8. Do establishments and services have high expectations of all, young people and adult learners?

• Through the entire period from age 3 to 18, including the important stages S1 to S3, learning needs to be planned to maintain challenge and enjoyment, with the highest possible expectations of what young people can achieve.
• A focus on improving outcomes for children, young people and their families based on a shared understanding of well-being.
• Ensuring that children, young people and adult learners have the highest expectations for their own achievement.

• There is a well-established culture of self-evaluation in most Scottish schools and education authorities.
• Staff in establishments and services rigorously analyse attainment and achievement levels and trends, and monitor of the progress of individuals. This leads to effective intervention to support learners and improve their achievement and outcomes through their lives.
• Education authorities effectively collect and analyse data across education authorities to monitor the achievement and experiences of learners who face particular barriers to progress, and put in place effective intervention strategies.
• The views of all children, young people and adult learners are gathered and acted upon. Learners are actively involved in bringing about improvements, and understand the impact they have had.
• Shared high expectations for behaviour, attainment and achievement by staff and learners.
• Positive attitudes and relationships amongst all learners and staff, including learners who face barriers to learning and who have had poor experiences.
• Increasingly, staff and individual children and young people jointly set targets for learning and achievement.
• In many establishments, senior managers successfully establish a culture of high expectations for all.
• Management information is often used very well to support that culture of high achievement, and to try to establish expectations for future progress.

As children enter pre-school education, expectations and challenge are mostly very high, and staff build on children’s natural capacity to learn and make sense of the world around them. For most children and young people, the level of challenge and support they receive through their education is appropriate. In many schools there is a consistently very strong culture of promoting success for all learners – “be all you can be” – and celebrating achievement in all its forms. This is backed up by effective tracking of progress, and quick intervention if the pace of progress slows. In many establishments and services, learning is open-ended and responsive to the interests and needs of the learner.

However, for some children and young people, including those who are capable of very high achievement in particular areas, there is insufficient day-to-day challenge. Instead, there is a narrow, slow-paced approach which stifles creativity and leads to loss of interest, and, in the worst cases, to frustration and depression. These approaches reduce achievement.

Some children and young people, such as young carers or those with challenging family circumstances, have difficulty in meeting day-to-day expectations for punctuality and homework. Too often, staff respond by reducing their own expectations of what these learners are capable of, sometimes in the belief that they will encourage the learners by helping them avoid failure. However, such children and young people have high levels of responsibility outwith school, which often go unrecognised.

Many learners find some teaching approaches uninteresting, and respond by disengaging from learning. In turn, staff assume a lack of ability and lower their expectations.

Below are links to video clips from Journey to Excellence and other good practice resources. Each clip will lead you to related clips. Feel free to explore as much as you have time for, but do try to look at clips from areas you may not be entirely familiar with.

1. How consistently high are my expectations and those of the staff in my establishment or service for what all learners can achieve? How well do leaders challenge the attitudes and expectations of all staff to ensure equality of opportunity for all learners?

2. To what extent do the staff in my establishment or service believe that all young people can learn and improve and that it is possible to improve the performance of the lowest attaining learners? How well do we demonstrate this belief in our attitudes and work?

3. How successful am I in working to ensure that all learners have high aspirations for themselves, clear goals, and clarity about what they have to do to improve their attitudes, learning and achievement?