Teaching & Learning Consultancy introduces the ECM Quality Mark.

This is a unique award which is personalised/individualised for each establishment. It offers schools the opportunity to gain recognition for using the five ECM outcomes to raise achievement. The main focus is on the school's ability to enhance the learning community by initiating and developing working relationships with a range of partners and then harness these to improve the achievement of vulnerable learners across the full range of age, ability and need.

The ECM Quality Mark will challenge schools to develop and strengthen working relationships, so that vulnerable learners arrive in the most positive and relaxed frame of mind possible, ready to work and learn. For this reason the nature and quality of partnerships with paraprofessionals will be a key element to be sampled by the ECM Quality Mark.

The sub text is very clear - the ECM Quality Mark will empower schools to celebrate and validate current partnerships while identifying new partnerships to cover areas needing further development.

Schools will be supported to become "partnership hubs," through which children, parents and carers can access a range of services and then challenged to demonstrate the ways in which these partnerships improve whole school achievement.

The ECM Quality Mark places achievement at the pinnacle of aspiration. Therefore "Enjoy and Achieve" becomes the tool for assessing the impact of a range of partnerships on achievement, with the remaining four outcomes becoming vehicles for creating the required social and emotional climate.

Introducing sustainable strategies for raising achievement of vulnerable learners will inevitably impact on the improved progress of all learners.

The ECM Quality Mark offers a 6 Stage Strategy. The key principle is to guide and support schools to become more effective. Assessment is based on using the principle "gather data once and use it lots".

Six Steps to the ECM Quality Mark

Step 1:
Whole staff training to focussing on raising the achievement of vulnerable learners in the local setting.

Step 2:
Partners for Achievement Audit to track vulnerable learners, mapping provision and measuring the impact of current partners on achievement.

Step 3:
Action Plan to improve the core offer by developing three new partnerships (one in school, one with parents / carers and one with the local community). The ECM Quality Mark training will support schools to become "partnership hubs" through which children, parents and carers can access a range of services.

Step 4:
Gathering evidence of the impact of Step 3 on the achievement of target vulnerable learners.

Step 5:
Accreditation Visit during which a member of the Verification Team will examine evidence relating to the contribution of partnerships to the achievement of the target group.

Step 6:
ECM Quality Mark award - made to schools which have satisfactorily completed the training and demonstrated, by tracking three target pupils, how a range of partnerships for learning have enhanced the achievement of vulnerable learners.

The "ECM Quality Mark Mantra"

Some children are born vulnerable
Some children acquire vulnerability
Some children have vulnerability thrust upon them - not in a school with the ECM Quality Mark

Contacts:

Telephone: 07968984762
Email: admin@ecmqualitymark.org