High Performance Learning

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November 17, 2022

What is High Performance Learning, and how can it empower students to become more effective learners?

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Main, P (2022, November 17). High Performance Learning. Retrieved from https://www.structural-learning.com/post/high-performance-learning

What is High-Performance Learning?

High-Performance Learning is a research-based, ideology that reacts to our developing understanding of human capabilities. It normalizes high performance for all students and employs a novel teaching and learning framework to systematically develop the cognitive skills, values, attitudes, and traits required for long-term success.

When you walk through the school, it is clear that a High-Performance culture permeates everything we do, from students articulating their learning in the classroom to children working cooperatively and engaged in creative and critical thinking tasks across all areas of education. Pastorally, students are also allowed to improve their abilities in Values, Attitudes, and Attributes (VAAs), assisting each student in overcoming hurdles and developing different techniques to assist them in overcoming challenges along their learning path.

High-Performance Learning theory suggests that most students are capable of achieving high levels of academic performance is once seen as the domain of the very few.

Source: (highperformancelearning.co.uk)

History of HPL:

Everyone wants a high-performing education system, but education systems continue to assume that only a minority of children can reach high levels of educational performance.

In 2010, the Founder Professor Deborah Eyre published a policy paper for the independent Think Tank Policy Exchange, in which she suggested that evidence from neuroscience and psychology demonstrated conclusively that the brain is exquisitely plastic and we can grow our intelligence.

She challenged the system to stop categorizing students by ability and instead expect high performance from everyone and systematically build towards it. Rather than a system that focuses on early detection of signs of failure, with pupils guided immediately into less demanding work, the system should be structured to provide the conditions that generate high performance and pupils steered towards this objective.

She called this approach High-Performance Learning and created a framework based on her lifetime's academic research on cognition. It identifies attributes, values, and practices that can be developed in schools to enable more students to achieve highly to help schools make the High-Performance Learning philosophy a reality.

From 2010-2015 Deborah field-tested this approach in 31 international schools in 11 countries that were operating in English and using English or IB curriculum. The outcomes were transformative with year-on-year uplifts in results and well-adjusted, confident students.

In 2016 the UK-based High-Performance Learning social enterprise was established with a mission to connect and support schools wanting to spearhead this change in education and become HPL schools. From the start, ambitious schools opted into the two-year HPL World Class School Award and demonstrated that this approach could deliver transformational results in all kinds of contexts - secondary or primary, maintained or independent, UK or international.

In 2017 they launched a wider range of programs to enable schools at any starting point to begin their journey toward being an HPL school.

In 2018  they celebrated the first four schools to achieve the prestigious and demanding World Class School Award.

In 2019 they launched The Fellowship and Global Community of Schools (FGC). The home for all HPL-accredited schools.

In 2022 we celebrated over 80,000 students being educated in HPL schools in 14 countries.

The HPL movement is growing – join us in our mission to deliver high performance for the many and not the few.

High performance learning book
High performance learning book

High-Performance Learning Framework:

  1. High performance is an attainable target for everyone.
  2. We can systematically teach students how to be ‘intelligent’ and how to
    succeed in school.
  3. World-class schools produce students that are intellectually and socially
    confident, workplace and life-ready with a global outlook and a concern for
    others.
  4. There are 20 generic characteristics that students need to develop if they
    are to be high performers in cognitive domains (ACPs) and 10 values,
    attitudes and attributes (VAAs) that develop the wider learner dispositions
    needed for cognitive and lifetime success.
  5. Schools can only become world-class by fostering a professional community
    of practice among their educators – no quick-fix, governance model,
    instructional technique or technology can substitute for this.

How schools can become world-class using HPL:

In the Modern world, by Paying attention to neuroscience and psychology schools are becoming world-class. Research has shown that schools can grow smarter brains using high-performance learning. All they need is to shift their thinking, to ensure more students succeed and no longer being limited by conceptions of genetic potential. High levels of academic performance in all students and schools can be achieved using high-performance learning. So High-performance learning is helping schools to be world-class.

The Global Community of High Performing Schools is exclusively for schools that have received the HPL High Performing School Award. They are now attempting to continue their ambitious quest for progress by utilizing HPL to ensure even better learning results for kids. The Global Community schools, as approved HPL schools, are focused on systematizing and optimizing HPL throughout the school in order to have a greater impact and get closer to the aim of every single student becoming a high performance.

Source: (highperformancelearning.co.uk)

High-Performance Learning is a systematic way of creating advanced learners as it helps in the following:

Producing advanced learners who win places in world-class universities and make a leading contribution.

Producing global leaders who are responsible and confident in improving things globally and locally.

Producing enterprising learners who are creative, innovative, and well-placed for future success.

Benefits of High-Performance Learning

Encourages students to aim high and believe in the growth of the brain and their ability. It develops intellectual curiosity and confidence to form, shape, and express ideas. High-Performance Learning develops a love of learning and intrigue through inquiry-based approaches.

It provides students with opportunities to solve problems creatively by adapting and improvising aspects of their learning and instills a desire to embrace challenges and to challenge others. It encourages risk-taking and knowledge that mistakes lead to learning and also encourages self-regulation and reflection to recognize strengths and build on areas of development. It helps in developing active listeners, who can give and receive critical feedback.

Teaches students how to critically evaluate sources and draw conclusions and encourages students to be happy, resilient, and confident.

Students who are educated in schools committed to the High-Performance Learning philosophy and approach not only achieve higher academic results but they also develop the characteristics of high performance that enable them to succeed in life. Read some of the many benefits of using HPL in your school.

HPL helps schools make the gear change in their organizations to become world-class, bring coherence to disparate initiatives and achieve better outcomes for students. Read what some senior leaders, who have adopted the HPL framework, say.

Source: (Sydenham.lewisham.Sch.UK)

High performance learning cognitions and behaviours
High performance learning cognitions and behaviours

Impact of HPL:

Surveys and research have revealed some persuasive evidence that HPL has a major influence after only two years. Some of the more intriguing statistics we've discovered so far suggest that 67% percent of HPL schools scored their best results in recent history. 89% of teachers felt that HPL had a positive or no effect on their workload and 95% of teachers said their students had grown more confident and engaged in their studies.

Student outcome: In 2019, there were seen improvements in student outcomes as 67% of HPL schools achieved the best results, across all levels of examination, in their most recent history. It was also found that GCSE/IGCSE results reported by HPL schools increased, on average, by 9% during the 2-year award scheme.

Student well-being: It asked 200 teachers about their student's perceptions and well-being. 93% of teaching staff believed that HPL had improved student well-being and self-esteem. It was found that 95% of teaching staff report that students have become more confident and engaged in their learning. HPL surveyed students too, and we found that HPL is changing their perceptions of themselves. After 2 years, 9% more students believe they are capable of high performance in an HPL school than in a non-HPL school. HPL is creating a more optimistic culture in schools as 17% more students believe that everyone is capable of high performance after 2 years compared with non-HPL schools.

Staff well-being: 68% of staff said that HPL had had a positive effect on how much they enjoy teaching, and the remainder says it has not affected them at all. It was also found that staff turnover decreased, on average, by 23% in HPL Schools. Our schools are spending less on staff cover, with one confidentially reporting they spent 37% less on supply teachers compared with before they joined HPL.

Staff Workload: We found that 65% of teachers feel that HPL has not affected their workload, with 23.9% of staff reporting a positive effect. We also discovered that 62.2% of staff would actively seek to work in an HPL school if they moved.

Parental Involvement: Parents are key players in supporting young people to become high performers academically and in later life. After implementing HPL, 72% of teachers now think more about how best to involve parents/carers in their child's learning.

We asked teachers about parental involvement, and we found they thought 37% more parents are involved in their child's learning and skill development in an HPL school compared to a non-HPL school.

Source: (highperformancelearning.co.uk)

Pillars of HPL:

High-Performance learning is based on the following pillars:

The key pillars of High Performance Learning
The key pillars of High Performance Learning

How Parents can help in HPL?

There are different ways to make our home a high-performance learning home. Parents need to build resilience in kids at home by helping them believe in themselves, not be afraid to make mistakes and keep trying. We need to encourage kids to know how our kids are doing and whether they need to put more effort into any specific area.

Encourage our kids to be receptive to ideas that differ from your own. And also make sure that kids practice regularly until they can do it well. We need to develop a spirit of curiosity in our kids by encouraging them to ask questions, by answering questions, and by working together and independently to find answers to questions.

The Structural Learning toolkit and your HPL Journey

Our organisation is focused on advanced thinking skills and we offer a wide range of tools and frameworks to help school communities explore different styles of learning. Our thinking framework offers a wide range of thinking approaches that school teachers can utilise for both planning and facilitating classroom instruction.

Understanding the principles of these evidence-based approaches is paramount for classroom success. We always facilitate professional development for our member schools, this can be done remotely or in person if it's viable. Within our professional learning sessions, we provide interactive sessions where educators can collaboratively explore barriers to achievement. Within a short workshop, teachers can quickly see how the framework can be used to solve complex and multi-step problems.

This approach to education does sometimes require a shift in perspective and we have a series of exercises that help educators explore the key characteristics of academic success. If you would like to find out how this toolkit could be utilised across your school, please do get in contact with us, and arrange a time for an exploratory conversation.

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What is High-Performance Learning?

High-Performance Learning is a research-based, ideology that reacts to our developing understanding of human capabilities. It normalizes high performance for all students and employs a novel teaching and learning framework to systematically develop the cognitive skills, values, attitudes, and traits required for long-term success.

When you walk through the school, it is clear that a High-Performance culture permeates everything we do, from students articulating their learning in the classroom to children working cooperatively and engaged in creative and critical thinking tasks across all areas of education. Pastorally, students are also allowed to improve their abilities in Values, Attitudes, and Attributes (VAAs), assisting each student in overcoming hurdles and developing different techniques to assist them in overcoming challenges along their learning path.

High-Performance Learning theory suggests that most students are capable of achieving high levels of academic performance is once seen as the domain of the very few.

Source: (highperformancelearning.co.uk)

History of HPL:

Everyone wants a high-performing education system, but education systems continue to assume that only a minority of children can reach high levels of educational performance.

In 2010, the Founder Professor Deborah Eyre published a policy paper for the independent Think Tank Policy Exchange, in which she suggested that evidence from neuroscience and psychology demonstrated conclusively that the brain is exquisitely plastic and we can grow our intelligence.

She challenged the system to stop categorizing students by ability and instead expect high performance from everyone and systematically build towards it. Rather than a system that focuses on early detection of signs of failure, with pupils guided immediately into less demanding work, the system should be structured to provide the conditions that generate high performance and pupils steered towards this objective.

She called this approach High-Performance Learning and created a framework based on her lifetime's academic research on cognition. It identifies attributes, values, and practices that can be developed in schools to enable more students to achieve highly to help schools make the High-Performance Learning philosophy a reality.

From 2010-2015 Deborah field-tested this approach in 31 international schools in 11 countries that were operating in English and using English or IB curriculum. The outcomes were transformative with year-on-year uplifts in results and well-adjusted, confident students.

In 2016 the UK-based High-Performance Learning social enterprise was established with a mission to connect and support schools wanting to spearhead this change in education and become HPL schools. From the start, ambitious schools opted into the two-year HPL World Class School Award and demonstrated that this approach could deliver transformational results in all kinds of contexts - secondary or primary, maintained or independent, UK or international.

In 2017 they launched a wider range of programs to enable schools at any starting point to begin their journey toward being an HPL school.

In 2018  they celebrated the first four schools to achieve the prestigious and demanding World Class School Award.

In 2019 they launched The Fellowship and Global Community of Schools (FGC). The home for all HPL-accredited schools.

In 2022 we celebrated over 80,000 students being educated in HPL schools in 14 countries.

The HPL movement is growing – join us in our mission to deliver high performance for the many and not the few.

High performance learning book
High performance learning book

High-Performance Learning Framework:

  1. High performance is an attainable target for everyone.
  2. We can systematically teach students how to be ‘intelligent’ and how to
    succeed in school.
  3. World-class schools produce students that are intellectually and socially
    confident, workplace and life-ready with a global outlook and a concern for
    others.
  4. There are 20 generic characteristics that students need to develop if they
    are to be high performers in cognitive domains (ACPs) and 10 values,
    attitudes and attributes (VAAs) that develop the wider learner dispositions
    needed for cognitive and lifetime success.
  5. Schools can only become world-class by fostering a professional community
    of practice among their educators – no quick-fix, governance model,
    instructional technique or technology can substitute for this.

How schools can become world-class using HPL:

In the Modern world, by Paying attention to neuroscience and psychology schools are becoming world-class. Research has shown that schools can grow smarter brains using high-performance learning. All they need is to shift their thinking, to ensure more students succeed and no longer being limited by conceptions of genetic potential. High levels of academic performance in all students and schools can be achieved using high-performance learning. So High-performance learning is helping schools to be world-class.

The Global Community of High Performing Schools is exclusively for schools that have received the HPL High Performing School Award. They are now attempting to continue their ambitious quest for progress by utilizing HPL to ensure even better learning results for kids. The Global Community schools, as approved HPL schools, are focused on systematizing and optimizing HPL throughout the school in order to have a greater impact and get closer to the aim of every single student becoming a high performance.

Source: (highperformancelearning.co.uk)

High-Performance Learning is a systematic way of creating advanced learners as it helps in the following:

Producing advanced learners who win places in world-class universities and make a leading contribution.

Producing global leaders who are responsible and confident in improving things globally and locally.

Producing enterprising learners who are creative, innovative, and well-placed for future success.

Benefits of High-Performance Learning

Encourages students to aim high and believe in the growth of the brain and their ability. It develops intellectual curiosity and confidence to form, shape, and express ideas. High-Performance Learning develops a love of learning and intrigue through inquiry-based approaches.

It provides students with opportunities to solve problems creatively by adapting and improvising aspects of their learning and instills a desire to embrace challenges and to challenge others. It encourages risk-taking and knowledge that mistakes lead to learning and also encourages self-regulation and reflection to recognize strengths and build on areas of development. It helps in developing active listeners, who can give and receive critical feedback.

Teaches students how to critically evaluate sources and draw conclusions and encourages students to be happy, resilient, and confident.

Students who are educated in schools committed to the High-Performance Learning philosophy and approach not only achieve higher academic results but they also develop the characteristics of high performance that enable them to succeed in life. Read some of the many benefits of using HPL in your school.

HPL helps schools make the gear change in their organizations to become world-class, bring coherence to disparate initiatives and achieve better outcomes for students. Read what some senior leaders, who have adopted the HPL framework, say.

Source: (Sydenham.lewisham.Sch.UK)

High performance learning cognitions and behaviours
High performance learning cognitions and behaviours

Impact of HPL:

Surveys and research have revealed some persuasive evidence that HPL has a major influence after only two years. Some of the more intriguing statistics we've discovered so far suggest that 67% percent of HPL schools scored their best results in recent history. 89% of teachers felt that HPL had a positive or no effect on their workload and 95% of teachers said their students had grown more confident and engaged in their studies.

Student outcome: In 2019, there were seen improvements in student outcomes as 67% of HPL schools achieved the best results, across all levels of examination, in their most recent history. It was also found that GCSE/IGCSE results reported by HPL schools increased, on average, by 9% during the 2-year award scheme.

Student well-being: It asked 200 teachers about their student's perceptions and well-being. 93% of teaching staff believed that HPL had improved student well-being and self-esteem. It was found that 95% of teaching staff report that students have become more confident and engaged in their learning. HPL surveyed students too, and we found that HPL is changing their perceptions of themselves. After 2 years, 9% more students believe they are capable of high performance in an HPL school than in a non-HPL school. HPL is creating a more optimistic culture in schools as 17% more students believe that everyone is capable of high performance after 2 years compared with non-HPL schools.

Staff well-being: 68% of staff said that HPL had had a positive effect on how much they enjoy teaching, and the remainder says it has not affected them at all. It was also found that staff turnover decreased, on average, by 23% in HPL Schools. Our schools are spending less on staff cover, with one confidentially reporting they spent 37% less on supply teachers compared with before they joined HPL.

Staff Workload: We found that 65% of teachers feel that HPL has not affected their workload, with 23.9% of staff reporting a positive effect. We also discovered that 62.2% of staff would actively seek to work in an HPL school if they moved.

Parental Involvement: Parents are key players in supporting young people to become high performers academically and in later life. After implementing HPL, 72% of teachers now think more about how best to involve parents/carers in their child's learning.

We asked teachers about parental involvement, and we found they thought 37% more parents are involved in their child's learning and skill development in an HPL school compared to a non-HPL school.

Source: (highperformancelearning.co.uk)

Pillars of HPL:

High-Performance learning is based on the following pillars:

The key pillars of High Performance Learning
The key pillars of High Performance Learning

How Parents can help in HPL?

There are different ways to make our home a high-performance learning home. Parents need to build resilience in kids at home by helping them believe in themselves, not be afraid to make mistakes and keep trying. We need to encourage kids to know how our kids are doing and whether they need to put more effort into any specific area.

Encourage our kids to be receptive to ideas that differ from your own. And also make sure that kids practice regularly until they can do it well. We need to develop a spirit of curiosity in our kids by encouraging them to ask questions, by answering questions, and by working together and independently to find answers to questions.

The Structural Learning toolkit and your HPL Journey

Our organisation is focused on advanced thinking skills and we offer a wide range of tools and frameworks to help school communities explore different styles of learning. Our thinking framework offers a wide range of thinking approaches that school teachers can utilise for both planning and facilitating classroom instruction.

Understanding the principles of these evidence-based approaches is paramount for classroom success. We always facilitate professional development for our member schools, this can be done remotely or in person if it's viable. Within our professional learning sessions, we provide interactive sessions where educators can collaboratively explore barriers to achievement. Within a short workshop, teachers can quickly see how the framework can be used to solve complex and multi-step problems.

This approach to education does sometimes require a shift in perspective and we have a series of exercises that help educators explore the key characteristics of academic success. If you would like to find out how this toolkit could be utilised across your school, please do get in contact with us, and arrange a time for an exploratory conversation.