Raising achievement for all: NorthLanarkshire’s strategy for breakingthe links between disadvantage

and underachievementBRIAN BOYD and MICHAEL O’NEILL

North Lanarkshire

Michael O’Neill writes:

When North Lanarkshire first came into being as aneducation authority, with effect from April 1996, to saythere were a number of challenges ahead was more thanmere directorate-speak. The new council area had beencarved out of the old Strathclyde Region, which hadeffectively covered half of Scotland’s population, embracingrural Argyll and Bute to the west and north, the city ofGlasgow with its ghettos of deprivation and its areas ofsuburban affluence, and the previous ‘divisions’ ofDunbarton to the north, Renfrew to the west, Ayr to thesouthwest and Lanark to the south and east. When the newboundaries were drawn, splitting Strathclyde into twelveunequal parts, the area that became known as NorthLanarkshire straddled two of the former divisions ofStrathclyde, and the previous heartland of industrial central

Scotland, home of Ravenscraig and Gartcosh, as well as therather less disadvantaged environs of Cumbernauld NewTown, part of the former Dunbartonshire.

There was a pressing need, apart from anything else, tocreate a sense of direction from the chaos which ensued askey people were ‘disaggregated’ from region or division totheir new unitary authorities, often taking on a number ofnew responsibilities in the process. Schools themselves,physically located on one side of a boundary or another,suffered less immediate disruption, but they too experienceda number of insecurities. Strathclyde had implemented a‘Social Strategy’ which had directed resources fromwealthier areas into ‘areas of priority treatment’ (APTs).What would the implications be for the new council areas,both in terms of policy direction, and of resourcing?

These were, of course, to be profound. The new ‘City ofGlasgow’, trimmed of its suburbs, became the largest andmost deprived by far of the new unitary authorities. NorthLanarkshire, third largest, ranked second in the deprivationstakes. It was no coincidence that together with WestDunbartonshire and Inverclyde in the west, and the city ofDundee in the east, they also occupied the lowest places inthe Scottish Office’s ‘league tables’. The link betweensocial and economic disadvantage and underachievementwas painfully, glaringly obvious. Nor were there resources topour into countering these inequalities; in the smaller, poorer,authorities in particular, the capital base was diminished,and the army of support staff which a large authority likeStrathclyde had been able to deploy was radically reduced.

In North Lanarkshire, however, there was not only realcommitment to make a difference, but a certain amount ofwherewithal, as a larger authority, with which to do so.North Lanarkshire had been comparatively under-resourcedas part of Strathclyde, which meant that it was possible to

Support for Learning Vol. 14 No. 2 (1999) 51© NASEN 1999.

In this issue we look at one local authority’s initiativefor improving standards in schools. North Lanarkshire’scommitment is manifest and Brian Boyd andMichael O’Neill lay out the broad parameters of thestrategy. Three elements are then dealt with in somedetail, the Outward Bound project describedenthusiastically by Robert Colquhoun, an earlyintervention programme detailed by Laura AnnCurrie and her colleagues and a study supportscheme outlined by Maureen Martin. Finally, AlisonCameron pulls together the various strands andasks, ‘Where do we go from here?’ NorthLanarkshire is not alone in taking powerful steps tocombat underachievement, and other authoritiesgoing through a similar process will take heart fromthis Scottish experience.

retain services and deprivation staffing levels otherwise lostin the general tightening of belts following reorganisation.The Council, with a corporate goal of social and economicregeneration, was supportive of the view that education couldand must contribute to breaking the cycle of disadvantage.And when early conferences were held in May 1996involving all headteachers and heads of centre to discussvalues, aims and priorities (North Lanarkshire has 134primary schools, twenty-six secondaries, and ten specialschools as well as a number of community education centresand early years establishments), raising achievement emergedas the department’s number one priority, by overwhelmingconsensus.

In August 1996, I formed a working group to advise on thebest way to break the links between deprivation andunderachievement. The group was deliberately broadlybased, comprising representatives from pre-5, primary andsecondary sectors, the psychological service, communityeducation, special educational needs, area learning support,the personnel section, home–school links, the trade unions,and local business. Either myself or my deputy, ChristinePollock, chaired the group. Brian Boyd, at that point adirector of Strathclyde University’s Quality In EducationUnit, was invited to join us as a consultant, a move whichwas to prove invaluable in helping the group to considerfundamental questions: What was education all about?What did we mean by achievement? And, once we had cometo some tentative conclusions, what did current researchtell us about the best way to proceed? Given that we wereaware of the large body of research available, we wanted touse that research to guide our actions from the outset.

Brian Boyd writes:

The Scottish context: a climate of enquiry

When North Lanarkshire Council Education Departmentembarked on its process of developing a policy of raisingachievement for all (North Lanarkshire EducationDepartment 1998), it was determined that research wouldilluminate the debate going on in Scottish education at thattime. In 1993, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate (HMI) had justpublished a report entitled The Education of Able Pupils:Primary 6 (P6) to Secondary 2 (S2) (Scottish OfficeEducation and Industry Department 1993), looking at thetransition years between primary and secondary schools. Itconcluded that if the needs of able pupils were to be met,then schools had to have a policy on effective learning andteaching for all of its pupils. It threw out two challenges:

• ‘The view that pupils are making a fresh start in SI is nottenable.’ (4.8)

• ‘The establishment of an ethos of achievement is vital.’ (5.10)

Thus the phrase ‘an ethos of achievement’ entered thevocabulary of Scottish educationists, and a succession ofmajor publications followed, all addressing issues of pupilunderachievement. The Scottish Consultative Council for

the Curriculum (CCC) (1996) produced a seminal workentitled Teaching for Effective Learning, which drew onresearch, theory and practice and challenged the educationalcommunity to look at how effective learning could beachieved. At the same time, a multimedia pack was producedfor schools entitled A Climate for Learning, distilling theevidence from research and offering practical help forpolicy-makers, managers and teachers alike. And HMIproduced a number of reports in quick succession, all withthe word ‘achievement’ in the title, offering advice toschools including more ‘direct teaching’, more ‘setting’ byattainment, and more extensive use of testing.

Since the early 1990s, the school effectiveness movementhad begun to influence national policy-making. The AuditUnit of HMI had sponsored seminars bringing togetheracademics and researchers from around the world to look atthe characteristics of effective schools and how they couldfeed into school improvement strategies. Since the publicationof Fifteen Thousand Hours (Rutter, Maugham, Mortimoreand Ouston 1979), it had become accepted that schools canmake a difference and that schools serving similar catchmentareas could have quite different measured outcomes for theirpupils. While schools contributed, on average, only around15 per cent of the total variance in pupil achievement,nevertheless, within that 15 per cent, there could be hugevariation. HMI funded a major study (the ImprovingSchool Effectiveness Project – ISEP – in 1994), bringingtogether researchers from the universities of Strathclydeand London, and involving 80 schools across Scotland in athree-year school effectiveness/improvement study.

Much of this early school effectiveness evidence hadinformed the HMI ‘Quality Process’ so that advice toschools – on performance indicators, ethos indicators,examination results – always had the subheading ‘for use inschool self-evaluation’. Advice on school developmentplanning started from a similar philosophical base. Thus,while the political context was emphasising examinationleague tables and competition, the educational community inScotland still valued school self-evaluation and co-operationamong HMI, councils and schools.

North Lanarkshire: An evidence-based agenda

A new Council, like North Lanarkshire, committed to anevidence-based approach to improvement, sought to takeaccount of research which might inform its policies. Byfar the most pressing concern for the Council wasunderachievement, particularly associated with social andeconomic disadvantage. North Lanarkshire has the secondhighest incidence of socioeconomic disadvantage inScotland. International research of the last thirty years – andthe early data from ISEP confirmed its relevance for theScottish context – had indicated that social disadvantage,when linked to low prior attainment, accounted for up to 70per cent of the variance in pupil attainment across schools.Thus, it became important from the outset, to tackleunderachievement associated with low socioeconomic

52 Support for Learning Vol. 14 No. 2 (1999)© NASEN 1999.

status. Scottish research confirmed that schools make adifference, and that value-added schools (in terms ofmeasured pupil progress in the cognitive and affectivedomains) were to be found in areas of disadvantage as wellas in the leafy suburbs. The converse was also true – thatvalue-subtracted schools could be found in areas of socialand economic advantage. The Council was determined to usethe research data emerging from ISEP to try to disseminategood practice as found in value-added schools.

It was necessary also to build on existing good practicefrom the old Strathclyde Region. Initiatives such as StudySupport had been evaluated by Strathclyde University, andthe approach to children with special educational needs,‘Every Child is Special’, had begun to change the waypeople thought of issues like ‘integration’ and ‘inclusion’.Pre-5 education was well established in many areas of theformer Strathclyde, and excellent practice was widespread.Notions of child or family deficit had been rejected, and thework of Tizard and Hughes (1984) had challenged oldprejudices about language acquisition in ‘poor’ families.The empowerment of children themselves was also seen bythe Council to be important, and the lessons of such studiesas Tell Them from Me (Gow and McPherson 1980) andSchool Effectiveness: What can pupils tell us? (Rudduck,Chaplain and Wallace 1996) established the principle of theinvolvement of pupils in decision making. Similarly, thedevelopment of parent forums and curriculum supportmaterials such as Parent Prompts, in the previous RegionalCouncil, was seen as an important base upon which tobuild.

However, it was, perhaps, the commitment to explore therelevance of cutting-edge research into learning whichsingled out the approach taken by North Lanarkshire asinnovative.

Learning and teaching: A new paradigm?

Over the last decade or so there has been a significant levelof research and development on the subject of the brain andhow it learns. It has been claimed that 80 per cent of ourknowledge of how the brain functions has been accumulatedin the last 15 years (Smith 1996), and a number of writershave developed new theories on the effect on learning ofthe emotions and self-belief (Goleman 1996); differentsorts of intelligence and how the brain retains and retrievesinformation (Gardner 1993); accessing the knowledge in arange of ways (Buzan 1991). The issue for NorthLanarkshire was how to make such research and theoryaccessible to people working in educational establishments,from pre-5 to post-16.

The concept of the reflective professional had been a subjectof debate in the Scottish educational press (Boyd 1996) andthe working group set up to develop the policy ‘RaisingAchievement for All’ was determined to draw on this ‘newknowledge’ and offer teachers a way of empowering theirstudents to understand their own learning processes better

and of helping them to learn how to learn. Thus, suchconcepts as metacognition became the focus of discussion,and it was felt that tackling underachievement could onlyhappen when there was a better understanding of childrenas learners. Indeed, psychological services within theeducation department were already planning a series ofdiscussion papers for teachers, the first edition being aboutthe concept of metacognition.

At an early stage, the working group looked at the evidenceof research into the human brain. By looking at the brain inlearning, the development of the brain through evolutionand understanding the concept of the triune brain (thereptilian, the limbic and the neocortex), the ways in whichthe brain learns – or is impeded in its learning – can bestudied. Thus, such phenomena as learner stress (Goleman1995) and how it might be overcome can be understood;making patterns for learning (Jensen 1995b) and how thetwo sides of the brain operate in learning and giving thebrain a ‘balanced diet’ of learning approaches (Smith 1996)can be explored.

There was concern that, nationally, too much emphasis wasbeing placed on testing and examinations. The measurementof a narrow range of cognitive attainment had the potential,it was felt, to distort the wider picture of what makeschildren effective learners. Goleman’s work, EmotionalIntelligence, had become a ‘number one bestseller’ bychallenging the widely held belief that cognitive attainmentis the best predictor of success in learning (or in life) andargued that such factors as self-esteem, motivation,self-efficacy, drive and aspirations might be just asimportant. Similarly, some emotions such as fear, shameand grief might act in a negative way on learning.

The working group looked at the emerging AcceleratedLearning movement which starts from the assumptionthat the learner needs to be able to see her/himself as beingsuccessful in learning, and that this has to be reinforcedand related to meaningful goals. Thus, such notions as‘belonging’, ‘aspirations’, ‘safety’, ‘identity’ and ‘success’are explored with an emphasis on how these conditions canbe created in the classroom.

From theory to (good) practice

The working group was acutely aware of the need to makethe link between theory and practice, looking at such issuesas reward and praise, the ‘brain gym’ and the connectionbetween physical and mental activity, relaxation for learningand establishing a learning attitude. It also looked atstrategies to help learners access and retain information(Fisher 1990), including such approaches as skimming andscanning, mind-mapping, visualisation, active listening,and study techniques. But, most importantly, the issue ofexpectations was acknowledged as crucial.

The work of McMichael and Boyd (Towards a Climate ofAchievement, 1995) had recommended that schools which

Support for Learning Vol. 14 No. 2 (1999) 53© NASEN 1999.

were well on the way to having an ethos of achievementshould have many of the following characteristics:

• Schools should have an explicit – and shared – statementof aims.

• Pupils’ voices should be heard, formally … and informally.• What constitutes achievement should be the subject of

widespread debate.• Schools should be willing to invest as much time on

praise as they do on discipline systems.• Ensuring high standards of achievement from all pupils

is fundamental.• Cross-sectoral discussion needs to take place if pupils

are to be challenged appropriately at transition points.• Teaching methods should be characterised by flexibility.• Parents should be involved in the learning process.• Monitoring and evaluation is important for teachers and

pupils alike.• Support, challenges and planning are at the heart of an

ethos of achievement.• Creating an ethos of achievement is not easy. It involves

challenging stereotypes of ‘intelligence’, ‘ability’ and‘success’.

Many schools had already, individually, begun to movetowards positive approaches to praise, encouragement andcelebration of success, and the working group sought to buildon the practice as well as the theory in their deliberations.Learning to Succeed, the report of the NationalCommission on Education (1993), had argued:

An ethos which is conducive to good morale and highexpectations among teachers as well as pupils is not amatter of accident, but a product of good management atevery level. Better outcomes are likely if there areagreed ways of doing things which are consistentthroughout the school and which have the generalsupport of all the staff. (p. 153)

The working group was convinced that this applied to theeducation department as well as to individual establishments.Thus, good practice was to be sought out and shared amongthe Council’s schools.

An entitlement philosophy

The research into learning over recent years has concentratedon the issue of maximising the potential which every humanbeing has to become a ‘powerful learner’ (Hargreaves andHopkins 1991). There was a strong equal rights dimensionto the proposals of the working group. Goleman (1995),Gardner (1993), Jensen (1995a, 1995b) and others stressedthe capacity of all children to learn successfully, and theworking group, drawing on the United Nations Charter onthe Rights of the Child, saw lifelong learning as thebirthright of every child. If barriers, such as those causedby poverty, exist to the achievement of young people’spotential, then it is the duty of educationists to work inpartnership with others to remove the barriers. As Fullan

(1995) has argued: ‘education has a special obligation tohelp lead the way in partnership with others’.

Thus, the entitlement of the child to an educationalexperience which would maximise her/his potential willonly be achieved by schools working in partnership withothers. The idea that ‘it takes a village to educate a child’was considered in the light of the work of Corrigan (1997)and Dryfoos (1995) on the concept of the ‘full serviceschool’. Thus, while some educators had been moved toargue that ‘education cannot compensate for society’, morerecently Mortimore et al. (1998) argued: ‘For familieswhose lives are disadvantaged in relation to their peers,schools remain one of the few mechanisms that are able toprovide a compensating boost.’

The US full service school is: ‘a “seamless” institution, acommunity school with a joint governance structure thatallows maximum responsiveness to families and communitiesand promotes accessibility and continuity for those most inneed of the services’ (Corrigan 1997).

Corrigan (1997), succinctly, argues that the full-serviceapproach springs from a concept of education which is:

• child-centred,• family-focused,• community-based and• culturally sensitive.

This concept of schooling is dedicated to raising attainmentfor all young people and tackling social exclusion at thesame time. North Lanarkshire had begun to move towardsthis idea before the Government issued its prospectus onthe New Community School (Scottish Office 1998), settingup five pilot projects and aiming to have two in everycouncil by 2002.

Aiming higher

The Scottish Office Education and Industry Departmenthas recently issued targets for all of its schools, expressedin terms of percentages of pupils gaining awards in externalexaminations or levels in 5–14 tests. However, the workinggroup, drawing on research into motivation of individualsand organisations, sought to devise input targets, experientialtargets, outcome targets and offered advice on how datacould be gathered. Thus, just as the study Schools Speakfor Themselves, which gathered evidence from primary,secondary and special schools in England and Wales, hadargued that qualitative and quantitative evidence arecomplementary to each other, and of equal importance, sotoo did the working group decide that no one kind of targetwould suffice.

The aim was to empower people and to celebrate success,and the commitment of the Council to earmark resources tosupport the meeting of the targets, and to monitor theeffects of its policy, helped ensure that the policy would be

54 Support for Learning Vol. 14 No. 2 (1999)© NASEN 1999.

taken seriously by the staff affected by it as well as theCouncil’s education committee. The ethos of the educationdepartment was to be characterised by partnership and trust– both qualities identified by research as being necessary, ifnot sufficient, for change to be internalised by those affectedby it. For the first time in Scotland, consultation with all ofthe personnel of an education department was to take placeon a paper which was rooted in educational research as wellas practice.

Michael O’Neill takes up the story:

Following the initial ‘ideas’ meetings, the group hascontinued to meet, consulting, discussing, visiting, triallingand advising at each stage of developing the policy document.One of the strengths of the policy-making process has beenthat policy not only informed practice but also grew out ofit. As the thinking progressed, new initiatives were piloted,evaluated, and fed back in to the process and the writing.Formative influences included not only Brian’s valuedinputs, but a visit to Birmingham City Council to hearChief Education Officer Tim Brighouse and his staffinspire their audience with the vision of ‘transformingschools’, given form and content by the local educationauthority’s wealth of actions and initiatives. A visit toPilton in Edinburgh took forward our thinking on earlyintervention approaches to literacy, and a meeting in April1997 with staff from the Outward Bound Trust to discuss aminor input to a summer school led that following Octoberto the first year of Aiming Higher with Outward Bound, aweek-long development personal programme for nearly1000 Secondary 4 students.

Meanwhile, in April 1997, we ran the first round of ‘Easterschools’ aimed at Secondary 5 students approaching theirHigher Grade exams in association with the three local furthereducation colleges. In October of that year we embarked onan ambitious Government-supported early interventionprogramme involving the development of a literacy strategyfor the authority and a major pilot project involving sixteenprimary schools. That summer, too, we piloted summerschools in association with Cumbernauld Theatre aimed atPrimary 7 pupils making the move to secondary school.We also held our first pre-university summer school inassociation with Heriot-Watt University. Study Support funding,available to twenty out of our twenty-six secondaries, hadmeanwhile been redistributed to include the remaining six.And our motto ‘Aiming Higher’ was catching on: not onlydid we have the Easter schools T-shirts, we had the bannerfor our annual ‘Battle of the Bands’, the pennants for thewind ensemble, and the jokes about what the ascendingdoves of the logo were actually engaged in.

But logo aside, what relationship did these early initiativesbear to the emerging policy document? As our thinkingprogressed, we were keen to try out new ideas which mighthelp us explore the concept of ‘multiple intelligences’, andwhich would help to develop the personal qualities ofself-esteem, motivation and high aspirations which

research indicated were so central to achievement. Thus weincorporated Outward Bound approaches into the Heriot-Wattprogramme, and used theatre workshop approaches to helpbuild confidence in our Primary 7/Secondary 1 summerschool cohort. Additionally, however, we were conscious ofthe need to model the processes which research suggestedwould produce best results, and which were most likely tobe in accord with our stated aim of breaking the linksbetween disadvantage and underachievement.

A major theme of all of these new initiatives, and indeed ofthe reshaping of established practices, was the weighting ofresources in respect of deprivation. In January 1997, we hadtaken the step of reallocating the previous ‘APT’ staffinglocation, comprising around 100 full-time equivalents(FTE), to primary and secondary schools, on the basis of anew formula. This formula spread the resource much widerand thinner, reflecting the fact that deprivation exists acrossNorth Lanarkshire’s communities. It was based on the rawnumber of pupils in receipt of footwear and clothinggrants, and on the percentage of the school roll which thisnumber comprised. While this meant some difficult staffingadjustments in certain schools, the move was generallywell received, with headteachers recognising the intrinsicfairness of reallocating this resource where the need wasmost acute. For a small primary school, even an allocationof 0.2 FTE meant that significant interventions could takeplace in terms of targeted support for literacy, parentalinvolvement or curricular development.

This model of targeting resources in respect of deprivationwas to be adopted in all subsequent initiatives: resourcesallocated to schools for study support, or pupil placesallocated for authority projects such as the Outward Boundprogramme, are targeted in this way. Schools, in turn, haveplayed their part in ensuring that the resources, or places,go to the young people most in need of support. This‘positive action’ approach has become quickly incorporatedinto both authority and establishment thinking, and ties inwell with existing community education approaches totargeting groups for particular forms of support. We quicklyrealised, given the reality of limited resources, that what ineffect we were doing was ‘intervening at critical stages’ ofa young person’s development, and this phrase rapidlyfound its way into the list of ‘elements’ which helped usshape our actions.

Another key theme which has emerged has been that of‘celebrating success’. As our ‘Artist of the Year’ and‘Battle of the Bands’ competitions have demonstrated, thetalent in North Lanarkshire is outstanding. An importantaspect of our emerging policy has been to spread themessage to both students and staff that their efforts arerecognised and appreciated. When our policy was finallylaunched in December 1998, it was accompanied by ourAiming Higher video, which demonstrates both the rangeand the quality of learning experiences on offer, thecommitment of staff, and the immense musical, dramatic,artistic and sporting potential in young people and in adultlearners. The event, held at our local ‘Showcase’ cinema,

Support for Learning Vol. 14 No. 2 (1999) 55© NASEN 1999.

was a particularly happy occasion, rounded off by spellbindingmusical performances from seventy of our young people.Earlier that year, we also published Spotlight on Successcontaining over sixty examples of good practice and small-scaleinnovations taking place in our schools and centres.

Those celebrations, and others more ongoing, have been anessential part of the process, helping to create our ethos ofachievement. It has been particularly vital to create a sensein staff that their efforts are valued and appreciated, andthat they are central rather than peripheral to the process. InNovember 1997, the draft policy was sent out to everymember of staff, teaching and non-teaching, with a letterfrom myself which attempted to convey this message. Inface-to-face consultation sessions, we asked the trenchantquestions, ‘Do you agree that self-esteem lies at the heartof achievement?’, ‘Should achievement be measured bymore than academic results?’ and (perhaps the crunch)‘[Adequately supported,] can we break the links betweendeprivation and underachievement?’ Feedback from staff,and from the teaching unions, in spite of understandableconcerns about workload and possible tensions with thenational agenda, was positive. There was a strong sensethat as a policy it was at least a move in the right direction,and from a number of quarters, enthusiastic endorsement ofthe key principles and processes identified. As one secondaryheadteacher wrote in summing up his staff’s response:‘Overall, the document is very impressive. No educationauthority in the past has ever offered such a coherent strategyfor comprehensive education at all stages.’

A key aspect of the Raising Achievement for All policy, thetarget-setting framework, has been perhaps the aspectwhich excited most reaction, both positive and negative.The policy takes the nationally agreed targets related to the5–14 curriculum, and to the Standard and Higher Gradeexaminations, and adopts these as quantitative targets, to beovertaken by the year 2001. Additionally, however, in linewith its broader definition of achievement, success andeducational good practice, it adopts a number of outcometargets which are more qualitative in nature. The authoritycommits itself to a number of input targets to help schoolsand centres achieve the outcomes, and in addition, suggeststargets which are experiential in nature. Schools and centresshould provide, the policy suggests, a range of activitiesdesigned to meet the entitlement of all young people to a broadand balanced education, involving growing in citizenship,developing sporting or artistic talents, learning to workcollaboratively with others, and so on.

In a climate of increasing accountability, target-setting wasnot an option for us; we needed to be able to gauge progress,and to work within the national framework. Equally, if wemeant what we said about the significance of less easilymeasured qualities in contributing to achievement, we neededto be able to report on these as key performance indicators.Many respondents to the policy consultation welcomed theframework as a breath of fresh air, an opportunity to salvagethe concept of a broad education from the obsession withnarrowly conceived and measured traditional academic

achievement, to give equal status to what teachers knowreally matters. But the ‘if it moves, measure it’ syndromeworried teachers, labouring under the weight of ever moreassessment (‘You want us to measure self-esteem next?’)and concerned that this would be an added layer on top of,if not at odds with, the national agenda. A major challengefor us will be finding ways of making the targets bolsterrather than restrict the efforts of teachers and others to raiseachievement – to make them meaningful and workable.

To summarise, the policy as we have it sets a broad agendafor raising achievement for all, underpinned by the principlesthat:

• all individuals are of equal worth and have equal rightsto have their needs met and their potential developed;

• diversity in the background, belief systems, and lifestylesof learners should be respected and celebrated;

• the development of self-esteem and a positive sense ofcommunity is critical in raising achievement;

• education is a lifelong process;• education should be concerned with the development

of the whole person and with preparation for citizenshipand other adult roles;

• people learn best when they are able to understandand guide their own learning;

• raising achievement should be seen as a fundamentalaim of education;

• education can make a crucial difference to achievement;

and with the following elements suggested as representingthe authority’s distinctive approach to raising achievementfor all:

• An explicit commitment to countering the effects ofeconomic disadvantage

• An emphasis on improving the quality and effectivenessof learning and teaching

• An equal rights approach which targets resourcestowards groups currently underachieving

• Intervention at critical stages in order to deployresources where they will make most impact onachievement

• A readiness to try out new ideas/projects and incorporatecurrent research into existing good practice

• The development of an ethos of achievementthroughout all sectors and services with an emphasison raising self-esteem and celebrating success in avariety of contexts

• A firm commitment to involve all client groups, includingyoung people, parents and the wider community

• Maximising resources within the education departmentby developing good cross-sector and cross-sectionworking and utilising the positive impact of partnershipstrategies

• Staff development which focuses on teaching foreffective learning, the building of self-esteem andsupporting achievement across a range of fronts

• Careful monitoring and evaluation of progress viathe Quality Framework

56 Support for Learning Vol. 14 No. 2 (1999)© NASEN 1999.

This represents a philosophy and approach to educationthat the Council, staff, parents and young people have beenhappy to debate and to endorse. The accompanying articlesgive a flavour of some of the ways in which this approachhas been taken forward so far in North Lanarkshire. Initialsignals look promising, Achievement, as traditionallymeasured, is rising. The commitment of staff, students,parents and the wider community is strong. In terms of themore radical agenda, however, we are very much at the startof a journey on which a whole range of conditions can andwill impinge, not least the degree of resourcing which canbe guaranteed in the longer term. As stated in the policy itself,

It should be stressed that the departmental strategy toraise achievement represents a long-term commitment towhich all members of the education service, parents, andthe wider community are asked to subscribe. There areno easy solutions to countering the effects of deprivationon educational achievement and no expectation thatachievement will be raised overnight on the basis of onenew initiative. The strategy does, however, rest on theprinciple that education can make a crucial difference toindividual achievement, and on the firm belief that it ispossible, working together, to break the link betweendeprivation and underachievement. (5.7)

References

BOYD, B. (1996) Scottishness of our schools. The Herald Essay, 28September.

BUZAN, T. (1991) Use Your Perfect Memory. London: Plume-Penguin.CORRIGAN, D. (1997) Creating collaborative systems: Implications

for interprofessional partnerships in teacher education. In J. McCall,J. and R. McKay (eds), Partnership and Cooperation. Glasgow.

DRYFOOS, J. G. (1995) Full service schools: Revolution or fad? Journalof Research on Adolescence, 5, 14–72.

FISHER, R. (1990) Teaching Children to Think. London: Simon andSchuster.

FULLAN, M. (1995) Change Forces. London: Falmer Press.GARDNER, H. (1993) Multiple Intelligences: The theory in practice.

New York: Basic Books.GOLEMAN, D. (1995) Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bloomsbury.GOW, L. and McPHERSON, A. (1980) Tell Them from Me. Edinburgh:

Edinburgh University Press.HARGREAVES, D. H. and HOPKINS, D. (1991) The Empowered

School. London: Cassell.JENSEN, E. (1995a) Brain Based Teaching and Learning. New York:

Turning Point.JENSEN, E. (1995b) The Learning Brain. New York: Turning Point.McMICHAEL, P. and BOYD, B. (1995) Towards a Climate of

Achievement. Strathclyde: University of Strathclyde.MORTIMORE, P., SAMMONS, P., STOLL, L., LEWIS, D. and ECOB, R.

(1988) School Matters. London: Open Books.NORTH LANARKSHIRE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT (1998) Raising

Achievement for All: Report by Director.RUDDUCK. J., CHAPLAIN, R. and WALLACE, G. (eds) (1996) School

Improvement: What can pupils tell us? London: David Fulton.RUTTER, M., MAUGHAM, B., MORTIMORE, P. and OUSTON, J.

(1979) Fifteen Thousand Hours. London: Open Books.SCOTTISH CONSULTATIVE COUNCIL FOR THE CURRICULUM

(1996) Teaching for Effective Learning. Dundee: Scottish CCC.SCOTTISH OFFICE EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY DEPARTMENT

SOEID (1993) Education of Able Pupils P6 (Primary 6) to S2(Secondary 2). Edinburgh: HMSO.

SCOTTISH OFFICE EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY DEPARTMENTSOEID (1998) New Community Schools: A prospectus. Edinburgh:SOEID.

SMITH, A. (1996) Accelerated Learning. Birmingham: NetworkEducational Press.

TIZARD, B. and HUGHES, M. (1984) Young Children Learning. London:Fontana.

CorrespondenceBrian BoydFaculty of EducationUniversity of StrathclydeSouthbrae DriveGlasgow G13 1PP

Support for Learning Vol. 14 No. 2 (1999) 57© NASEN 1999.