On Monday, we visited the St John Fisher primary school and had a conversation with the head teacher to gain invaluable insight into what goes on behind the scenes. We learnt about the diversity at the school, the challenges the school runs into, as well as its relationship with regulatory bodies such as Ofsted.
John Fisher is a primary school that is keen in incorporate a large variety of extra-curricular, enrichment based activities. Crucially, the conversation helped us learn more about the challenges faced when considering non-attainment based evidence in education policy. Specifically, the difficulty of gathering high-quality, non-attainment based data, as well as the difficulty in deriving conclusions from it compared to raw, attainment based date, seemed to play significant roles in causing the asymmetric focus on attainment-based evidence.
On Friday, helping with the PowerHouse games was a valuable experience, and I was happy to be part of something that contributes positively to the wider community. Afterwards, having lunch in BlackBird Leys, and receiving a tour of the area, I gained first-hand exposure into the community, as well as important third spaces in the region.
Overall, it was a week with stable research progress, and enriching activities. Having gained a footing after the first week, there were no notable challenges that we ran into.