For the academic year 2024-25, neaco is offering a range of attainment raising programmes addressing our core areas of focus: oracy, literacy, study skills and metacognition. We have designed our programmes to cover year groups from 7 to 11, supporting and upskilling students during Key Stage 3 and building on these acquired skills during Key Stage 4 with a combination of targeted interventions that will help students be more prepared by the time of their GCSEs. Our programmes aim to target all underrepresented groups in HE.
Make it Count is an 8-part series of sessions to support small groups of 3 students to gain metacognitive strategies that can be used within their learning. The programme will help young people feel more confident and resilient to tackle challenges they are faced with in their learning. They will feel better equipped to 'have a go' at new, less familiar activities with a more positive approach. In turn, this will impact on their engagement in lessons and raise their attainment.
Essential information:
What will the students gain?
The students will identify and reflect on existing skills, capacities and areas of expertise needed to progress towards future ambitions. They will build an understanding of how they learn, exhibiting knowledge of themselves as learners, understanding how to deploy a range of available strategies for different tasks. They will develop study skills through educational projects which encourage active learning as well as access and experience appropriate attainment-raising interventions.
What is the benefit for the school?
The project helps young people explore the ways in which they learn and provides them with opportunities to develop a set of tools (strategies) to empower them to tackle school tasks and activities with greater confidence and resilience. It aims to offer strategic support to schools in raising attainment by equipping their young people with lifelong skills to become more independent and self-regulating learners.
What curriculum links are there?
English - Spoken English for KS3
Geography - Climate change
Reading Matters is a 6-session programme to help develop key literacy skills with a focus on disciplinary literacy. As an early intervention in Year 7, Reading Matters will be based on the existing reading materials in key subjects across the curriculum and will aim to increase students’ reading and analysing skills. The programme will be co-created with experts from National Literacy Trust, Higher Education Champions and Literacy Leads within the schools.
Essential information:
What will the students gain?
Literacy, understood as reading, writing, speaking and listening skills, has wider implications in the context of secondary school education. Students will be taught to develop “disciplinary literacy”, applying more sophisticated subject specific language, knowledge and communication. They also think across subjects, analyse and synthesise different areas of information, and express them in coherent and convincing presentation in speech and writing, which will have an impact on their increased attainment over the year.
What is the benefit for the school?
The programme offers schools an opportunity to help develop students’ literacy skills in their first year of secondary education. The school will see improved outcomes in literacy that can be manifest across various subjects. The programme will be open to interventions from the literacy leads at the schools who will be offered opportunity to contribute toward resource planning.
What curriculum links are there?
Disciplinary literacy means that the programme will aim to address various subjects in the curriculum from Science to History, Geography, and English topics by choosing the reading resources from existing materials within the curriculum.
Raise Your Words is an 8-week programme to develop key oracy skills with a focus on public speaking, presentation, and effective communication. The programme involves an expert-led public speaking workshop at a neaco partner HEI, six sessions delivered by Neaco Higher Education Champions, and a final day of student presentations at Cambridge University.
Essential information:
What will the students gain?
The programme aims to increase students’ attainment levels through increasing their effective spoken language and listening, and non-verbal communication skills, as well as enhancing their self-confidence, critical thinking, research, and teamwork abilities.
What is the benefit for the school?
Opportunity for student development, potential impact on GCSE outcomes and future employability skills. On average, development of oracy skills has a high impact on pupil outcomes that is equivalent of 6 months’ additional progress. Gaps in oracy skills of students from underrepresented groups will be reduced.
What curriculum links are there?
Oracy skills work across all disciplines through building up transferable skills such as reasoning, collaborative problem solving, comprehension and evidence building. English – Spoken Language; effective communication, persuasive speech, organising and using information, non-verbal communication in speeches; Citizenship, PSHE, Science and Maths – developing skills in collaborative problem solving for Key Stage 4.
A 6-week programme to develop key oracy skills and to prepare students to take part in a debating competition. Delivered by Neaco Higher Education Champions, with opportunities for workshops with university partners. The long-term aim of the programme is to encourage schools to launch their own debating societies either as an after school or lunchtime club.
Essential information:
What will the students gain?
The programme aims to increase students’ attainment levels through increasing their effective spoken language and listening skills as well as non-verbal communication skills and improve a range of higher-order thinking skills and non-cognitive abilities such as confidence, teamwork, and leadership.
What is the benefit for the school?
Opportunity for student development as well as staff CPD opportunities and access to debating resources on help to incorporate oracy training within the curriculum. On average, development of oracy skills has a high impact on pupil outcomes that is equivalent of 6 months’ additional progress.
What curriculum links are there?
Oracy skills are expected to affect all subjects across the curriculum, and the skills developed in debating such as reasoning, comprehension and evidence building are transferable, but the programme particularly mobilises English – Spoken Language; effective communication, persuasive speech, organising and using information, non-verbal communication in speeches; Citizenship- Active Citizenship, Parliament Structure; and PSHE for Key Stage 4.
A 6-session programme designed to help students feel confident and prepared to begin their GCSE revision. The project starts with Year 10 students and ends with a refresher at the beginning of Year 11 to help them in their exam processes. Parent/carer activities will be embedded in the programme.
Essential information:
What will the students gain?
The students will have an opportunity to develop their set of skills in effectively improving how to learn. They will have access to various proven revision methods as well as self-care techniques.
What is the benefit for the school?
The programme offers schools opportunity for student development by supporting students to prepare for their exams and introducing them to the most effective methods for revision.
What curriculum links are there?
The programme provides students with the revision skills required to succeed in their GCSE revision across all subjects.
A 6-session programme that offers professional development and training for teachers and focuses on improving oracy in secondary schools, particularly for disadvantaged students. The programme will be delivered by Cambridge University’s Oracy Cambridge: The Hughes Hall Centre for Effective Spoken Communication, a leading centre that offers training to secondary schools to implement oracy framework into their teaching. The programme is ideally suited to the whole teacher cohort within a school, academy, or communities of schools working in collaboration in a local area. The main activity of the programme will involve Oracy Cambridge running a series of face-to-face or online workshops to develop key aspects of pedagogy, and to help teachers lead developments within their school.
Essential information:
What will the students gain?
The proposed model of delivery enables schools to build, consolidate and embed oracy practice within the curriculum, leading to increased attainment. Development of oracy skills has a high impact on pupil outcomes that is equivalent to 2-6 months’ additional progress in all subjects and increased GCSE scores.
What is the benefit for the school?
The programme aims to create a sustainable model for leadership and teaching of oracy within the curriculum and to support school management and teachers in realising plans to promote the effective use of talk for teaching and learning and develop young people’s spoken language skills. It builds a community of practice by appointing one or more Oracy Lead teachers who, after training, would lead by example - developing approaches in their own classrooms for consideration, discussion and dissemination with colleagues.
What is it?
Students will take part in a year long series of interventions, on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. These will be 1-2 hours long depending on how often the intervention is.
What will the students gain?
The programme aims to increase students actual or predicted grades in their creative subjects. This also improves their research skills which transfers to other subjects as well as a greater knowledge of Creative Higher Education routes.
What is the benefit for the school?
The project offers opportunity for student development, increasing confidence in both creative subjects and wider subjects. More students can be seen within a lesson, which also benefits staff as they can see more students. It will increase in the appetite for studying the subject at A Level.
What curriculum links are there?
History - Art history, research
To check whether your school is eligible for this programme, please contact our Arts HEC Emma Jones at e.jones@norwichuni.ac.uk
We aim to ensure that our offer meets school needs, please contact your Higher Education Champion for further information and to discuss your requirements.
Evaluation
Evaluation and research have always been central to our way of working and these new programmes retain our focus.
The OfS highlights the importance of evaluation, for Uni Connect and more broadly, and emphasises the importance of building of evidence that isolates the impact of programmes. It is therefore essential to explore how our attainment raising initiatives support learners’ academic achievement and higher education progression.
You'll be given full details around what the programme evaluation entails before you sign up and you can find out more about how we use student data here.
Find out more
Download a printable two-page guide: Neaco Attainment Raising 2024 25
To express an interest in neaco's Attainment Raising offer please contact your Higher Education Champion.