Teaching
Cornerstone Multi-Academy Trust - Exeter
Meet the senior team at Broadclyst Primary School and hear how their simple aim of putting today's tools in the hands of pupils to prepare for the challenges of tomorrow is delivering exceptional outcomes for all learners.
They have moved away from using yesterday's tools to develop skills no one needs any more.
What is the Broadclyst Cornerstone EdTech Strategy? BC EdTech 1
'All we've ever done is harness the latest technology of the day and give it into the hands of children to let them experiment with it. Now, that experiment wasn't random. We were using them not as guinea pigs, but we were educating these children with the tools of the day for the age that they lived in.
We were trying to prepare them for their futures, not their past. So that simple driver is what's taken us on this 30 year journey. Give them the latest. Give them the best. Why would you educate somebody with the tools of the past and not the tools of today? Because they're certainly not going to be the tools of tomorrow'
Jonathan Bishop
CEO - Cornerstones MAT
The Lecture Hall BC EdTech 13
'So I think our lecture theatre still is perceived as being futuristic, a classroom of the future 18 years after it was built I think this is because no one else has thought that it would work in their setting. My challenge would be 'give it a go'. You'll find it's transformative to the practice. And we're now trying to replicate those lessons in each of the classrooms, in each of the schools, by opening up spaces, getting team teaching with one-to-one devices at the heart of the strategy.'
David James
Head of Education
Cornerstone Academy Trust
Why do you prioritise real-world examples and modelling for pupils to engage with when using technology? BC EdTech 1c
'The technology they use in school and the technology they access in the real world at home are the same. And the only way to do that is to provide real-world projects, situations and contexts with real-world audiences. That requires a different approach to having some devices and a learning platform'
Anthony Lees
Deputy Head of School
Cornerstone Academy Trust
How do you manage the change required to be successful with technology adoption? BC EdTech 2
'It embedding an ed tech strategy can be described as a marathon more than a sprint. And that's very important that you have a long-term view of how you intend to embed the technology within your teaching and learning at your school. Now, there are lots of quick wins within that process. It doesn't have to be onerous or difficult to start and not necessarily expensive. What we're looking for is to start with a long-term strategy and view and then to embed it and unroll it at a pace that is appropriate to not just the needs of your learners and the comfort of your staff, but enables them to embed that practice, make it their own, and then work to move forward with that themselves'
Anthony Lees
Deputy Head of School
Cornerstone Academy Trust
Examples of EdTech use BC EdTech 3
'We give every child a stylus that they can write on the surface and take part in collaborative work with their fellow pupils. They can annotate work that the teacher has assigned them, give them notes they can write, as you would do in a writing book on the screen, and submit that as a piece of writing. This alongside the other uses. The surface has a camera, which is a very simple device, but actually extremely powerful. Children are now filming each other, so it moves on into their presentation skills, their drama skills. They are now using technology to green screen just off an app, very simple app on the surface, enabling them to put themselves anywhere in the world'
David James
Head of Education
Cornerstone Academy Trust
What challenges have their been along the way? BC EdTech 5 -
'The biggest challenge for us on this journey has been the choice of device. There are so many devices out there, so which do you go for? Do you go for the cheapest, which allows children to access the internet, documents, and the office suite, or do you want to utilise a device for its whole purpose? So then there's touchscreens, so then there's the iPad. And the tablet route we went for was a Microsoft Surface, a tablet environment combined with the desktop environment'
David James
Head of Education
Cornerstone Academy Trust
How do you support inclusion?
'We're looking to use the technology to really enhance the offer for learners and give them opportunities to access the curriculum irrespective of needs and context. And that frees up the teacher to have much more higher order conversations with learners, much more targeted adaptive teaching than can be done when the teacher is running around firefighting situations that in this day and age don't need to be then case within our adapted curriculum for all learners and all needs'
Katie Lawson
Deputy Head of BCPS
Cornerstone Academy Trust
BC EdTech 6
How to do you support staff to maximise the potential of the technology available?
'If I look back over time, I remember putting in digital screens. Everyone put digital whiteboards. I decided we'd give a digital device in their hand with a digital pen, which meant that they faced their students rather than looked, as we've done for 200 years, with your back to your students writing on a whiteboard. So, we weren't looking at digital whiteboards. We were looking at digital screens that enabled mobility around the room. But one thing we should have done was leave a whiteboard on the wall. I've been to so many schools where they put a digital screen and a whiteboard, a flip chart, and pens. And why would you use the digital? You'd use the digital because it brings a monumental difference'
Jonathan Bishop
CEO - Cornerstones MATBC EdTech 7
How replicable is your approach to technology adoption? BC EdTech 8 -
'In our lecture hall, if you look at ratios, still one to 15. But if you want to deliver an inspiring reading of The Warhorse by authors such as Michael Morpurgo, does it matter if 60 are sat there? Can it only be a class of 30?'
Jonathan Bishop
CEO - Cornerstones MAT
How do you create new approaches to secure future success? BC EdTech 9
'To get meaningful data is a really big challenge that faces schools. We all collect and store posts of data. However, turning that data into something useful and empowering to a teacher requires that data be brought together and presented to enable teachers to make accurate judgments and assessments on what is right for a child. It's often called insights, giving the teacher insights into the pupil. And we're collecting those insights or providing those insights to teachers in various ways'
Jonathan Bishop
CEO - Cornerstones MAT
The role of mentoring, coaching and teaching BC Edtech 10 -
'Coaching, mentoring, and tutoring, you need all three. And a good, skilled teacher, by nature, does all three. 30 in a class, though. It's pretty hard work. Bring the digital tools in, and you can start to bring the AI tools and the power of tech to bring those insights into who take away the labour-intensive parts for the teacher and frees them up to be what they are.'
Jonathan Bishop
CEO - Cornerstones MAT
How have you used technology to support and evolve the role of the teacher to be more effective? BC EdTech 11
'We're very interested in workload reduction and how we can support teachers. It's about enabling teachers to be available for learners in ways that they weren't previously. So, a lot of the jobs now that we can do through the use of a learning platform, through access to a device, especially in a one-to-one setting, where learners can be more independent and more self-sufficient. That frees up teachers to do the things that a teacher as a professional is really key for and less of the things that now you can do in other ways that don't require that professional judgment and that very personal knowledge between a student and a teacher. That means that the teacher can be very targeted in what they ask the student to do, which is very different to some of the things that historically teachers would do.'
Anthony Lees
Deputy Head of School
Cornerstone Academy Trust
How do you use data to support pupils effectively? BC EdTech. 12
'I really think that being insightful as a teacher is an important skill. Insightful means that you are taking in lots of information about students and you're working out what makes them tick. Great teachers understand their children and adapt the learning to meet the needs of those children. So if we could get really rich data into the hands of a teacher to enhance those skills of insights, then it could be really transformative. So the next step in the journey for me is we're collecting, like most schools, lots of data.
So if we're collecting data, data about reading, data about how they're performing in English, maths, science, but more than that, data about how they're feeling, what's their attitudes towards themselves as a learner and their attitude towards school, the work they're being set towards their teachers, they're really fundamental pieces of data. Your attitude will massively change and impact the outcomes that you achieve as a student. So if we're taking that progress data, that reading data that attitudinal data and merging it together, we're getting what I believe is going to be a pupil on a page'
Jonathan Bishop
CEO - Cornerstones MAT
