Best Practice Guidelines

Getting Started

Training all the participants in a project to use a simple formula of good practice helps ensure good preparation and research from the outset. A useful model is EUA:

Exploration - of ideas, needs, networks, resources and a variety of solutions
Understanding - which follows from debate as information is collected and potential beneficiaries begin to offer ideas and insights
Action - which takes place only when E and U have indicated the most appropriate actions to take, who can best help, where there are unexpected sources of support in cash or kind and a suitable timescale

Resources

Once there is clarity about aims there are several ways to build up a fund:

Ask all colleagues what offers they have come across and share out the work of applying
Ask yourselves whether any aspect of the project - or elsewhere in school - has a commercial value. Will you/could you make something saleable? Could paying adults learn and participate alongside the students?
Ask people in business, including your regular suppliers, whether they know of trust funds peculiar to their firm, industry or geographical area
Be sure that governors know what you need. Ask them to use their networks
Tell the Rotary Club and other philanthropic organisations all about your project. Keep them informed
Officers in the LEA, social workers and youth workers may all know of suitable sources of help and funding and might even offer help
Special schools should always alert a nearby mainstream school who may choose to get involved at any of several levels
If you are not naturally good at networking, ask someone who is to share the task.

The media are not always supportive to start with. However, if the local paper fails to respond to the usual sort of press release, a student sending a story or letter direct could trigger the response you need. Most free newspapers are glad to be sent publishable material. Local radio will be interested. A visit to the studio could be the starting point. Save your TV contacts for the big human interest story. Media coverage is worth pursuing for its potential to attract resources and new partners. Quality coverage helps ensure that a large part of the community will know about your plans. Ensuring that students figure strongly in the coverage reminds us to "think inclusion".

Community/Agencies

Working with schools is becoming an expectation for many agencies. Working with students directly is the next stage. Special school students have much to offer including strength, reliability, willingness to do unpopular tasks and a gift for drawing out the best in other people. Almost any community plan has to meet a wide range of needs, making it logical to involve special students from the design stage onwards. Projects concerning leisure activities, learning centres, services to others and the physical environment will benefit from their active inclusion.

Finding and working with partners

Schools are already being inundated with offers from a wide range of agencies and charities. Look for those with interests which match curriculum needs and find a local representative to explore ideas with. Governors, staff, parents and mainstream students all have networks so ask for their help in this and in identifying current community issues.

Communication with all partners and participants needs to be regular, transparent and business like without sacrificing the essential element of fun. WIIFM - what's in it for me? - should always be addressed and regularly reviewed for all participants.

Reflection and Recording

Special schools may find, as ours did, that a simple portfolio of photos, student writing, teacher accounts, graphs, press cuttings and quotations creates in itself the means to remind students what they have achieved, thereby reinforcing the learning. Wyvern School has developed Power Point presentations, operated by students.

Mainstream students working with special schools contribute to these as well as keeping personal diaries, a video record and a photographic record.

Both groups benefit from reflection sessions which encourage positive feedback between themselves. A record of significant quotes is kept for use in student ROA's and relevant coursework.

Staffing

It is essential that staff engaged in project development on a large scale are given considerable freedom of movement. Potential partners and supporters tire of teachers being unavailable for daytime meetings and phone calls. Staff resent heavier than normal demands on their time out of school when they see the significance of the results they are getting. These trail blazers need time and support now, not after they have broken down. Commercial enterprise, that most exciting of the new developments, is unlikely to suceed without such flexibility.

It is essential that the lead teacher regards their role as that of MD - managing director - ensuring that most tasks are carried out by students and their helpers or by others eg agency staff, community members, parents and friends. A project facilitated by an exhausted teacher is not sustainable. A project embedded in the broad curriculum and in community life could well be.

As things stand, it is easiest for senior staff to take the lead or, at least, to be the link person with the world beyond the school.

Supervision of Activities

Where mainstream and special students are working together using specialist facilities such as Music, ITC, Drama, Science - then LSA's, technicians and other AOT's can provide supervision, provided they are suitably briefed about the student led nature of the activity. Their role should be that of capable guardian, a source of help - when asked - reminding key students of their responsibilities for health and safety and behaviour.

Time

Projects based in the curriculum use time already catered for. Disapplied and alternative curricula also create time slots. Mainstream and special schools working together can create parallel curriculum time. Even these projects require additional effort in breaks, after school and perhaps even at weekends. Targets should be agreed only when it is clear that they can be met without over commitment. Feasibility is essential. Early failure due to poor planning can be worse than not starting at all.

Accreditation

A Barclays New Futures project can help with bids to become a Healthy School or a Dyslexia Friendly School, with applications for membership of the University of the First Age and with other bids for special status. "All alternative curriculum activities should be justifiable by accreditation." says Dick Berry of Florence Brown school. The schools shown in this website used BNF, ASDAN, Trident, Duke of Edinburgh, Land Studies and Skill Power.

Curriculum Based

"All the work is accreditable so the project is curriculum based." (Florence Brown). In any type of school the project tends to be strongest and most sustainable where it is embedded in curriculum work. This gives it an immediate relevance to both staff and students and represents an efficient use of time. The St Nicholas garden is described in relation to every subject For some students, the very fact of project work being 'different' and 'real' creates a better than usual level of involvement and creates a new sort of arena for less enthusiastic students to shine in. For severely disabled students the very activity seems to generate new feelings of excitement. Much of this work can be accredited through course work and exams as in Florence Brown's Land Studies and some curriculum work can count towards the schemes described in the previous section.

Curriculum based projects can use normal lesson times for planning, reflecting and even some of the delivery. Lunch times and breaks may be used for meetings with community partners and other activities.

Extra Curricular

It is perfectly possible to facilitate projects with an assorted group of student volunteers of all ages, but this does present logistical problems eg finding suitable times and places to meet and adds to the out of school hours workload for any teachers and helpers involved. For special schools it is probably best to work through the curriculum, using extra curricular time slots for achieving some of the community based tasks.

Supporting Quality Team-work

Begin with clear guidance about the qualities of a successful team (see Appendix 4 of the full report). Another simple starting point is ICA:

Inclusion - helping everyone to feel valued, necessary and involved
Control - helping members to feel that their views count and make a difference
Acknowledgement or Affection - encouraging a praise culture in teams and between all participants.

Success Factors

The key factors are good relationships, networking and persistence.

Organic Growth

Projects become embedded in school life when other departments, colleagues and community partners become involved. The workload and the sense of responsibility are shared and tasks become integrated across the school(s). As time goes on the benefits of the work become more widely known. Easier ways of organising evolve as time tables, roles and accreditation paths begin to converge.

It is worth noting that the more different people join in, the less predictable the developments. Practically all Barclays New Futures projects report unexpected outcomes in addition to those originally planned.

Peer Training

Immediate implementation of peer training of the newest team members saves valuable time and creates yet another arena for students to try themselves out in. Special students will need support but their mainstream partners can probably be trusted to design and carry out an approved programme with whoever needs it.

Evaluation

Self and peer evaluation has value for feedback, reflection and planning
The comments of other staff and adults should be sought
Presenting the work to an audience sharpens thinking and improves behaviour.

Students involved in the BNF award had the replicable benefit of a regional conference to take a presentation to. Special students played a full part in this, with staff filling any gaps. Some also carried out a review to an audience of local interested people - an effective way to involve every participant in presentation.

Checklists have an important role to play. Appendix 5 of the full report lists all the actions necessary for a perfect project, based on the adapted Business Excellence Model used by the BNF scheme.

Recording

diary style account of the project's development can be kept by one writer
Several students might keep their own diary and this could be linked to English and ITC
Most projects find that a portfolio of the whole project including photos, student writing and art work, designs, plans, programmes, press cuttings, quotes and meeting notes is useful for updating staff, other students, governors, visitors, sponsors and OfSTED
Making a video record creates a key task for someone and clips can be added to an eventual Power Point presentation.
Audio recordings of interviews with beneficiaries, for example, will provide another important contribution.
Experience shows that some LSA's have talents which can support students in carrying out most of the legwork involved in recording.

Action Planning

An action plan is a requirement of the BNF scheme. Without a plan agreed with the adviser, the award money cannot be accessed, which indicates the importance it is found to have in project success. An action plan can be written in many formats, but should always include, alongside "task", a description of "desired outcomes" (which ensures that everyone is clear about the task) and a place to record "progress/result". All students need help and encouragement to maintain a meaningful plan.

The "Perfect Project" checklist (see Appendix 5 of the full report) may help to ensure that all areas of development are considered eventually.

Curriculum Links

As the St Nicholas case study demonstrates it is possible to include every department in an environmental project. Helping other staff to see the curriculum possibilities is one way to attract additional help and move towards whole school involvement. Drawing attention to hitherto unfamiliar accreditation routes may help. In a small school, as special schools usually are, it is possible to involve every student, most adults and some parents, agencies and community members.

In mainstream schools it is possible to set up a structure enabling, for example, all Y7's to help with a particular project based on curriculum requirements and then form a management team to direct the work in Y8.

Guidance

Special school helpers can advise mainstream students on the limitations and enthusiasms of their special students. Such people model patience, insight and ways of coping with the needs of students with a wide range of limitations.

Feedback from the projects suggests that helpers also learn to trust the mainstream students to get on with it once they have essential information. Many are astonished at the speed of understanding which develops when adults stand well back.

Facilitation

Mainstream

One mainstream teacher describes this as helping students to question their values, work out for themselves what is possible, seek evidence of need and find out the likely cost of proposed actions. All adults involved must learn to stand back. It is natural to protect students, but most humans need light and air to develop ie space and time to interact and solve problems in their own way, with adult interventions reduced to oversight of health and safety, legality, reminders of where they can find help and encouragement to fully debate and explore ideas as they arise. This does not preclude pointing out opportunities to meet school aims, achieve good publicity, enhance relationships, win accreditation and recognition and reflect on their own and others' learning gains. Facilitation does not preclude guidance - it is more a matter of style, of suggestion rather than pronouncement and, above all, of patience to await students arrival at the point of understanding.

Special

The situation here is different, yet the same principles apply ie to help students take the highest level possible of responsibility, whatever their limitations. Whether this is to simply be present as a resource to other students or whether, as at Wyvern, a student with learning difficulties develops skills of presentation and addresses a conference of VIP's, the contribution is of equal importance and should never be regarded as less than that of mainstream students. Part of the facilitation role of the special school teacher is to model and explain this attitude to supporting adults and mainstream students. Again, the style is about suggestion, clarifying and waiting patiently for students to arrive at their own point of understanding.

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