Sankey Valley St. James CE Primary School- Pathways to Progress – Case Study

About the school:

Number on roll: 207 Reception – Y6 & 37 Nursery

Number of classes: 8 classes from Nursery – Y6

Mastery Approach: 

• Pathways to Progress is delivered to small groups throughout school. Currently in Years 2-5.
• Teaching Assistants deliver the sessions.
• We aim to deliver the sessions three times a week but it is at mostly twice.
• Staff will be given time to access the CPD videos. We have recently subscribed to them again.

After some training from The Literacy Company, we have decided to change the way we deliver the Pathways to Progress intervention. Teachers will now be picking targeted skills from modules. We can then see clear progress.

The Impact: 

Pupils are more positive. They like to share what they have been focusing on in their intervention groups in class with their class teachers. The pupils are now proud of their achievements and can now identify when they have made progress by using a new skill independently.

Teachers have noticed children who had the Pathways to Progress intervention in the Autumn Term and the progress they have made. The pupils were correctly using more grammatical features and discussing ways in which they could improve their own writing.

• At the end of Year 1, the current Year 2 class had 75% of children on track to meet their personal target in writing. In the Autumn term, all the children were on track to meet their personal writing target.
• At the end of Year 2, the current Year 3 class had 41% on track to meet their personal writing target and at the end of the Autumn term 80% were on track to meet their personal target in writing.
• At the end of Year 3, the current Year 4 class had 70% on track to meet their personal target in writing. At the end of the Autumn term, 80% were on track to meet their personal writing target.
• At the end of Year 4, the current Year 5 class had 71% on track to meet their personal target in writing. At the end of the Autumn Term, 80% were on track to meet their personal target in writing.

The above percentages are measuring the progress of the children reaching their individual targets.

Pupil Voice:

“I like working in a small group.”

“We get to share our own examples more.”

“I can now use a variety of conjunctions.”

“Mrs Williams explains things really well.”

“I like working in a small group and going through things in my own time so that I can ask more questions and have more help.”

What would you say to other schools? 

Pathways to Progress is an intervention which can easily be implemented across school. It has been incredibly beneficial to our school and we have seen clear progress from the pupils who have participated in the intervention.

There is a wide range of resources and creative ideas for teaching. Teaching assistants enjoy using Pathways to Progress as the lesson plans are clear and can easily be followed. We have been looking for a successful intervention for writing and feel that Pathways to Progress has helped our children to reach their individual targets in writing with the help of small group support.

Sankey Valley St. James CE Primary School