Improving practice and extending opportunities at Fitzwaryn School

Using multimedia to capture progress, reduce workload and celebrate achievement

Fitzwaryn School wanted to modernise its approach to summative assessment and the way it captured evidence of pupils’ progress.

The aim was to use a multimedia system that showed how pupils were progressing, rather than simply recording that progress had taken place. It also needed to reflect the highly personalised nature of the school’s curriculum while having a positive impact on teacher workload.

In June 2016, Fitzwaryn launched Multi Me for all 96 pupils, aged 4–19.

Multi Me became embedded within school practice, helping Fitzwaryn achieve its initial assessment aims while opening up new opportunities for recording learning, communication and pupil participation.

Improving practice through multimedia evidence

Multi Me enabled teaching staff to assess pupils more comprehensively and efficiently.

Previously, the school’s video evidence process involved teaching staff spending an average of three hours per termrecording, downloading, editing and saving one example of each pupil’s progress towards an individualised target.

Using Multi Me, Fitzwaryn reported that within the same amount of time, staff could include at least one piece of video, photographic or written evidence against five or more targets, as well as recording progress in areas that did not necessarily sit within a specific target.

Evidence could then be stored securely and accessed by appropriate staff across the school.

Connecting evidence to Goals

Teachers used Multi Me Goals to record progress against IEP (Individual Education Plan) and EHC (Education, Health and Care) plan targets.

Targets could be organised into categories, making it easier to follow each pupil’s progress and understand how they had completed a particular task.

This also supported continuity when pupils moved through the school, while giving school leaders greater visibility of progress across different areas.

“I find Multi Me incredibly easy to use, and I enjoy putting all evidence on the individual diaries as a way of recording. This enables me to gather lots of evidence against their IEP targets, and also just to celebrate the children's individual achievements.”

— Fitzwaryn School teacher

“I find it is an ongoing assessment tool that records progress throughout the term of all topics covered, not just the ones that we need to provide evidence for.”

— Fitzwaryn School teacher

Making moderation simpler

Rather than relying on folders of work and observation sheets, Multi Me gave Fitzwaryn a way to bring the evidence required for assessing an individual together in one place.

This helped make moderation across the school a simpler process, with information from different strands of the curriculum accessible more quickly.

For pupils within the EYFS, evidence could be recorded within different Areas of Learning. At the County EYFS Profile Moderation Meeting, staff were able to use a laptop to access evidence of attainment across each Area of Learning for individual pupils.

Creating a multimedia learning journey

The Multi Me Diary provided a learning journey for each pupil using videos, photographs and text.

Entries could show evidence connected directly to targets, while also capturing progress, activities and experiences that might sit outside formal targets.

The school reported that the Diary became particularly popular with teaching staff.

Giving pupils opportunities to connect

At the time of the case study, Fitzwaryn also used Multi Me's social features to create monitored online discussions around different subjects.

Pupils could comment on one another’s work, school performances and curriculum topics within a supported environment.

The school found that pupils particularly enjoyed interacting with one another and using emojis within these conversations.

This section describes social features and terminology used by Fitzwaryn at the time of the original case study.

Connecting school and home

As Fitzwaryn developed its use of Multi Me, the school identified greater family involvement as an important next step.

The aim was to enable parents to see their child’s individual learning journey and the progress being captured by school.

Fitzwaryn also saw the potential for Multi Me to support more joined-up, person-centred meetings by bringing together pupil voice, parents’ perspectives and the views of professionals within the same multimedia environment.

At a glance

96 pupils aged 4–19 introduced to Multi Me

Multimedia evidence using video, photographs and text

5+ targets could be evidenced in the time previously spent capturing one example of progress

Goals linked to IEP and EHC plan targets

Simpler moderation with evidence brought together in one place

Multimedia learning journeys capturing progress and achievement