Sunny Bank Primary School is a one-form entry school in North Manchester, and is part of Vision Multi-Academy Trust, who are rolling out CENTURY trust-wide following the success at Sunny Bank. We spoke to headteacher James Gabrielides about how accelerated learning on CENTURY combined with quality-first teaching has positively impacted attainment in every year group and their Year 6 SATs results.
How we use CENTURY
When we first introduced CENTURY, we stopped setting traditional homework. At the end of each week, teachers analyse assessment for learning data and select six children who need a little extra boost at home, and send them home with CENTURY nuggets. Stage two was bringing it into the classroom. Teachers use it as a whole class learning tool, or they set up certain children to work through a nugget targeting a gap that had been assessed. CENTURY is not a silver bullet, but a resource that will make a really good teacher even better.
The idea with this system is “keep up, not catch up”. We don’t wait six weeks to plug a gap, we do it the week that it’s taught. The teachers are really attuned to the analysis to pinpoint where the gaps are. Once identified, they set nuggets as interventions to mirror what’s going on with the classroom. With pre-teaches, the teacher will set a learning nugget for the entire class and then they have that data to inform planning based on what the children already know and don’t know.
We’re not currently a one-to-one device school, but we will be by next term. As a result of our success, the entire Vision MAT is rolling out CENTURY along with one-to-one devices to support implementation.
Year 3 to 6 Impact Study
We forensically tracked the progress and attainment of a wide demographic of pupils from Years 3 to 6. This demographic of pupils was mixed ability, and included some who qualify for pupil premium, some who have special educational needs, and some who have English as an additional language. This was the broadest possible church to represent usage in our school.
These pupils took an assessment in the autumn term, and then another assessment in the summer and we analysed their scaled scores alongside the amount of time they had spent on CENTURY for each subject. These included SATs papers for Year 6, and other assessments.
Our data shows that for 82% of the selected demographic there is a clear correlation between accelerated progress and additional learning via the CENTURY platform. Alongside quality-first teaching, the effective use of CENTURY played an important role for many students. 88% of pupils made good or accelerated progress with CENTURY in at least one subject, and over half (53%) of pupils made good or accelerated progress with CENTURY in all three tested subjects.
