Eckington C of E First School

More able children

At Eckington First School,  we aim to create an ethos in which high academic ability, as well as high ability in fields such as music, sport and creative arts is valued, encouraged and celebrated by all members of the school community. We believe that children can be more able or talented in academic subjects, sports, the arts, languages or other significant skills like leadership. In line with our school ethos, we recognise and value children’s individual development in all areas and work with children and their parents to enable them to reach their maximum potential. Through consultation with parents, staff, children and governors, we have developed the following definitions for our work with more able children:

• More Able children: More able children are pupils who perform consistently in one subject or a range of subjects above national peer expectation.
• Talented children: Talented children are those with one or more abilities developed to a level which is exceptionally ahead of that of their peers nationally.

At the beginning of every academic year, we review all children in school to identify those who are More Able and separately those we would identify as Talented. As a staff team, use the above definitions, data and discussions to identify children for academic subjects and let parents and children know that we will support them through the year.

We also write to all parents seeking any information that they may have that would identify their child which school would be unaware of, for example a sport outside of the curriculum. Staff throughout school will use the resulting list to challenge and stretch children and where possible offer additional opportunities within and beyond the curriculum to meet individual children’s needs. Parents are offered the opportunity to book a slot with the school SENDCo, who has responsibility for More Able children to discuss their child’s needs. In order to take into consideration the children’s thoughts and opinions around the subject of the More Able we include questions when conducting pupil voice interviews/questionnaires.

We do not have a set list of the activities that support More Able and talented children as we aim to be creative in meeting their individual needs, however below are some typical ways in which children’s needs can be met:

• Quality first teaching, ensuring that teaching and activities in lessons are matched to children’s needs, including moving through activities at a faster pace:
• Open ended questioning and opportunities for open investigations in a variety of subjects
• Small group work in lesson time with a teacher.
• Individual pupil challenge work in lesson time.
• Small focused groups with Teaching assistants, focused on higher order skills.
• Sign posting children and parents to extra curricular activities.
• Links to outreach events with other schools in the cluster and beyond.
• Buddying children where appropriate/ children leading groups or 'teaching' sessions as peer coaches.