From the session on 'Narrowing the Gap' I had discovered how valuable this is but yet incredibly difficult to achieve as there are many outside factors sometimes beyond your control. For I had learned that differences in literacy skill ability varies across all classes and if one of your targets is high grades within a particular class of varying literacy ability this can be difficult to achieve. However, by incorporating literacy skill workshops and comprehension exercises in class can help improve student outcome.

As a leader I had learned that society's perception was very different to what an actual good leader does. Society's perception of leadership is an individual that portrays very confident body language who barks orders to their team members whereas in reality a good leader has that careful balance in that they are firm but fair and portray an encouraging behaviour towards other members of the team rather than being perceived as nagging. They are seen as being able to support others and to step back at times in order to let others take the lead as some members of the team will have strengths that you will need to utilise.

I had found particularly interesting the research that was conducted by 'Sutton Trust' in improving learning which showed methods impacted on students the most with time scales. Some methods which improved learning included meta-cognition, feedback, oral language interventions in order to raise literacy skills, homework, one-to-one tuition, mastery learning, early years intervention and collaborative learning.

It was also interesting to find out that there are many underlying conditions students suffer from that can contribute to their behaviours in class such as ADHD and the treatment that they are given for these disorders.

When reviewing the leadership competencies the characteristics I have are delivering continuous improvement, learning focus, serving others, inspiring others, information seeking, self-awareness, personal drive, integrity resilience and emotional maturity. The main area I need to focus on is operational management in my analytical thinking, relating to others, holding others to account, and developing others. I also need to develop my strategic leadership skills in conceptual thinking, future focus and impact and influence. In my educational excellence I need to develop my modelling excellence in leadership of teaching and learning, broad organisational understanding and partnership working.

When reviewing the document on 'the importance of teaching' the main issue that came across was in order to address the issue of consistency would be to reduce variation within classes which is difficult to achieve as students all have varying abilities. Also the importance of having a high-quality teacher can have a huge impact on student progress particularly students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

What I understand about closing the gap is trying to reduce the variation in class. Why you would need to do this is to improve consistency and student outcome. How we do this is by identifying the groups which are least successful, reflecting on the causes and taking action in order to bring attainment levels closer to the national norm.  In some instances this may involve improving their wellbeing in order for them to achieve. The three main groups that prove to be unsuccessful are those from a poorer socio-economic background and of those pupils with SEN, behavioural, emotional and social difficulties eligible for free school meals. Gender is the second with boys more likely to underachieve than girls. Thirdly is ethnicity with the lowest performing as being black Caribbean.

Other gaps included in-school variation, between school variation and between other vulnerable groups such as mobile pupils, pupils with SEN and looked-after children. Closing the gap is a core leadership responsibility involving vision and ambition for your pupils and school, analysis of evidence, strategic thinking, tactical planning, operational drive, capacity building and partnership building

Use of internal data is not always reliable as there are issues that affect the validity of the data such as the student may be having a bad day that day of the assessment and the result is not a true reflection of their ability. Also issues like attendance and punctuality can mean students have missed that particular topic so don't understand how to answer the question on it but may have been able to answer the other questions correctly in which they attended the lessons for.

In my leadership challenge I need to formulate an action plan to discuss the issue of students achieving value added and in turn address the issue of closing ethnicity gap in A2 Biology.