments by all pupils and, starting at kindergarten, training pupils in progressively longer spans of mental attention and in how to learn together as the class [listening carefully to other pupils, not interrupting… ). Indeed, on a closer reflection it has to be said that the whole-class learning capabilities of Swiss secondary school pupils seemed to our team of observers at least as impressive as the whole class teaching capabilities of their teachers; The need for the former capabilities – the carefully instilled whole-class learning capabilities of pupils – have usually been overlooked in the recently fashionable discussions in England on the advantages of ‘whole class teaching’.
Strikingly characteristic of all the Swiss literacy classes in the secondary schooling phase that we observed [that is to say, striking to the eyes of experienced English inspectors and teachers in our team] were: the high degree of attention by all pupils…; A faster pace of lessons, with minimal time absorbed in moving from one activity to another (for example, from discussion of a text read by the class, to pupils answering orally questions on that text written out and advanced on the OHP or folding wallboard or to the distribution of worksheets requiring desk work written answers], all transitions being carried out as quick routines without the teacher having to issue admonishing or reinforcing remarks ) no division of the class into teaching subgroups but whole class teaching throughout the main part of the lesson with additional help for weaker pupils during the individual desk work part of the lesson
SJ Prais, Social Disparities and the Teaching of Literacy, 2001
(original emphasis)
What should you take away from this?
To clarify, I am not endorsing any particular teaching style or a specific way of presenting information to students but as Marilyn Jager Adams notes from her analysis of reading research, “If we want them to read well, we must find a way for them to read lots”. If your pupils aren’t reading lots or doing lots of whatever you want them to get better at, then it’s your responsibility to make it happen.
My first suggestion for school and education leaders everywhere is, for every meeting at any level that has any mention of any kind of attainment/achievement gap or and under-achievement is to cross that out and put ‘Practice Gap’. Why? Because that is clear and directly actionable.
Senior leaders should be asking whether low attainers are doing as much as your higher attainers. If not, what are you doing about it? Those who have fallen behind need to be working harder and making faster progress than their peers to have any chance of catching up. What are your lower attainers doing?
Consider that your approach to reading probably does need to be radically different from what it is now. Is reading the school-wide habit Katie Ashford recommends it should be? If it isn’t, you are privileging the already advantaged pupils in your school.
Consider that your approach to supporting children with SEN also likely needs to be radically different from what it is now. Does what you are doing amount to, if you are being really honest, making excuses for lower expectations even if that feels kind and supportive for the individual children? Are you “moving mountains” on a daily basis to support children in catching up with their peers?
And lastly, if children don’t feel that your classroom is a safe space to try, you are responsible. If the culture in your school isn’t safe and supportive, change it. You are responsible for creating a culture that is conducive to learning and growth.
I understand that every year the local newspapers turn up for the best SATs in the county or to the school with a slew of kids heading off to Oxbridge. We are measured by the success of our highest attainers. But this isn’t an either-or. If you do better for your SEN children then you will raise attainment for all children (for reasons I explain here). Start measuring your and your school’s performance by the attainment of your most disadvantaged pupils and watch how outcomes improve for everyone.
Links
I recommend watching all the talks referenced here in full:
Jo Facer: Simplicity rules: simplifying your practice for classroom success ResearchEDHome 2020 https://youtu.be/BQeyJjCBUBA
Katie Ashford: SEN: Raising Expectations https://youtu.be/8B5D7DgYJTk
Katie Ashford: Reluctant readers https://youtu.be/dCcYOj344Bc