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Focus on attainment: Laurelhill Community College
CSSC's recent report, 'Attainment and performance in the controlled sector’, explores patterns of attainment in Northern Ireland’s largest school sector. To accompany the report a series of case studies have been published looking at good practice across the sector. This article provides an overview of Laurelhill Community College’s case study.
Laurelhill Community College is an 11-18 co-educational school located in the city of Lisburn.
The College has developed a broad curriculum which meets the needs of the pupils and implemented a monitoring and evaluation strategy.
Working towards improvement
Senior management team take an active role in monitoring and evaluating the quality of learning and teaching. A system of target-setting for pupil attainment and a dashboard of progress measures has been established which includes a range of data and other evaluative information.
Developing a broader curriculum
Prior to 2011 the school offered a traditional curriculum to pupils at KS4. The number of pupils achieving five or more grades at A*-C were well below the Northern Ireland average.
A range of other subject options, allowing the pupils a range of progression pathways, were identified. Pupils responded well to more stimulating subjects and performance in external examinations improved.
In 2017 the College’s results were above the Northern Ireland average for similar schools. A greater number of pupils are also staying on to continue their studies at post-16 level.
Monitoring and evaluating
As part of the monitoring and evaluation strategy a ‘performance dashboard’ was generated. This provides a condensed summary of some of the College’s key performance indicators which the senior management team discuss during their meetings. The dashboard is also an important resource at governor’s meetings, allowing them to exercise their monitoring function effectively.
To read the full Laurelhill Community College case study click here.
18 June 2018