1A: How to achieve success in learner achievement

Family learning constitutes events or activities that are planned and purposeful and that get adults and children working and learning together. What is unique about family learning is that adults learn alongside their children. It follows that the most effective learning has positive outcomes for both.

Where adults and children are learning something new together, there is a shared discovery. In some activities, the child may know more than his or her parents, such as in ICT programmes. In other courses, parents and carers may be learning separately from children to understand more about their child’s behaviour, how they learn or how they are taught in school.

Parents or carers can then use this new knowledge to work and learn with their child at home. In family literacy, language and numeracy programmes, there is the additional perspective of adults improving their own literacy, language and numeracy skills. In summary, the successful outcomes of family learning include:

• better achievements by children
• new skills and knowledge for adults
• changed attitudes to learning
• higher self-esteem for children and adults
• raised aspirations of adult learners for themselves and for their children
• new perspectives on family relationships
• benefits to the school and the wider community through increased confidence and involvement.

Starting points and distance travelled

The key to measuring achievement is to be clear about learners’ starting points, their learning goals and the distance they have travelled towards these. The prime motivator for most parents and carers to attend family learning programmes is to understand what their child is doing in school, specifically in literacy, language and numeracy, and to obtain the skills and knowledge to help their child at home.

To ascertain the adults’ own learning needs requires some sensitivity and skill on the part of the provider. Some adults will disclose their levels of literacy, language and numeracy. They are willing to take an initial assessment, to state their learning goals and take ownership of an individual learning plan in order to achieve their ambitions. For others, group learning plans with additional individual goals may be more appropriate, particularly on short courses. Individual learning needs may then be detected by observation and by the way tasks are completed. At this stage, more detailed individual learning plans may be negotiated and developed with the learners.

All programmes should have some form of initial and diagnostic assessment, a recording system for individual or group learning goals and a final assessment procedure. The methods may vary but this should be a requirement of every course. Methods of assessment and recording of progress are considered in more detail in the section on CIF Question 2.

Accreditation

For many learners, receiving recognition through accreditation for their learning will be important although this may not have been the initial reason for going on a family learning programme. Others may not take up the option of accreditation. Even so, providers need to make all learners aware of what accreditation is available to them. The flexibility of the national tests has made it possible to offer accreditation alongside different programmes. For example, a six-hour taster or the Move On programme may be offered alongside a family learning course to help learners brush up their skills and prepare for the test. Some family learning modules accredited through the National Open College Network (NOCN) are tailor-made for specific groups and the activities are mapped to the core curriculum. Receiving a certificate for a short course may be the incentive a learner needs to move on to further learning.

Learning outcomes and the impact on the family

Learners report unexpected learning gains as a result of attending family learning programmes. Most of these gains involve increased confidence both in themselves and when playing with or helping their child. The challenge for providers is to capture these informal or softer learning outcomes. Although case histories do give a flavour of personal learning gains, more systematic ways are needed to quantify and record these. More detail on this aspect is given in the section on CIF Question 2.

Increased confidence may result in parents having more contact with their child’s school, teachers and the education system generally, often resulting in a readiness to become a more active partner with the school in progressing their child’s learning. In programmes for parents and pre-school children in children’s centres and early years settings, parents and their pre-school children work with a teacher and an early years specialist at Foundation Stage, primarily on language acquisition but also literacy and numeracy. This can have a positive impact on the child’s readiness for school. Some schools record the impact on children’s learning when participating in family literacy, language and numeracy programmes by baseline testing and end-of-programme testing.

Although it is difficult to isolate a single factor that contributes to raising a child’s attainment, many headteachers cite family learning as a key component. Ofsted reports have also commented on the contribution made by family learning. Data and testimonials from schools should be collected to provide evidence for assessing the effect that family learning programmes are having on pupils’ progress.

Parents and carers will often be willing to talk about the effect that taking part in a programme has had at home. Changes may be the result of spending more time with the child or the shared success of specific activities. Encourage learners to record how their learning is being used outside the learning environment. Learner diaries help parents and children record the success of particular tasks and the learning that has taken place. Improved confidence can also result in parents or carers managing their children’s behaviour more effectively. Again, this can be recorded. Family learning programmes may have tangible outcomes, such as the production of story sacks, games, books, a collective collage or mural. The activities that led to the product can be recorded photographically. Learners engaged in a joint project can record how they went about the process.

It is also important to record the individual learning that took place. An activity with a practical outcome can have an impact on a school or community, and this too should be captured as evidence of attainment and progress.

There have been local evaluation reports on the outcomes of specific family learning programmes and university research into the impact of some externally funded programmes. NIACE is currently looking at what constitutes effective learning in families and developing models. Information on outcomes from key research is also currently being collated.

Data collection and analysis

The task for providers is to capture information, not just on individual learners or individual courses, but to collect and analyse information about progress and achievement across the whole organisation. This gives the provider a clear view of how well the organisation is helping learners and their families achieve their learning goals and improve their lives.

Collecting data alone is not sufficient, although good information is essential. Data from individual courses, from a particular range of programmes or from a geographical area needs to be analysed. Lessons learned from this are applied to future development. Be sure you are comparing like with like when doing this. Data collection, analysis and application all need to be systematic and the processes and procedures must be understood by everyone in the organisation. This aspect is covered in greater detail in the section on CIF Question 5.

Retention data on how many learners start, continue and complete courses, obtained from course registers, should be aggregated to give attendance and retention rates for the whole organisation. Attendance rates may be erratic in some districts or where family commitments prevent learners from maintaining a regular commitment. If a significant number of learners is not completing a programme, further analysis and enquiry will be needed to find out why and a judgement made on whether or not the provision is effective.

Achievement data for the organisation needs to be gathered from information on individual attainment and achievement collated for each programme. Although examples of individual success can be powerful illustrations to those outside your organisation, they do not provide a view of how learners have succeeded overall. Keep track of how many learners start, continue and complete programmes and what proportion achieve some measure of success. You also need to collect information on how many learners take up and achieve accreditation.

Find ways to track the destinations of learners once they leave a family learning programme. If they move within the organisation, this will be easier to do, but you will probably receive anecdotal evidence of how learners who leave at the end of their course have applied their learning. Some providers make a follow-up phone call after the course has ended, while others use a postal survey.

Some organisations provide incentives for learners to contact them in the future to say what they are now doing; one provider offered a book token for such contact. More systematic information can be obtained from research, perhaps tracking one cohort of learners over time. Information is needed nationally on the long-term effects of family learning, and your organisation could contribute to this.

Comparisons

You could use data to compare one centre with another or one mode of teaching with another. However, bear in mind that two different groups of learners on a similar programme will contain individuals with different abilities, motivation and experiences. You need to use the data you collect to compare your organisation’s performance from one year to another. Keeping track of performance over time will help establish trends and alert you when action needs to be taken.

Data can be used to compare your organisation’s performance with that of similar organisations. National data for achievement and retention will begin to emerge as the new qualifications come on stream. Currently, the LSC produce achievement data for local education authorities (LEAs) on accredited programmes that are considered as further education. However, comparisons are not always straightforward. Some providers will enter most learners for qualifications while others will not. Family learning programmes also vary considerably and you may not be comparing like with like. You may want to link up with other providers to make comparisons. Local and regional networks provide opportunities to compare practice.

For example, one group of LEA family learning practitioners formed a national benchmarking club in order to provide comparative data for their Best Value Reviews. The DfES groups LEAs as statistical neighbours for the purposes of comparing data. These are 10 or 12 LEAs of similar size, geographical and socio-economic make-up. The School Improvement Service in your LEA will have a list of authorities that are similar to your own.

Since family learning has developed rapidly in recent years, providers will be at different stages of development. Some will have well-established data collection systems, while others who have a small programme are just beginning. Whatever stage your organisation has reached, do make sure you regularly review and analyse the data you have.