An Evaluation of The Communication Trust’s
‘Talk of the Town’ Project, 2011-12
Mel Ainscow, Frances Gallannaugh, and Kirstin Kerr
Centre for Equity in Education
The University of Manchester
August 2012
Executive Summary
1. This report presents the findings of an evaluation of The Communication Trust’s
Talk of the Town (ToTT) project, an initiative which set out to develop a holistic
and long-term strategy for improving speech language and communication skills
(SLCS) amongst learners from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds.
2. Set in the context of a partnership between four schools (three primaries and
one secondary) in one urban district, the study was carried out by a team of
researchers from The University of Manchester. It reports evidence generated
through observations, interviews, documentary analysis, an engagement with
statistical data, and involvement in practitioner-led action research activities.
3. This evaluation provides strong evidence that ToTT presents a potentially
powerful approach that offers encouraging possibilities for improving the
educational outcomes and, in the longer term, the life chances of young people.
More specifically, it indicates that in the participating schools:
 ToTT stimulated considerable activity aimed at improving learners’
SLCS
 These activities led to significant changes in the thinking and
practices of practitioners, although there were variations regarding
the extent of these effects
 Whilst ToTT’s short timescale made it difficult to measure the full
extent of the project’s impact on children and young people, the
evidence so far is encouraging
 ToTT’s successful implementation was achieved as a result of strong
leadership within the schools, combined with effective external
support
 As it developed in the participating schools, the key elements of ToTT
emerged as: an analysis of issues relating to speech language and
communication (SLC) in the schools’ contexts; school-led strategies
for changing policies and practice; additional interventions; and a
strong emphasis on professional development.
4. It is recommended that ToTT’s achievements to date could be further
strengthened by activities that involve closer partnership working in two
respects – firstly between schools, with schools developing shared good
practice, and secondly ‘beyond schools’, with schools working in partnership
with other services and agencies such as health care providers. Through
these mechanisms, participating schools would have the benefits of
additional expertise and resources to support their efforts to improve SLC.
5. The report also considers how ToTT could be replicated in other contexts while
still providing schools with the flexibility to respond to the particular possibilities
and challenges they face. In order to provide guidance for such future initiatives,
the report describes the way ToTT’s approach developed within the
participating schools and provides evidence of its impact on practitioners and
pupils. It goes on to offer illustrative accounts of how particular schools adapted
ToTT’s general approach to suit their own circumstances. A model is then
presented that attempts to conceptualise how the key elements of ToTT’s
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approach should be linked together in order to create a more holistic approach
to the development of SLC.
6. The report concludes that the lessons drawn from these experiences provide
a sound foundation for further developments within the four project schools.
They also offer strong leads for those in other contexts who wish to adopt the
TOTT approach, and raise specific questions about the sorts of
commissioning processes needed to enable schools to access appropriate
specialist support, for instance, from speech and language therapists.
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Contents
1. Introduction
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2. The importance of fostering speech, language
and communication skills in disadvantaged areas
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3. Talk of the Town: an overview of the project
3.1 Origins of the project
3.2 The participating schools
3.3 The project approach
3.4 Anticipated impacts
3.5 Monitoring activities
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4. Evidence of impacts
4.1 Staff awareness of SLC and identification of needs
4.2 Implementing practical strategies to support SLC in schools
4.3 Engagement with wider contexts
4.4 A strong likelihood of sustainability
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5. Talk of the Town in action
5.1 Account of practice 1
5.2 Account of practice 2
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6. A model for taking the project forward
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7. Conclusion
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1. Introduction
This report presents the findings of an evaluation of The Communication Trust’s Talk
of the Town (ToTT) project. During the academic year 2011-12, this sought to lay the
foundations of a holistic and long-term strategy for improving speech language and
communication skills (SLCS) amongst learners from relatively disadvantaged
backgrounds. Set in the context of a partnership between four schools in one urban
district, the study was carried out by researchers from The University of Manchester.
Using evidence generated through observations, interviews, documentary analysis, an
engagement with statistical data, and involvement in practitioner action research
activities, this report draws out the lessons from what was, in effect, an experimental
initiative. In this way, it points to the features of ToTT that appear to have had a
positive impact, and to the organisational conditions that enabled this to happen.
The analysis presented indicates the importance of adopting an approach that takes
account of the features of particular contexts. This means that further attempts to
replicate ToTT must allow schools the flexibility to respond to the distinctive challenges
and possibilities of the communities they serve. In order to provide guidance for such
future initiatives, the report provides evidence of ToTT’s early impacts as set against
the project’s core aims. It then goes on to offer illustrative accounts of how particular
schools adapted ToTT’s overarching approach to suit their own circumstances.
Reflecting on these experiences, the report concludes with the presentation of a model
that attempts to conceptualise how the key elements of ToTT’s approach should be
linked together in order to create a more holistic approach to the development of SLCS.
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2. The importance of fostering speech, language and
communication skills in disadvantaged areas
Speech, language and communication skills (SLCS) are absolutely central to children
and young people’s life chances and opportunities for social mobility. From school
readiness at aged 3 to post-16 destinations, SLCS play an integral role in shaping
children’s attainment and wider outcomes. They encompass a wide range of skills, not
least among which are being able to:
 speak clearly
 initiate and take part in conversations
 learn and use vocabulary
 communicate for different purposes, for instance, to reason, explain,
question, and tell stories
 understand sentence structure, grammar and how words relate to each
other
 understand non-verbal features of communication.
This list is just the tip of the iceberg. To speak clearly, for instance, children need to:
be aware of and able to make different speech sounds (phonological awareness);
have the vocabulary to express what they want to communicate; be able to formulate
sentences; have listening and turn taking skills; be able to maintain attention and stay
on topic; and have a good working memory and social interaction skills. Again, this list
is far from exhaustive, but it nonetheless goes some way to demonstrating the sheer
complexity and wide ranging nature of SLCS.
However, despite the complex nature of SLCS, these are frequently taken for granted.
While specific knowledge and skills – for instance, relating to grammar – receive
explicit attention in schools, the full range of SLCS are often underappreciated, and as
a consequence, ways of fostering these successfully are overlooked in schools’ dayto-day practices. Wider research suggests that this is indicative of a lack of awareness
of SLCS among the teaching workforce, with The Communication Trust noting that
around ‘60 per cent of teachers report a lack of confidence in their ability to teach
speaking and listening skills.’1
This comes at a particularly high cost for children and young people who live in areas
characterised by high levels of disadvantage. In such areas, there are, typically, low
levels of SLCS overall and high rates of language delay in the early years, and of
specific speech language and communication needs (SLCN) which require specialist
intervention. As Perry and Francis2 report:
British children’s educational attainment is overwhelmingly linked to parental
occupation, income, and qualifications. Marked differences become apparent
during early childhood with regard to readiness for school. By the age of
three, poor children have been assessed to be one year behind richer ones
in terms of communication, and in some disadvantaged areas, up to 50 per
1
See http://www.thecommunicationtrust.org.uk/media/9558/ToTTt_newsletter_jan_2012.pdf
Perry, E. and Francis, B. (2010) The social class gap for educational achievement: a review of the literature.
London: RSA
2
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cent of children begin primary school without the necessary language and
communication skills. (2010:5 emphasis added)
Furthermore, while poor SLCS may be most readily apparent in early years, they
remain strongly associated with poor outcomes throughout young people’s educational
careers and in their post-school destinations. For instance, during their time in
secondary school, a young person’s vocabulary is typically expected to increase at a
rate of between 3,000 and 5,000 words per year, and the full range of SLCS needed to
engage successfully with the curriculum becomes increasingly complex. 3 Young
people without the necessary skills will inevitably struggle to attain across the
curriculum. Older students, in particular, may also find ways to mask their difficulties
with speech, language and communication (SLC), for instance, through aggressive
and/or disruptive behaviour. It is of particular note that at least 60 per cent of young
people in the youth justice system have specific difficulties in relation to SLCS,
compared to about 10 per cent of the general population of children and young
people.4
Given this complex situation, responding to the challenges posed by poor SLC in
disadvantaged communities requires much more than a series of discrete, targeted
interventions (though there is, of course an important role for good evidence-based
interventions, for instance, in boosting phonological awareness in the Early Years).
Rather, there is a need for a long-term, extensive and strategic approach that can
address the:
 complex and wide-ranging nature of SLC
 need for workforce development with regard to SLC
 fact that SLC affects every aspect of children’s lives – not just attainment,
but their behaviour, relationships, and wider achievements and well being –
and the wider communities in which they live.
This, in turn, points to the need for an approach to fostering SLC that is holistic with
respect to the following dimensions:
1. SLC has to be understood and addressed as a whole skills set. It will not be
enough simply to focus on one or two discrete elements, such as phonics or
grammar.
2. SLC has to be fostered in all the contexts in which children and young
people engage – in school, at home, and in their wider community.
3. SLC has to be fostered continuously in order to support progression,
transition, and access to positive destinations post-16. A planned and
integrated approach which spans early years provision and primary and
secondary settings is important to ensure that age appropriate skills are
developed and built upon throughout a child’s education.
The Talk of the Town (ToTT) project, on which this report focuses, began to develop
an approach to fostering SLC in a disadvantaged neighbourhood, based on these
principles. During the academic year 2011-12, ToTT involved The Communication
Trust working in partnership with four schools in South Manchester to improve SLC
amongst children and young people, their families, and the wider community. The
initiative set out to do this by raising awareness of SLC, developing skills and practical
strategies to promote SLC, and refocusing schools’ practices to make SLC integral to
their core business of teaching and learning. From the outset, The Communication
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4
http://www.thecommunicationtrust.org.uk/media/7817/universally_speaking_11-18_final.pdf
http://www.thecommunicationtrust.org.uk/youth-justice.aspx
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Trust aimed to ensure that the participating schools would be able to continue to
develop ToTT independently during 2012-13 and beyond.
This report, from The University of Manchester, was commissioned by The
Communication Trust to provide an account of ToTT in its early stages. Firstly, it
provides an overview of ToTT as a whole project, and of the University’s role in
monitoring its development. It then explores what ToTT has achieved in the last year,
and the issues this has raised – both through an exploration of the impacts made by
the project as a whole, and then through presenting two illustrative accounts of work in
schools. In the final section, the report presents a model that can be used to replicate
ToTT’s overarching approach in other disadvantaged neighbourhoods across the UK,
while also allowing sufficient flexibility for schools to respond to their particular
circumstances. In so doing, the report emphasises the importance of adapting ToTT’s
approach to the challenges and possibilities that exist in particular circumstances, in a
way that seeks to mobilise existing expertise and resources.
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3. Talk of the Town: an overview of the project
In this section of the report, a brief but comprehensive overview of ToTT is provided.
This traces ToTT’s origins as part of the national year of communication; provides
background information on the participating schools; outlines ToTT’s overarching
approach and anticipated impacts; and explains how ToTT’s development and impacts
were monitored.
3.1 Origins of the project
ToTT grew out of the 2011 national year of communication, known as the Hello
campaign. Supported by the Department of Education and Department of Health,
Hello aimed to ‘make children and young people's communication a priority in homes
and schools across the country’ as well as having ‘a special focus on championing the
needs of children and young people with speech, language and communication needs
(SLCN) and their families’5.
ToTT was one of three strategic projects developed during the year, the others being
‘A Chance to Talk’ – an evidence-based programme for improving SLC in 4-7 year
olds – and ‘Communication Ambassadors’ – a national network of volunteers
supporting families in disadvantaged areas to develop their children’s SLC. ToTT was
perhaps the most ambitious of the three, setting out to promote SLC across a
disadvantaged neighbourhood through a multi-faceted strategy. Its underpinning
strategy was intended to be:
 3-19 in remit, developing SLC continuously, from the early years through to
further education
 targeted and universal, developing SLC in all children and families, as
well as providing targeted interventions and speech and language therapy
to children requiring additional support
 whole-school, aiming to change the ways in which schools thought about
SLC, by making all staff communication aware, enabling teachers to identify
different levels of SLCN, and ensuring that schools provided an
environment in which SLC were central to teaching and learning
 cross-school, within and across phases, supporting the schools in an
area to share and develop good practice and resources around SLC, and to
develop seamless and consistent approaches
 inclusive of families, involving parents and carers in supporting their
children’s SLC and in developing their own
 multi-provider, involving partners from wider services, voluntary and
community groups and the third sector, and local business.
ToTT also had the potential to incorporate A Chance to Talk and Communication
Ambassadors within its broad remit.
3.2 The participating schools
The Communication Trust was approached by the executive head teacher of a hard
federation of three schools, one secondary and two primaries, about the possibility of
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developing a project focusing on communication. During the academic year 2011-12
and with financial support from the Hello campaign, the Trust was able work in
partnership with the federation’s schools to develop ToTT in their specific contexts. A
third local primary school lying outside the federation also joined the project. While The
Communication Trust covered the cost of project activities in the federated schools,
the non-federated school financed its own participation, buying into selected elements
of ToTT.
The participating primary schools were all described by Ofsted as ‘larger than average’
while the secondary school was of average size. The schools were all situated within
an approximately 3 square mile area, characterised as predominantly white working
class with poor social outcomes. To give an indication of levels of deprivation in the
area, one of the electoral wards which most closely corresponds to the schools’
locations was ranked 240 in the ward-level indices of deprivation (as calculated using
data from the Indices of Multiple Deprivation 2000), in which a rank of 1 is the most
deprived, and a rank 8,414 is the least deprived. More recent data from the Indices of
Deprivation 2010, available for lower level super output areas, reinforces this picture of
overall high levels of deprivation in the area.
The primary schools’ most recent Ofsted reports note that across the schools, children
join the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) generally performing well below agerelated expectations. Nonetheless, children are typically noted to make good progress
and to be ‘narrowing the gap’, reaching average expectations in many areas by the
end of Key Stage 2. According to an Ofsted report dated January 2011, the proportion
of students in the secondary school achieving five A* to C grades at GCSE or
equivalent, including English and mathematics, rose to 37% in 2010. This figure was
significantly below the national average but represented a strong improvement on
performance in 2009.
Despite the challenging contexts in which they were situated, the participating schools
all had a recent history of sustained improvement and of supporting each other, and
had a clear determination to improve further – indeed, as noted above, it was the
schools who approached The Communication Trust in the first instance. During 2012,
Ofsted rated one primary school as good, and one as good with outstanding
leadership, while the other was rated satisfactory in 2011, and seen as being well
supported to improve by the federation structure. In an interim report in 2011, Ofsted
found the secondary school to be a well-respected hub of the community, and to be
making good and sustained improvement following a satisfactory judgement in 2009.
3.3 The project approach
ToTT’s overarching project approach was very different to that typically seen in timelimited projects involving external experts, where usually a ‘blueprint’ for intervention is
imposed on schools. In ToTT’s case, rather than dictate to the schools, The
Communication Trust sought to provide them with resources and expertise that could
serve as the initial building blocks for longer-term, school-led developments. In doing
so, it operated on the following assumptions: schools – not the Trust – must have
ownership of ToTT; schools must be able to recognise and build on their existing good
practice; and, within the overarching project framework, schools should be able to
develop their own distinctive approaches suited to their particular needs.
In line with this overall rationale, during 2011-12 the Trust provided access to a wide
variety of specialist resources, including:
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Training delivered by SLC specialists. At the outset, the Trust identified
evidence-based strategies and interventions to support the development of
SLC at different Key Stages, both at a universal and targeted level. Training
from SLC specialists was provided to support schools to implement these.
Training was generally organised on a whole staff basis (including teaching
assistants) in primary schools, and to identified groups (for example, staff in
a particular year group) in the secondary school.
Input from a speech and language therapist (SALT). The Trust funded the
secondment of an NHS-employed SALT to work in each of the schools for a
day a week for the duration of the project6. Her role was to work alongside
school staff to help develop their understandings of SLC and how to
recognise and respond to SLCN, and to support the implementation of small
group interventions.
Specific support from SLC consultants. As an umbrella group for a
consortium of speech, language and communication organisations, The
Communication Trust was able to commission two external consultants – one
from the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT), and one from
ICAN, the children’s communication charity – to help schools with specific
interventions or to develop a particular dimension of their work on SLC. The
precise focus of these interventions was discussed with schools and the
intention was to provide them with opportunities to trial practical strategies
from a ‘menu’ of options, and identify those most appropriate to their needs.
Accredited courses. The project provided funding for ten members of nonteaching staff from each of the federated schools to complete a level 3 award
in supporting children and young people’s SLC. The aim was to create a pool
of paraprofessional expertise that would help to ensure high quality
approaches across different teaching and learning contexts. (This element of
the project started too late in the year for its impacts to be captured in project
monitoring activities.)
Project management. ToTT had dedicated support from The
Communication Trust – from one of the Trust’s Professional Directors, who
provided specialist SLC support, and from a project manager. The project
manager played a vital role in co-ordinating the work of SLC specialists, and
brokering relationships between schools and specialist providers.
The Communication Trust also facilitated two levels of cross-school meetings
approximately every six to eight weeks to support the schools in leading the
development of ToTT. These were a:
 ToTT working group. This was set up so that the teachers co-ordinating
and leading on ToTT in each school, and the schools’ SENCOs (special
educational needs co-ordinators), could meet to discuss progress and plan
development; share experiences; and use differences in practice and
perspective as a potential stimulus for experimentation in their own schools.
 ToTT steering group. The head teachers of the four participating schools
met separately in order to discuss ToTT’s development and sustainability at
a strategic level.
Throughout the year, both groups were co-chaired by the Trust’s Professional Director
and project manager, thus ensuring that specialist SLC issues and logistical
arrangements could be addressed and resolved quickly. It was intended that when
The Communication Trust and its external partners withdrew from the project, the
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The non-federated primary school paid for this service itself.
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steering and working groups would be able to drive ToTT forward and maintain its
coherence.
3.4 Anticipated impacts
By introducing evidence-based SLC interventions into schools, from the outset there
was a strong likelihood that ToTT would achieve positive short-term impacts for
targeted children. However, as indicated above, The Communication Trust also
intended that ToTT should be the start (or continuation) of a process which could
plausibly lead to long-term changes in SLC. With this in mind, the Trust also identified
a series of developmental areas where, within ToTT’s first year, evidence of a
changing situation would provide an important indication of its potential to bring about
longer-term change. These were:
 Changes in awareness about SLC. Staff should become more aware of,
and knowledgeable about, SLC and how the development of SLC might be
supported.
 Improvements in identifying SLCN. Staff should become more adept in
recognising when children have specific SLCN and in identifying appropriate
interventions to support their development.
 Implementing practical strategies to support SLC in schools. Schools
should begin to adopt a range of practical strategies for developing SLC as
part of their routine practice, and have appropriate strategies in place to
support those children and young people at particular risk of falling behind.
 Engagement with the wider context. Schools’ approaches to developing
SLC should pay attention to the wider family and community contexts in
which children and young people live. This might include work with parents,
and potentially with other services working with families in the local area.
 A strong likelihood of sustainability. There should be evidence of the
potential for sustainability, for example, through long-term strategic planning.
The feasibility of such plans would therefore be an important indicator of
future impact.
3.5 Monitoring activities
The Communication Trust commissioned The University of Manchester to help monitor
ToTT’s implementation and impacts, and to do so in ways which could support its
future development and sustainability. The project’s short timescale, compared to its
scope, longitudinal nature, and its intended evolution in situ, inevitably limited the sorts
of evaluative activities that could be undertaken and claims which could be made. For
instance, professional understandings take time to change, and then to shape schools’
practices and become self-sustaining, and this cannot be captured in a short-term
evaluation. Similarly, a much longer time scale would have been needed to monitor
children’s progress through year groups and key stages, and to explore which sets of
SLC interventions, when implemented sequentially, would have most impact on
children’s skills. It is therefore important to be clear that the analysis presented in this
report is best considered indicative of ToTT’s potential to bring about change, rather
than as a definitive statement of impact.
With these caveats in mind, the University team focused its attention on:
 how understandings and practices changed during ToTT’s early development
 clarifying how ToTT was evolving in practice and how it might be modelled in
other neighbourhoods
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ToTT’s future sustainability and issues relating to this.
In line with this agenda, the team pursued two strands of activity. Firstly, they
interviewed key individuals involved in ToTT’s design and implementation, and who
could comment on its impacts to date. These included:
 the Professional Director and project manager from The Communication
Trust
 the SALT seconded to ToTT
 external communication specialists from ICAN, the children’s
communication charity, and the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust
(SSAT)
 members of the ToTT working and steering groups
 other teaching staff in the participating schools.
They also attended all working and steering groups meetings, and reviewed relevant
project documentation. This included records of activities kept by the schools, the
SALT, and by external communication specialists.
Secondly, given ToTT’s intention to build on schools’ existing good practices, the
research team sought to engage with a small group of staff in each school who were
working together to support SLC, typically around their existing teaching and
curriculum development commitments. The research team acted as critical friends to
these groups, exploring with them: gaps in SLC provision which need to be addressed
and foundations which could be built on; identifying ways of utilising ToTT training and
resources to achieve this; and the development and implementation of models of good
practice. Through this process, the research team sought to develop practical insights
into the schools’ ownership of ToTT and their commitment to embedding SLC in their
core business more generally.
Findings from these monitoring activities are presented in the following sections.
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4. Evidence of impacts
In this section of the report, ToTT’s impacts to date are considered. Indicative
evidence is presented in relation to the developmental areas identified by The
Communication Trust, namely:
 changes in awareness about SLC
 improvements in identifying SLCN
 implementing practical strategies to support SLC in schools
 engagement with wider contexts
 a strong likelihood of sustainability
4.1 Staff awareness of SLC and identification of needs
Across the participating schools, staff had felt for some time that many children and
young people experienced difficulties with SLC. Indeed, there was a history of
repeated intervention efforts to address these, but without sustained gains being made.
As one primary teacher explained:
As a school we’ve recognised for a long time that speaking and listening is an
issue with children. We’ve addressed it in different ways over the years.
Sometimes we’ve done the same thing in different ways – coming at it from a
different point of view. For example, before the project we were thinking about
questioning. That got us involved in thinking about how we were questioning
children. Fundamentally, we recognise that communication – particularly
children’s ability to access the curriculum – is poor.
However, what ToTT has shown, is that despite having a general awareness of SLC
as an area requiring attention, at the project’s outset teachers’ understandings of SLC,
and of how to develop this in ways which were appropriate to meet pupils’ needs, were
much more limited. As set out below, ToTT played an important role in generating
baseline data – both in terms of children’s SLC, and teachers’ ability to identify SLCN
– which challenged teachers’ existing assumptions and stimulated change.
Baseline data
In order to develop a clearer picture of children and young people’s actual SLCS (and
therefore the strategies and interventions most likely to be effective in developing
these), The Communication Trust arranged for detailed, nationally-recognised SLC
assessments to be carried out by speech and language therapists in the federation’s
nursery classes, and with a sample of Year 8 students in the secondary school. The
outcomes from these were then compared with teachers’ own assessments of pupil’s
SLC skills in order to see how well the teachers were able to identify pupils’
competencies and needs.
The assessment data have been reported in full by the Trust elsewhere 7, but to give
an indication of the levels of SLCN revealed:
 The SLC of 105 children joining nursery classes in autumn 2011 was assessed.
The overwhelming majority scored below normal range for their age, with 26%
scoring so far below that in many places they would qualify for a statement of
7
http://www.thecommunicationtrust.org.uk/media/18738/communication_in_schoolsa_case_study_in_wythenshawe.pdf
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SEN (this compares to 2.5% of children nationally). Only 3 children scored
above normal range, equating to 2.9% of the sample, which compares to 16%
of children nationally.
Thirty children had an age equivalent score of 12 months or more below their
actual age. The youngest age at which a child would normally be admitted to a
nursery class is 36 months. Forty seven children across the two schools had an
age equivalent score of less than 36 months.
The narrative skills (for instance, the ability to identify key information in a story
and retell a story) of a random sample of children at reception, Key Stage 1 and
Key Stage 2 were assessed. Within the ToTT sample, 54% of children were
identified as having delayed development for their age (compared to 16%
nationally) while 27% were identified as severely delayed (compared to 2.5%
nationally).
Of a randomly selected cohort of 29 Year 8 students, just over half were
found to fall below normal range for their age when their skills in formulating
sentences and understanding spoken paragraphs were assessed.
Teachers’ awareness of the children’s SLC was assessed through a RAG rating
system. This asked teachers to rate children as Red, Amber or Green according to
their level of need, with green indicating that a child is achieving at or above expected
levels, while any child falling below or well below these should be rated amber or red.
At both primary and secondary phases, this exercise revealed a notable underidentification of difficulties across a wide range of SLCS. This suggested that many
staff lacked awareness of typical age-related skills. They also appeared less adept at
recognising needs in some areas of SLC (for example, formulating sentences and
naming) than others (for example, inferential comprehension). This, in turn, suggested
that they would have found it difficult to identify appropriate strategies and
interventions to address children’s SLCN.
Data as a stimulus for change
Results from the SLC assessments and RAG rating exercise proved to be a powerful
stimulus for change across the schools, and many teachers, not least the head
teachers, described being struck by the results. Comments included ‘we always said it
was a difficult area, but we didn’t have a handle on the low communication starting
point’ and ‘we knew achievement on entry was under, but never realised how much.’
This was a concern not only because of the large group of children who seemed to be
experiencing some level of general difficulty with SLC, but also because of the risk that
the smaller group of children with specific SLCN could ‘get lost’ within it. Both SLC
specialists and teachers felt that identifying SLCN in schools was likely to be extremely
challenging – in one specialist’s words, it would ‘be difficult to tease [SLCN] out from a
group of difficulties.’
Many teachers were also surprised by the discrepancies between the RAG-rating
exercise and children’s assessment outcomes; as one secondary school teacher
reflected, ‘what staff felt were issues for students were miles off’. One of the primary
teachers noted that in her school, while teachers had been able to identify children
experiencing difficulties, they had typically underestimated their levels of needs. As
she went on to explain, this had challenged her to ‘think outside the local area’:
What’s good for here might just be normal somewhere else. We have to
think what skills children from more advantaged families have and how our
children can reach those.
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Notably, in one of the primary schools, results from the SLC assessments also led
teachers to question the extent to which current Foundation Stage assessments might
actually mask SLCN. They were particularly surprised by the results of the SLC
assessments because their pupils appeared to be achieving well on Foundation Stage
criteria, including such skills as ‘the child can listen to a story’. This mismatch created
an impetus in the school for thinking more broadly and explicitly about SLC. For
instance, the school’s EYFS leader and literacy co-ordinator jointly explained how they
had started to identify areas for development which they had previously
underestimated or not identified. They gave the example of sentence construction,
where they had come to recognise that while some children had good skills in
formulating written sentences, if asked to describe something, they would struggle to
give a well constructed, spontaneous verbal response.
Mechanisms to support change
From this starting point, three main mechanisms were reported to have helped staff
develop their awareness of SLC and their ability to identify SLCN. Firstly, The
Communication Trust devised a ‘tracking tool’ (a practical identification instrument for
non-specialists) to support teachers to identify SLCN and monitor children’s progress.
While this was initially reported to be ‘a bit long and detailed’ (and has since been
revised to make it more user friendly), it was also noted that ‘staff have really had to
engage with [the tracking tool] to complete it, and the detail has made them aware and
interested’ (primary school teacher). There were frequent references to the tracking
tool’s use, both in school documentation and in records kept by the SALT. For
instance, the following entry from the SALT’s notes is typical:
All nursery staff are currently completing tracking tools. [I have been]
observing them doing it – no queries have come up so far. Scoring system
would make it easier for them and I know this is going to be introduced.
Secondly, having the seconded SALT in school for a day a week was widely regarded
as invaluable, allowing the schools to have, as one primary school teacher put it,
‘specialist knowledge on tap’, while another explained the benefits as ‘teachers can
ask questions and she can model approaches’. These sentiments were reinforced by
one of the primary head teachers who reflected:
A massive thing is the high-quality expertise the project has brought and
the advantages of a speech therapist who is able to work with staff in a
consultative coaching role.
Improving identification skills was one of the areas where the SALT worked most
closely with school staff. One of ToTT’s particularly striking impacts is in the shift seen
over time from the SALT leading the process of early identification in schools, to
teachers leading this and incorporating it into school processes. For instance, in one
primary school, the SALT noted that early in 2012 she: ‘Met with nursery staff,
discussed early identification process, plan is for the staff to assess all children with
tracking tool… and then we will discuss interventions.’ By the time the school
completed its ToTT progress report for May 2012, teachers had become confident
enough with this process to report that ‘the tracking tool is now embedded in the
school’s SEN identification process.’
Another notable feature of the SALT’s notes – confirmed by teachers’ own accounts –
was the number of instances over the year where teachers who had concerns about a
16
child’s SLC had completed the tracking tool independently, considered what this
indicated, and then discussed their findings with the SALT – either to check their
understandings or to seek further specialist advice. Overall, the SALT reflected that
although it was ‘hard to say for all staff’, some had ‘definitely taken the information on
board’. For example, she commented:
… it’s the staff who approach me, so those who do, or fill in a tracking tool,
do show a change in understanding...There is an awareness of the difficulties
to look out for. It tends to be more the teachers who approach me but also
some teaching assistants, for example in [name of primary school] nursery
where I have been quite a lot and therefore developed relationships.
The SALT’s notes also illustrate situations where, as teachers’ gained confidence in
their abilities to identify SLC, they became keen to develop their knowledge:
Ran staff meeting on early identification- feedback:
 All [staff] said they were confident in identifying children with SLCN.
 They were interested by the findings and asked about the 3 average
children in nursery and how the children [with delayed SLC or specific
SLCN] they were interacting with would impact on them - i.e. would it hold
them back?
Thirdly, the formal training delivered by communication specialists was important.
They were seen as a way to develop awareness and understandings of SLC issues
across all staff, not just those directly engaged in leading ToTT in the their school. As
one primary teacher explained: ‘we need to sensitise colleagues as [SLC] pervades
everything.’ The accredited courses for teaching assistants were also reported to have
‘really focused staff on what we are doing and why ... They can see the rationale
behind the way we are changing the communication’ (primary school teacher).
Some issues to consider
Although generally very positive about changes in understanding and skills, those
interviewed about the project did draw attention to two broad issues which will need to
be addressed in future. The first was about ToTT’s variable impacts to date. At one
end of the spectrum, those involved in the project were unanimous that it had brought
about some significant changes in understanding and skills. For example, referring to
the secondary school specifically, one of the specialist consultants described a
‘seismic shift in thinking’ in the teachers coordinating ToTT. Amongst school staff in
general, the project was felt to have had a lesser but nonetheless widespread impact:
Staff knowledge and skills – definitely at a very basic level people have more
knowledge, know about differences between speech, language and
communication for example, and also skills. There are pockets of people who
have shifted massively, the working group, teachers who have worked with
consultants… So slight shift in most, great shift in some.
(SLC specialist)
There were concerns, however, that members of staff who were not directly involved in
teaching and learning (lunchtime supervisors, for example) had been relatively
untouched by ToTT. Both school staff and SLC specialists felt that this was a group
that needed to be addressed in due course. In addition, there was a feeling that raising
whole school awareness of SLC had been more difficult in the secondary school than
in the primaries. Given the nature of secondary schools – particularly the numbers of
17
staff, and wide range of systems and structures they encompass – this is perhaps not
surprising, but does suggests the need for distinctive strategies to promote staff
awareness in secondary contexts. As one secondary teacher explained, an initial
challenge for the school lay in convincing the wider staff that SLC was not simply a
concern for English subject specialists, but was central to all subjects.
A second issue was that while staff had become more confident in their own
knowledge and skills, there was a continuing desire to combine this with specialist
input on SLC. Having a SALT on site was felt to be particularly productive, as it meant
staff could discuss any difficulties they had identified with a specialist and she could
offer them advice. Some teachers were also keen to repeat the screening tests carried
out in the nursery for future cohorts, which would depend on buying-in support. In
general terms this highlighted the value they were placing on early identification. This
did, however, raise an issue about the balance that might ultimately be struck between
the development of school-based competence and the use of specialist expertise.
4.2 Implementing practical strategies to support SLC in schools
As well as developing awareness, ToTT intended that schools should begin to adopt a
range of practical strategies for developing SLC as part of their routine practice. Given
low overall levels of SLCS, these strategies would need to promote universal good
practice, as well as targeted means of responding to those children and young people
at particular risk of falling behind, and with specific SLCN. One of ToTT’s functions
was therefore to identify best evidence-based practices and interventions and, with
specialist support, to introduce these into schools.
Mechanism to support change
Over a relatively short period, ToTT stimulated a considerable amount of activity in all
the participating schools. At the level of general good practice this included, for
instance, modelling good listening and questioning skills, and promoting ways to
support the learning of new vocabulary (e.g. drawing a picture to represent the word,
clapping the syllables in the word, putting the word in context). The Communication
Trust also provided resources to support such universal approaches. For example, in
the primary schools these included ‘Talk Boxes’, which contained a variety of toys,
dressing up items, and other stimuli for conversation or narrative work.
In addition, the Trust identified specific interventions and organised training around
these materials, with the SALT helping to ensure that children were carefully matched
to targeted interventions. The list below, though far from exhaustive, gives an
indication of the range of interventions introduced:





Makaton training: Makaton is a package which introduces vocabulary through
signing
A Week to Speak: a universal intervention focusing on listening, vocabulary,
sentence building, narratives and conversation
Talk Boost: a targeted small group intervention focusing on listening,
vocabulary, sentence building, narratives and conversation
Phonological awareness: a targeted small group intervention supporting the
development of speech sounds
Narrative therapy: a targeted small group intervention focusing on enhancing
the understanding and expression of stories
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
Memory groups: a targeted small group intervention focusing on improving
short term working memory to support SLC.
This list of interventions is also indicative of the progressive nature of support
planned by The Communication Trust; for example, at the primary phase, a child
identified as struggling during ‘A Week to Speak’ might then be referred to take part
in activities based on ‘Talk Boost’.
In practice, specific interventions were introduced into the schools through two main
mechanisms:
1. Support from external specialists: In each of the federated schools, a SLC
specialist from SSAT supported the development of a specific, targeted
intervention to develop vocabulary. In the secondary school, a specialist from
ICAN also supported an intervention designed specifically to enhance SLC in
secondary schools called ‘Secondary Talk’ (see www.ican.org.uk). Training
was also provided by The Communication Trust directly, or by one of its
consortium members.
2. Training teaching assistants (TA) to lead interventions. The SALT either
modelled or led each session in a targeted intervention with a TA. TAs than ran
sessions independently, observed by the SALT.
Evidence of impacts
In general terms, the introduction of new strategies and interventions led to a greater
focus on SLC in interactions with pupils. A notable feature of ToTT was that rather
than seeing this as an imposition, teachers more typically saw this strand as further
developing their existing work. As one primary teacher put it, ToTT was ‘joining them
on a journey which had already started’. She explained that staff in her school had
already ‘done very detailed work on the quality of reading and writing in the school’
and that ToTT was adding to their existing repertoire of approaches. To give an
example, she reported that ‘the general feedback on the talk boxes is brilliant and staff
are feeling that the improved ‘talk’ is already being seen in improved writing.’ She later
reflected that the talk boxes had been so well received because ‘they had links to what
we had already been doing about talking for writing but they give staff a useful way of
approaching things’. She also felt that they motivated staff to be ‘more creative in their
teaching. They are willing to push the boundaries a bit rather than keeping doing the
same thing.’ Across the other schools, staff were also generally very positive about
interventions which were helping them to meet specific needs. For instance, a primary
teacher commented:
Three children in my class who find it very difficult to communicate have started
to use Makaton signs to communicate things such as dinner time. I also think
Makaton helps the less confident children join in.
SLC specialists too recognised the importance of ‘embedding speech, language and
communication in what [the schools] are already doing’. Indeed, they recognised that
schools had come, as one specialist put it, ‘[to be] shifting under their own steam’ and
that, as ToTT progressed, the situation was one where ‘the schools involved have
enough expertise and you’re just there to keep them going’. Each of the schools also
had mechanisms in place to enable staff to learn from each others’ practice and to
develop and trial new approaches together. One school, for example, had an
established system of ‘coaching threes’, which involved a team of teachers planning
one lesson; teaching this in turn with their two colleagues observing; and meeting after
each lesson to share their reflections and pinpoint areas for improvement. The impetus
19
created by ToTT’s activities had led the school to use coaching threes to focus on SLC
across the curriculum, with this making it central to lesson planning and peer
observations.
As this again emphasises, a considerable strength of the ToTT approach is that is has
built on existing good practice, showing how, with just a subtle change in focus, SLC
can be made central to a school’s practices, and owned and driven by schools
themselves. That the schools wanted to ‘own’ the project, and identify those strategies
and interventions that ‘worked for them’, is shown in such comments as:
We want to move from awareness to training; skilling up teachers quickly; we
don’t need a whole new pedagogy for this – half dozen essential things would
make a huge difference. (secondary teacher)
Similarly, a primary teacher commented that what worked well was when The
Communication Trust (or its consultants) ‘introduce something useable, staff have a
chance to discuss and unpick it, and it’s practical and quick and they can see the
immediate use.’
Targeted interventions were also generally well received across the schools even
though they could be ‘very intensive’ and, in some cases, ‘[expected] a lot from
teaching assistants’ (communication specialist). Despite this, schools (particularly the
primaries) were keen to ensure that the interventions introduced by the project
remained part of their teaching and learning repertoire. Interventions were credited
with a wide range of positive outcomes, including increases in: the volume of talk;
children’s ability to initiate talk; children’s confidence to speak; and their vocabulary. In
one particular instance, a child who had been referred to a specialist speech and
language clinic made so much progress during a targeted phonological awareness
intervention that by the time she was given a clinic appointment, it was no longer
necessary.
Some issues to consider
ToTT’s short time scale meant that new initiatives were introduced on a continual
basis throughout the year. This situation was far from ideal, inevitably limiting staffs’
opportunities to engage thoroughly with every initiative, or to plan how to embed
initiatives in their on-going practice. In terms of the volume of work created and the
pace at which ToTT has moved, one of the communication specialists reflected that
the schools ‘had done as much as they could cope with, any more would have been
too much’. In this respect – whilst their input was valued in itself – some questions
were raised about the involvement of consultants. Indeed, one of the consultants
herself highlighted the issue of ‘overlapping initiatives’. For her, it was not just a
question of potential initiative overload, but also of coherence; ‘seeing the whole was a
challenge’ and she ‘got the sense that it was a challenge for the staff too’.
Patchy take up of activities within schools was also an issue. The following entry in the
SALT’s notes is typical:
Talk boxes: during my visit around the school to hand out missing resources,
there are some that are obviously not being used as yet – mainly in Key Stage
2 – in store cupboards, resources on top of them, etc. There are some teachers
that are definitely using the resources though and really implementing well!
20
In looking to sustain their activities in future, the schools also identified a number of
specific issues which would have to be resolved. Notably, for some people, there was
less of a concern that targeted interventions might fall by the wayside, than that they
would begin to take precedence over on-going development at the classroom and
school levels. Some staff expressed concerns about the amount of time TAs had spent
outside the classroom running targeted interventions, and questioned where the
balance between general classroom support and targeted support should lie.
In addition, while each of the schools had a range of activities within different year
groups and key stages, they had yet to start planning explicitly how these might be
aligned to create an integrated programme of support over time. It was also clear that
if targeted interventions were to be used to maximum effect in future, they would need
to be planned carefully into the school calendar. With interventions consisting of
sessions over a number of weeks, all the schools had experienced difficulties in being
able to run these to schedule in continuous blocks.
4.3 Engagement with wider contexts
As well as promoting in-school strategies, ToTT was founded on the belief that
sustained improvements in SLC were unlikely to be achieved without paying attention
to the wider family and community contexts in which children and young people lived.
Finding ways to work with parents and with other services working with families in the
local area was therefore an important objective. Given the sheer volume of activity
undertaken in schools around the identification of SLCN, and the implementation of
practical strategies, this strand of the project was understandably least well developed
and schools found ‘getting into the community [could be] a challenge’ (primary head
teacher). It was also the most difficult strand of ToTT for The Communication Trust to
support because its success ultimately depended on the schools themselves being
able to build strong relationships with parents and wider partners. Even so, as set out
below, during the year the schools started to look outwards in two main ways.
Working with parents
Since the low starting points of many of the children entering primary schools was a
particular concern, those involved in the project felt that the early years were a crucial
phase for intervention – a view shared at both primary and secondary levels. As one
secondary teacher reflected:
One of the very scary things was The Communication Trust’s assessment of
nursery children. So we are aware as part of the offshoots of the programme
that we have got to be hitting family life and helping local families. (Secondary
school teacher)
A primary school teacher elaborated on this, explaining:
Lots of children arrive in school not having had conversations at home, not
having been spoken to at home. They come in so far behind. We have to put in
so much to get them up to where they should be. They’re 18 months behind in
nursery in terms of speech, language and communication skills.
For these reasons, the pre-school phase and transition from pre-school to primary
school became a focal point for schools’ community engagement strategies. All the
primary schools had existing programmes for helping children settle into school, such
21
as ‘stay and play’ sessions, but felt there was scope for developing these to engage
with parents in a deliberate way around SLC. Activities which were re-oriented to
support such engagement included, for example, home visits during which children’s
SLC development could be discussed, and sessions in schools for pre-school children
where parents could be introduced to ways of encouraging development, such as by
modelling story telling. A promising strategy which began to be explored towards the
end of the project was the development of a cohort of volunteer parent ‘ambassadors’,
trained by schools, who could be ‘buddies’ for parents of children about to start school.
In addition to providing advice, the idea was that they would encourage parents to
make use of community children’s provision, for example, holiday activities in
children’s centres.
At a general level, the schools had variable success in reaching parents and often
those who the school most wanted to engage in activities (such as pre-school
workshops) were the ones least likely to attend. As one teacher put it, ‘in general, the
parents who were already engaged are still engaged and vice versa’. Some people
also pointed out that intervening with parents around SLC was a sensitive matter. One
teacher, for example, thought that some families had been put off by a letter from her
inviting them to a support session. She commented:
People don’t like to be told they need help. It’s different to be told your child
needs intervention from being told you need help to support your child’s
communication.
However, there were many activities which had good engagement and positive
feedback from parents. For instance, The Communication Trust met the costs of coach
hire for the federated schools to run a parent and child museum trip. The schools
planned activities for the day focusing on SLC, ranging from prompts of things to talk
to your child about on the coach (e.g. ‘what can you see?’) to structured activities for
parents to complete with their children at the museum.
In addition to involving parents in specific activities to promote SLC, the SALT also
played a vital role in raising parents’ awareness of their children’s needs. She not only
met with the parents of children identified as having particular needs, but teachers
reported that she would spend time in playground at the start and end of school
chatting to parents about their children’s progress, and giving suggestions about ways
to help develop their children’s skills. As one primary head teacher reflected, the SALT
– unlike other specialists who worked with the school – had had time to build
relationships with parents:
[the SALT] is excellent with our parents, very gentle but very very persistent…
she’s in the playground gently reminding them what they need to be doing, making
sure they follow up and they respond really well to her because they don’t feel
threatened.
Working with other services
The schools also recognised the potential of collaborating with other professionals and
services in order to strengthen children’s SLC. This strand of work began to take place
towards the end of the project, particularly when the SALT had allocated time for
‘linking work’. In one school, for example, a link was made with the local children’s
centre, and as a result joint ‘stay and play’ sessions took place for children about to
transfer to the school’s nursery class. This allowed school and Sure Start staff to liaise
about children’s SLC (including any individual difficulties) and was also an opportunity
22
for parents to discuss their children’s development informally with the SALT. The SALT
also offered support to outreach workers who were working with families in the
community. Such activities were not restricted to the primary schools. In the secondary
school, the SALT had started to explore what could be learnt from work to promote
SLC in the youth justice system.
Nonetheless, the schools also experienced challenges at times trying to develop
relationships with other local services. One school, for instance, had tried to enlist
health visitors to help get information about language development to families but had
found that they would only coordinate over children they had identified as having
particular needs. In terms of approach, moreover, one of the teachers involved thought
that there were quite significant differences between the school and the health visitor
service, suggesting that although the latter provided support for children’s general
behavioural development there was ‘still an early years vacuum in provision, in terms
of support for parent/child interaction’. One teacher expressed her frustration with this
situation, explaining:
The problem with pre-school assessments is when a child is identified as
having needs pre-school, they are simply signed off by other agencies when
they reach the age for accessing nursery provision. Then it becomes a school
problem which schools don’t have the capacity to deal with, even though it is
known about before the child comes to school.
In general, therefore, whilst schools remained reasonably positive about their
community strategies, they saw the project as a small step in a much longer-term
process of engagement. For instance, ToTT’s head teacher steering group had started
to think more broadly about SLC as a public health issue rather than simply an
educational concern, and wondered how they might establish links with local health
and well being boards in ways which would be supportive of ToTT’s future
development.
The time and resources needed to pursue such avenues – with no guarantee of
positive outcomes – also created some tensions within the project. In particular, it was
possible to detect a tension at times between a desire to achieve broad educational
and social outcomes over time, and a narrower, more curriculum-oriented version of
ToTT’s aims. As one teacher put it, ‘we want to get children where they can learn to
read and write and access learning quicker’. At its baldest, the narrower version was
about being able to meet the demands of a national standards agenda. Tensions in
this respect appeared to be indicative less of a difference between people’s
understandings of SLC and commitment to enhancing this, than of the pressures
schools faced to make demonstrable gains in attainment.
4.4 A strong likelihood of sustainability
As noted throughout this report, ToTT stimulated a considerable amount of activity in a
very short period of time, and all those involved were aware of the possibility of losing
any gains that had been made once The Communication Trust withdrew from the
project. ‘Working pressure’, ‘loss of momentum’ and ‘initiative overload’ were all
considered possible threats to continuing development. Staff in schools reported
sometimes feeling that even with external support for co-ordinating the work involved,
there ‘wasn’t, with the best will in the world, enough staff, time or space for it’
(secondary teacher). As with other projects, therefore, there were some fears about
sustainability, and that ‘next year another plate will come along to spin and we will lose
23
what’s been done in the project’ (primary school head teacher). Some people felt that
if ToTT had been longer and there had been more time to embed the gains this would
have been less of a risk.
These fears aside, those who were closely involved in the project were optimistic
about ToTT’s on-going reinforcement and development, and had put in place some
practical mechanisms to try and support this. Some of these were at an individual
school level, while others capitalised on the federation structure. For example, at an
individual school level, one of the primary schools had given a middle manager
specific teaching and learning responsibility for SLC, deliberately making this role
distinct from that of literacy co-ordinator to ensure that the full range of SLC skills
would be promoted. The secondary school in particular was keen to ensure that the
school’s learning about SLC, and the activities it had developed, should be made part
of the induction process for new members of staff.
There was also a commitment to integrating on-going work into existing systems for
target setting, planning, and review. For instance, one of the primary schools had
made it a requirement to record the use of ‘talk boxes’ in their planning, so it could
then assess evidence from across the school about how the boxes were being used.
The schools had also identified simple mechanisms through which SLC could be kept
alive within the school’s consciousness – for example, having a ‘sign of the week’, or
word or key SLC skill of the week – and by making SLC development a standing
agenda item for staff meetings about teaching and learning. The primary schools were
also keen to create a SLC baseline for nursery children starting in 2012-13. Although
the costs associated with administering the national SLC assessments used by The
Communication Trust were seen to be prohibitive, the schools planned to use the
Trust’s tracking tool to assess the children themselves, and from this, to determine
which interventions they needed to run.
At the federation level, the schools had committed to maintaining the working and
steering group structures established by The Communication Trust, with one of the
head teachers taking on the role of chairing the working group to ensure a close
connection between ToTT’s operational and strategic levels. The working group
members also agreed that for the group to be effective in future they would need to
make a conscious commitment to sharing good practice, as their natural tendency was
rather to share problems and concerns. Working group members also recognised that
the opportunities for the schools to work together and share resources created by the
federation structure had not yet been fully realised. Although the potential existed to
coordinate SLC activities across the project schools (and staff did share and use some
of the same ideas), they had, to date, focused primarily on development in their own
contexts. As one teacher reflected:
To be honest, the project could have worked just as well with [name of school]
only. We have had some joint training, but at the minute, for example, children
aren’t working together. But we do plan strategies together. So what does make
a difference is to be able to discuss ideas, we can each benefit from ideas. So
it’s beneficial from the network/learning together point of view, but not the dayto-day execution.
Indeed, it may be the case that as external experts withdraw from project, the
participating schools have greater incentives to support each other more closely.
Notably, the teachers leading ToTT in two of the primary schools had already started
to work closely around EYFS provision.
24
Probably the single most important commitment to sustaining ToTT, at least during
2012-13, was made by the primary school head teachers who agreed to pool
resources to buy in a school-based SALT. The idea was that he or she would work in a
similar way to the SALT who had been seconded to ToTT during 2011-12, and that
this would help to maintain ‘a coaching model that can continue to support the way
interactions are governed in the classroom’ (primary school head teacher). Although,
within ToTT, having a school-based SALT appeared to have been highly beneficial,
this was not typical of local provision, and various difficulties were encountered in
determining how best to replicate a school-based model, as there was no established
mechanism to allow schools to fund an NHS secondment. As an issue outside the
head teachers’ expertise, the Professional Director and project manager from The
Communication Trust took the lead on negotiations with the Royal College of Speech
and Language Therapists and the schools’ local NHS Trust. A difficulty they
encountered was that the schools would be required to meet the SALT’s full NHS
management costs as well as salary costs, which would make it prohibitive for the
schools to hire a SALT on a full-time basis.
While appointing an independent SALT presented a more cost effective approach,
both the schools and The Communication Trust wanted to ensure that any SALT
appointed would have a level of qualification at least equal to the seconded NHS SALT
they had been working with, who already had several years experience in different
clinical settings. The Professional Director from The Communication Trust was also
particularly concerned by the growing number of instances nationally where schools
had, in the interests of cost, appointed independent and often newly qualified SALTs
who were not always able to handle the complex range of needs typically found in
school contexts. In addition, she felt that having an NHS line-managed SALT would be
important to ensure that the SALT received continuing professional development, and
could refer to NHS colleagues with professional queries and for professional mentoring
in general – services the head teachers would have been unable to support
independently.
By the end of the academic year, the primary schools had agreed to pool funds to
jointly appoint an NHS-managed SALT on a 0.6 term-time only contract, with this
allowing a day a week in each of the three schools, and the Professional Director from
The Communication Trust had agreed to support the schools from a specialist
perspective during the interviewing process. It was, however, doubtful, given how long
negotiations had taken, that the schools would have a SALT in post for the start of the
school year. The secondary school meanwhile had secured a school-based SALT
funded by the local authority to support the school’s specialist provision for pupils on
the autistic spectrum. Creating links between the primary and secondary SALTs will
also be important to support developments in cross-phase and federation contexts in
future.
25
5. Talk of the Town in action
As noted already, ToTT has been distinctive in working from the premise that – within
a wider project framework which introduces specialist knowledge, training, and
targeted and universal interventions – schools should be able to develop their own
approaches, suited to their particular needs. In this respect, the coordinating teachers
in each school have played a vital role in leading the initiative, by starting to create a
narrative for the project in their school which not only joins ToTT’s component parts
together, but does so in ways which match their schools’ concerns. Thus, while in the
short term the schools have taken steps to maintain particular elements of ToTT (for
instance, through securing continued access to a SALT), it seems likely that it is these
emerging teacher-led narratives which may actually form the core of longer-term
developments. They have the potential to bring a continuing sense of destination and
purpose to ToTT in each school, and in doing so, help to guard against the danger that
over time the project will fragment into a series of disconnected interventions.
To illustrate this potential, this section of the report presents two brief accounts of
practice. These show how, in one of the participating primary schools, and in the
secondary school, the teachers leading ToTT have drawn on the project’s resources to
address a coherent set of underlying concerns. While there will inevitably be some
overlap with the previous section in terms of the activities discussed, the accounts are
nonetheless distinctive in showing how teachers leading on ToTT have brought
activities together in a way which is indicative of an emerging and sustainable
narrative for change.
5.1 Account of practice 1. A federated primary school
At the beginning of ToTT, the speech, language and communication skills of this
school’s 65 nursery class children were assessed using standardised national tests.
These showed the vast majority of children to be joining the school with skills which
were below, or well below, normal range for their age. Elaborating on possible reasons
for this, teachers drew attention to features of the school’s local community, and its
high levels of disadvantage – as indicated by the fact that 68% of the school’s pupils
were in receipt of free school meals. In particular, the teachers commented on
parenting skills and the nature of child-parent relationships. These included:
 the number of young, typically single mums, who were often quite isolated and
had poor support networks
 the number of children starting school with poor social skills – and sometimes
not yet toilet trained, or weaned off dummies and/or bottles, or able to use a
knife and fork
 a lack of interaction between parents and children. For instance, staff
commented that parents listened to music on headphones while bringing their
children to and from school. It was felt that many parents lacked good SLCS
 poor engagement in activities at the local Sure Start Centre (located next to the
school), or in activities at school (‘parents will come into school, but they won’t
stay’)
 a general lack of confidence and self esteem in parents and children.
The school felt that finding ways to engage more effectively with parents would be
central both to improving children’s SLC on entry to school, and to supporting their
26
development once in school. However, the school had already made extensive efforts
to engage parents, with the difficulties and frustrations they had experienced being
captured in comment ‘if we had [the children] 24 hours a day then we could actually do
something about [SLC]’.
Reflecting on developments in this school over the year, it is clear that ToTT has
created both an impetus, and set of resources and specialist support, that have helped
to start shifting parents’ engagement, both with school and pre-school contexts.
However, it has been the school’s EYFS leader, and her concern to address factors
outside school, which have ultimately driven the school’s activities. Although it is not
possible to detail all the developments which have taken place over the year here, a
number of these are outlined below.
The school’s emerging approach
Over the course of the year, the school developed a two stranded approach – one
focusing on children already enrolled in the school’s EYFS, and one to engage with
parents and other agencies in pre-school contexts.
Work focusing on current pupils:
 As an initial step, the school took the decision to share the results of the nursery
pupils’ SLC assessments with parents at parents evening. The school thought
carefully about how to present the results so that they became a shared
concern which needed the school and parents to work together – not as
something for which the school was ‘blaming’ parents. The EYFS leader asked
the SALT to write an advice sheet for parents to be handed out at the evening,
leading to a small number of parents asking to meet the SALT. Overall, staff felt
parents had responded well to this approach. With support from The
Communication Trust, the school also ran a parent focus group, which was
attended by a small number of parents, to explore parents’ understandings
about SLC and how to promote this with their children.
 The school started to run activities for parents and children with an SLC
emphasis. For instance, the school ran a number of ‘story and rhyme time’
sessions for parents and children, which might involve making a doll or a
puppet, and then using this to act out a particular story. Parents could then
retell the story to their child at home using the puppet. The school also used the
‘postcards for parents’ introduced by The Communication Trust. For instance,
these postcards had key vocabulary with accompanying pictures, and
suggestions of things to talk about in different situations (e.g. questions to ask
at dinner time, bath time, bed time, and on the way to school). Other activities
have included writing workshops for parents, and stay and play sessions with
an emphasis on talk.
 Through The Communication Trust, the school had training to use ‘Makaton’ – a
package introducing signing alongside vocabulary – and found that the children
in EYFS responded very well to it. To develop this further, the EYFS leader
started to explore how parents could be involved, so that they could use the
Makaton signs being introduced in school with their children. For instance, the
SALT’s notes from January 2012 recall: ‘had a long conversation with [EYFS
leader]… She felt that Makaton training for parents would be beneficial…[if no
funding] we discussed doing it ourselves.’ By the end of the academic year, the
school had committed to funding a member of staff to qualify as a Makaton
trainer – allowing them to sustain the use of Makaton in the EYFS, and offer
training to parents and Sure Start staff in the school’s linked children’s centre,
and on a fee basis to other schools. An after school signing club for parents and
27


children – an idea raised by The Communication Trust at a working group
meeting – is planned to start in September 2012.
The EYFS leader emphasised the value of the inclusive nature of all these
activities, be it signing, story telling, or modelling questions. As she explained,
parents who might not have the skills to read a bed time story could still tell their
child a story which has been modelled for them through a session in school,
and in doing so, actively support the development of SLC.
For some of the targeted small group SLC interventions – typically involving
around 10 pupils – parents were invited into school to watch the sessions their
children were involved in, with up to seven parents attending one session. The
SALT also met with parents to explain about the skills their children were
developing, and how they could support this.
Work focusing on pre-school children:
 The school has started to make earlier home visits for its new intake of pupils,
and has developed a questionnaire for parents which can help to identify any
potential SLC difficulties. Parents are invited to bring their children to activities
at the school – such as story and rhyme time outlined above– which can begin
to address these before their child starts school.
 The school has started to identify other professionals who work with pre-school
children and with whom it might work in partnership to develop SLC. Most
notably, it has started to develop much stronger links with its local Sure Start
children’s centre. In particular, the EYFS leader is working with Sure Start staff
on curriculum issues, and will either help to develop Sure Start’s existing
curriculum so that it increasingly builds school readiness (both with respect to
SLC and more broadly) or to help Sure Start staff to develop their own version
of the school’s EYFS curriculum. Sure Start staff have also been attending SLC
activities for parents and children at the school so that they can replicate these.
The school sees moves to allow parents to register births at the Sure Start
centre as a positive mechanism for identifying and engaging with parents who
might need additional support in the pre-school years, and is willing to share its
knowledge and expertise with the Sure Start centre to help meet these needs.
 The school has also started to explore ways of working in partnership with
health visitors. Although links are considerably less well developed here, the
EYFS leader has raised concerns with health visitors about how the use of
bottles and dummies – up to and beyond school starting age – can affect SLC
development.
Future plans
The EYFS leader is very aware that getting more parents actively involved in SLC
activities pre-school and during the EYFS will be important to ensure maximum impact.
She has therefore started to explore different models of peer mentoring for parents,
which would involve training volunteers to support parents to access activities at
school, and wider resources and opportunities in the community – all with an emphasis
on SLC. The EYFS leader feels that parents who could benefit from mentoring could
be identified through the school’s own home visits, or by Sure Start, or health workers,
with whom she has been developing links, and that some of the first cohort of
volunteers could be drawn from those parents who were actively involved in the
school’s SLC activities this year. She is currently exploring with the national volunteer
service how best to approach this, and The Communication Trust has also
recommended looking into the National Literacy Trust’s Parent Ambassador
programme as another possibility. The EYFS leader is also keen to explore the
possibility of parent-led SLC activities in school, again perhaps led by parents who
28
have been taking part in activities this year. To support this, the other federated
primary school has offered to share learning from its already established Parent
Champion programme.
It is particularly striking, given the school’s starting point, that its involvement in ToTT
has created the impetus to start developing an assets-based strategy, actively
demonstrating a belief that all parents, whatever their own level of SLCS, are able to
support their children’s SLC development, and indeed, that parents and local
volunteers can become SLC champions for their community.
5.2 Account of practice 2: Secondary school
As noted earlier, in the participating secondary school, there have recently been strong
improvements in GCSE scores, but the numbers of students achieving five A* to C
grades at GCSE or equivalent, including English and mathematics, are still
significantly below national average. One of the challenges the school has identified in
raising attainment is to strengthen students’ thinking skills and ‘to encourage deep
thinking and deep learning’ (head teacher). For instance, the head teacher highlighted
instances where students had struggled with the changing nature of mathematics
assessments which, instead of requiring straight calculations, presented them with
problems to solve. Students were often found to have difficulty in understanding what
was required, which in turn prevented them from demonstrating their mathematical
skills.
Prior to their involvement in ToTT, the school had sought to address these issues
through implementing SSAT’s Personal Learning Emotional and Thinking Skills
(PLEATS) initiative, which focuses on enabling students to become:
 Team Workers
 Effective Participators
 Creative Thinkers
 Self Managers
 Independent Enquirers
 Reflective Thinkers
Each of these broad areas (commonly referred to in the school as ‘PLEATS’) had an
accompanying set of seven statements, setting out the skills students needed to
develop. These were intended to form core learning outcomes for lessons. For
instance, the statements accompanying ‘Independent Enquirers’ were:
 I can identify questions to answer and problems to resolve
 I can plan and carry out research, appreciating the consequences of decisions
 I can explore issues, events or problems from different perspectives
 I can analyse and evaluate information, judging its relevance and value
 I can consider the influence of circumstances, beliefs and feelings on decisions
and events
 I can support conclusions, using reasoned arguments and evidence
 I can motivate myself to work towards goals.
The school planned that class teachers in Years 7, 8 and 9 would focus on two
PLEATs per term, and record the skills statements being addressed in their lesson
planning.
The school’s emerging approach
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ToTT started at a time when the school was questioning the effectiveness of PLEATS
as an approach for fostering thinking skills. Ofsted had reported PLEATS to be a ‘bolton’ initiative, rather than as integral to the school’s teaching and learning practices.
Staff had also expressed concerns about the wording of the PLEATS skills statements,
suggesting they were too complex for students. The school’s lead teachers for ToTT
were therefore keen to see if, through ToTT, they could find ways to make PLEATS
more effective.
The Communication Trust commissioned a consultant from SSAT, who had both a
specialist background in SLC and knowledge of the PLEATS initiative, to work with the
school. Working with the consultant, the lead teachers used questionnaires to explore
students’ and teachers’ views about PLEATS. Their findings pointed to underlying
difficulties with SLC as one of the main factors hindering engagement with PLEATS.
For instance, the skills statements were found to be over-long and to use difficult
vocabulary which students could not access. Approximately half of the 100 students
randomly surveyed across years 7, 8 and 9 reported that they did not understand what
PLEATS were.
With ongoing consultant support, this led the school to focus more specifically on SLC
as a way of developing PLEATS to support teaching and learning. In particular, the
teachers leading ToTT were impressed by the work of another secondary school they
had seen at a conference which had used visual imagery to support vocabulary
development. They decided to adapt this approach, and as a pilot study, to create
visual materials for the PLEAT ‘Independent Enquirers’. As part of this, staff in each
subject department were asked to reduce the seven existing skills statements into
three statements that reflected the skills needed in their subject. Across the school,
this focused attention on the vocabulary needed to foster deep thinking and learning,
and the difficulties students had in understanding this. Indeed, at a training meeting,
some teachers talked about how they had come to realise that when students were
uncertain about what a task required of them it could be because they did not
understand what was meant by terms like ‘explore’, ‘analyse’, ‘solve’ and ‘evaluate’,
and that it was important to be able to offer students definitions they could access.
Through this consultative process, three skills statements were agreed at school level.
These were:
Independent enquirers
 I can analyse and evaluate information, judging its relevance and value.
 I can support conclusions, using reasoned arguments and evidence.
 I can motivate myself to work towards goals.
A group of eight students identified as requiring extra support then worked with the
ToTT lead teachers and technical staff to create imagery for these key statements,
which both reflected their school environment and could help other students to
understand the key skills they needed to develop. An example of one of these images
is provided in Figure 1 below:
30
Figure 1. A visual illustration for Independent Enquirers
The school then also made a successful application for 02 ‘Think Big’ funding to
support its work on using visual imagery for vocabulary development. This provided a
digital camera and highly specialised commercial software which students used to
develop further images for PLEATS. These images have been made into PowerPoint
slides, and will be available to all staff, via the school’s staff intranet, for use in their
teaching in 2012-13. To accompany these slides, a staff guide to introducing the
vocabulary of PLEATS has also been produced. Taking each of the PLEATS skills
statements in turn, this identifies the words in each statement which will make most
difference to students’ understandings. The guide explains that most of the words
identified are ‘tier 2’ words - tier 1 words being those in common usage; tier 2 words
being those which are less commonly used and which allow ideas to be expressed in a
sophisticated way; and ‘tier 3’ words being specialist vocabulary which are limited to
specific domains and subject areas. Given the subject specialist nature of the
secondary curriculum, this will be important in helping the staff as a whole to
appreciate the difference between subject specific vocabulary and vocabulary linked to
thinking skills. The guide also gives ‘tips for teachers’ on how to introduce tier 2
vocabulary.
With a set of school-wide skills statements now agreed for all the PLEATS, staff have
also been able to assess students’ understandings of the different thinking skills they
need to develop. For instance, the lead teachers for ToTT have created a proforma
which asks students to: underline the words they think are key to each statement;
underline the words they are not sure of; to give an example of where they have
shown the ability to be an ‘independent enquirer’ (or one of the other PLEATS); and to
mark on a scale (from very confident to not very confident) how they feel about their
understanding of what each PLEAT means. In future, this proforma can be used to
create a baseline showing students’ understandings, to which staff can then respond.
The wider impacts of PLEATS
The work on PLEATS has stimulated a much wider interest in SLC across the school.
Notably, one of the teachers leading on ToTT is a member of the school’s strategic
teaching and learning committee which includes all departmental heads, the school’s
behaviour co-ordinator, and the lead teacher for transition support. Sharing work on
31
PLEATS at this strategic level has acted as a catalyst for a wide range of activity which
is now starting to be developed throughout the school. This includes:
 The introduction of whole school strategies. For instance, the use of
vocabulary for questioning, along with visual symbols, has been introduced in
form-time. This has allowed teachers to have, as the consultant described it, ‘a
dummy run’ before introducing this into their subject teaching.
 Support for transition. Staff have put plans in place to pre-teach specific
words in the new PLEATS statements (such as ‘explore’ and ‘analyse’), at a
minimum to new Year 7 students known to have SLCN. In future, the lead
teachers for ToTT have expressed at ToTT working group meetings that they
would like to work with Year 6 staff in the project primary schools to introduce
vocabulary around core skills pre-transition.
 A whole school commitment to developing the teaching of vocabulary. To
support this, the consultant was able to secure funding for the school to
purchase licences for ‘Communicate in Print2’. This software package provides
a comprehensive range of visual illustrations for curriculum related vocabulary
and instructions, and staff will be offered training in its use so they can create
classroom resources. Members of the teaching and learning committee have
already started to model its use. In addition, the school has given a licence to
each of the ToTT primaries, and offered to include them in any training activities,
in order to create a shared resource. In future, it is hoped that this will lead to
greater cross-phase continuity in learning.
 Raising staff awareness around the impact of poor vocabulary. In the
summer term, a staff feedback session was held to share the finding of baseline
SLC assessments carried out by The Communication Trust at the start of ToTT.
In addition, 27 teachers attended a voluntary workshop session held by an
external consultant with an emphasis on understanding the differences between
tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 vocabulary, and how to teach vocabulary using
picture/symbol support.
 Targeted interventions. There are also plans to develop targeted interventions
around vocabulary, for instance, a phonological awareness group linked to
vocabulary learning.
In this case study, it is particularly striking how, by acting with an explicit awareness of
the importance of SLC, and in particular, of vocabulary in the Key State 3 curriculum,
PLEATS have gone from being an ineffective initiative to being a catalyst for changing
practice at school level. In the last year, work stemming from the revision of PLEATS
has stimulated both a commitment, and range of activity, to support vocabulary
development. As highlighted in Section 2, secondary school students can be required
to learn between 3,000-5,000 words a year, and so the potential importance of the
school’s emerging approach should not be underestimated. If sustained and further
developed, its focus on vocabulary can be expected to impact on attainment. In
addition, if the teachers’ hopes to work more closely with the ToTT primary schools
come to fruition, it could help to develop a common cross-phase approach –
supporting transition and potentially improving SLC and attainment at all levels. Also,
as noted earlier in the report, the school has special provision for students on the
autistic spectrum and continued work to promote vocabulary development with visual
supports is likely to have specific benefits in this regard.
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6. A model for taking the project forward
The project in the four Manchester schools has provided a pilot for what might happen
elsewhere as ToTT develops. Importantly, while The Communication Trust presented
an overarching framework for ToTT, the actual project strategy developed during the
year as the participating schools each took hold of the ideas and materials provided by
the various consultants and adapted these to suit their own circumstances. Inevitably,
therefore, while working within a common framework, the project took a different form
in each school. Nevertheless, an overall pattern began to emerge in terms of each
school’s approach to developing ToTT in its particular context, not least as a result of
staff from the partner schools sharing their experiences.
Involvement in these development processes led the University team to formulate an
explanation of what seem to be the critical features of ToTT, and how these features
relate to one another. Connecting all of this to other relevant research, it is possible to
suggest an overall model of what should happen to promote SLC in schools. It is
recommended that this model should now be refined so that it can be used to guide
ToTT’s developments when it is implemented in other contexts. Figure 2 summarises
the features of the model. What these involve is explained below.
Figure 2: A model for promoting speech, language and communication in schools
Intended outcomes
Analysis of contexts
Professional
development
Changing policies
and practices
Additional
interventions
33
Intended outcomes
Research suggests that attempts to bring about educational change are more likely to
be successful if there is a common understanding of what it is a project is trying to
achieve. In the case of ToTT, this is an area that will need much further clarification
amongst those who get involved.
As noted earlier, in the partner schools there was evidence of varied views as to what
the goals of the initiative were. Broadly speaking, the schools’ efforts were focused on
overall improvements in SLCS, particularly for those children who were perceived to
be relatively weak in this respect. As explained above, the baseline testing was
powerful in focusing minds on the fact that, in this group of schools, many children
seemed to fit into this category. For some staff this meant that the project became part
of the core business of fostering SLC across the curriculum. For others, however, it
was mainly focused on interventions outside of the main curriculum for particular
groups of children perceived to be vulnerable. And, inevitably, the pressure of national
tests and Ofsted inspections meant that some senior colleagues saw the project as
helping to raise standards.
The idea of a ‘communication-rich school’ was frequently mentioned amongst those
most closely involved in the project. Defining this could potentially helpful in clarifying
ToTT’s central purpose. However, this would then also need to be developed in more
operational terms in respect to:
 Skills – it was clear that those involved were increasingly focused on
improving children’s skills in speaking, listening and communicating, both
within school and beyond.
 Knowledge – through this greater emphasis on SLC, staff were also
concerned with enriching the experiences of their pupils, on the assumption
that many had a limited range of cultural experiences on which to draw.
 Behaviours – staff talked a lot about the need to help children to become
more confident in expressing their views and sensitive in listening to the
ideas of others, in ways that were intended to help them learn in school and
to enable them to self-regulate their behaviour more effectively, and make
their way in later life.
Analysis of contexts
Staying with the idea of communication richness, the University team saw how schools
had used ToTT to analyse the contexts which help shape children’s SLC, as well as
exploring children’s skills in the contexts of the school and its curriculum offer. In this
way staff sometimes were able to identify and address barriers that were preventing
some children from developing their SLCS. At the same time, this enabled staff to
pinpoint resources – particularly human resources – that could be mobilized in order to
overcome these barriers.
In thinking about analysing contexts, the experiences in the project schools point to
three sets of factors that bear on the development of SLC amongst children and young
people. These are:
34



Within-school factors related to the practices and structures of schools
themselves – how teachers operate, how the school identifies students SLCN,
groups students, how it responds to diversity, and so on.
Between-school factors that arise in the wider education system. These relate
to the way that school provision is organised in a neighbourhood, patterns of
pupil movement between primary and secondary phases, and the opportunities
that are or are not available in the area.
Beyond-school factors that arise from the local socio-economic context within
which schooling takes place. Amongst other things, these are to do with
material poverty, inadequate family support for children’s learning, peer cultures
and lack of educational opportunities.
Connecting this analysis to research evidence, it would be possible to develop an audit
tool that could help schools to focus their activities so as to develop holistic
approaches for fostering communication-rich learning environments.
Changing policy and practice
Linking such contextual analyses to ToTT’s aims is likely to point to aspects of policy
and practice that will need changing. Staying with the formulation described above as
a framework, ToTT’s primary aim should be to develop a more holistic strategy that
seeks to address all three sets of factors, as follows:
Within-schools
 Ensuring universal quality with respect to teaching and learning practices to
foster SLC, and leadership to support this
 Using targeted interventions to ensure that no pupils are overlooked or left
behind
Between-schools
 Ensuring coherence within a local area, such that all schools pull in the same
direction and all pupils receive consistent support to develop their SLCS
throughout their time in schools
 Developing shared responsibility so that no children fall ‘through the net’
Beyond-schools
 Identifying and addressing family, community and societal barriers to the
development of SLC
 Mobilising all the resources available in the local community to overcome such
barriers
Clearly, this is a challenging agenda for change that requires strong commitment and
effective leadership from staff at a range of levels, plus support from external agencies.
Given that the evidence so far is that such an approach has the potential to make a
significant impact on the learning and future life chances of children and young people,
such efforts would seem to be justifiable.
Additional interventions
As noted above, the evidence from the project schools suggests that well planned
additional experiences can add value to the learning experiences offered as part of the
general curriculum. The extent to which these are needed varies from school to school,
35
and, indeed, from child to child. Often these interventions were provided away from the
classroom by support staff.
There is a need to look carefully at the way the expertise of these important colleagues
is utilised. It is worth noting that recent research presents a mixed picture in this
respect. Some studies show that teachers feel that the presence of assistants in class
has a wide-ranging effect on the teaching and learning, including: increased attention
amongst students, improvements in learning, improved teacher effectiveness and
improved outcomes. There is some evidence too which suggests that targeted support
interventions, with small groups, where the support staff were appropriately trained,
have some success in increasing outcomes with targeted students. But there is also
evidence which contradicts this, which suggests that children miss out when they are
absent from the classroom, and that impact on educational outcomes is very limited.
For example, one study identified a negative correlation between the amount of
contact students with special educational needs had with teaching assistants and the
interactions they had with their teachers. In addition, the majority of supported
students spent most of their time working on tasks different to those of their peers.
This led the authors to conclude that, too often, teacher assistant support was used as
an alternative to attention from teachers.
While there are differences in the findings of these studies (possibly due to context),
there is general agreement that if teaching assistants are to be used they must be
provided with relevant training, and that teachers themselves need training in how to
make use of such support within their classrooms. Overall, it appears that a careful
balance between using teaching assistants to lead targeted small group interventions,
and using them to support universal good practice in classroom contexts, will need to
be struck.
Professional development
At ToTT’s heart are opportunities for professional learning amongst staff regarding
ways of fostering SLC amongst their pupils. This takes the form of a potentially
powerful mix of strategies for creating a school wide effort to improve understanding
and practices. An added factor in all of this are the benefits that can be gained when a
group of schools work cooperatively in order to widen the available expertise and use
differences in practice to stimulate experimentation and innovation
As far as ToTT is concerned, there were three important elements involved in
professional development, as follows:

Resources. The project provided an impressive range of materials that were
well received in the schools. These included a lot of practical suggestions
and attractive stimulus materials that could be used to foster SLC. Whilst
there was considerable variation in the way and extent to which these
resources were used, in the best contexts it was evident that they had been
carefully assimilated into existing repertoires of practice. This is important
since it was clear that many staff in these schools already had a range of
effective techniques and practices that could be built upon. In taking the
project forward, therefore, it is vital to see externally provided resources as a
supplement to what already exists.
36

Inputs. Alongside the additional resources, staff in the project schools valued
the contributions of external consultants, who were seen to add further
expertise to that which is normally available. It is vital that these consultants
see themselves as being there to increase the capacity of the schools, by
providing professional development. In this respect, the modelling of ways of
working within classrooms tends to be much more powerful that using
workshops, although these sometimes can be a helpful starting point. In
addition, providing constructive feedback to school staff as they experiment
with new approaches in their classrooms is also a powerful way of fostering
improvements in practice.

Collaborative activity. Research suggests that developments in practice are
unlikely to occur without some exposure to what teaching actually looks like
when it is being done differently, and exposure to someone who can help
teachers understand the difference between what they are doing and what
they aspire to do. At the heart of the processes in schools where changes in
practice do occur is the development of a common language with which
colleagues can talk to one another and, indeed, to themselves, about
detailed aspects of their practice. This is why having the opportunity to see
colleagues at work is so crucial to the success of attempts to develop
practice. It is through shared experiences that colleagues can help one
another to articulate what they currently do and define what they might like to
do. It is also the means whereby space is created, within which taken-forgranted assumptions about particular groups of learners can be subjected to
mutual critique.
To varying degrees, the project schools had well-established strategies for
encouraging collaborative professional learning amongst staff. Here, a promising
approach is that of ‘lesson study’, a systematic procedure for the development of
teaching that is well established in Japan and some other Asian countries. The goal of
lesson study is to improve the effectiveness of the experiences that the teachers
provide for all of their students. The core activity is collaboration by a small group of
staff (usually a trio) on a planned lesson, which is used to examine the teachers’
practices and the responsiveness of the students to the planned activities. Members of
the group work together to design the lesson plan which is then implemented by each
teacher, with their colleagues observing. Post-lesson conferences are arranged to
facilitate the improvement of the lesson plan between each trial.
There were examples of this type of approach being used successfully in the project
schools to foster SLC within classes. In these contexts it was evident that the idea of
planning the lesson together had created a constructive and, indeed, creative dynamic
within the meetings of the teachers involved. A number of teachers noted that this
meant they felt able to challenge one another regarding issues, because they shared
responsibility for the lesson design. At the same time, it provided an excellent context
for sharing expertise and developing new ideas regarding practice.
37
7. Conclusion
The evidence presented in this report provides strong indications that ToTT is a
potentially powerful approach for improving SLC amongst children and young people
from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds. This in turn offers encouraging
possibilities for improving educational outcomes more generally and, in the longer term,
the life chances of young people.
In summary, this evaluation indicates that within the four participating schools:
 The project stimulated considerable activity aimed at improving learners’
SLC
 These activities led to significant changes in the thinking and practices of
practitioners, although there were variations regarding the extent of these
effects
 Whilst the short timescale of the project makes it difficult to measure the
full extent of the impact on children and young people, the evidence so
far is encouraging
 The successful implementation of the project was achieved as a result of
strong leadership within the schools, combined with effective external
support
 The key elements of the approach developed in each school involved an
analysis of contexts, school-led strategies for changing policies and
practice, additional interventions and a strong emphasis on professional
development.
The lessons drawn from these experiences provide a sound foundation for further
developments within the four project schools. They also offer strong leads to those
in other contexts who wish to replicate the project. However, it is recommended that
within-school developments would be further strengthened by a much greater
emphasis on between-school and beyond-school activities. In this way, participating
schools will have the benefits of additional expertise and resources to support their
efforts to improve SLC.
38