• Success for All-UK offers an innovative and unique approach towards the education of children in the primary phase. 
• The Success for All programme is based on extensive research into the way that children learn to read and write. 
• Our curriculum is driven by co-operative learning, which is embedded throughout the programme and focuses on individual pupil accountability, common goals and recognition of group success. 
• This emphasis on partner and group sharing, and the opportunities that children are given to work with peers, enables them to master basic reading skills, whilst encouraging them to develop into active, thoughtful learners.

Why use Co-operative Learning?

Research has shown that using co-operative learning techniques with children:

• Promotes learning and academic achievement
• Increases retention
• Enhances satisfaction with their learning experience
• Helps develop skills in oral communication
• Develops social skills
• Promotes self-esteem
• Helps to promote positive race relations

Research in Co-operative Learning

Co-operative Learning has been proven to enhance children’s capacity to learn and consolidate new ideas across the primary curriculum.

• In the vast majority of research studies co-operative learning has been shown to be more effective than traditional methods in raising the levels of motivation and achievement of children as well as resulting in positive social outcomes.
• Researchers such as Robert Slavin and David and Roger Johnson have shown that using co-operative learning strategies has a positive impact on achievement.
• Children who learn co-operatively tend to be more highly motivated to learn because of increased self-esteem. They also have greater on-task behaviour, score higher on achievement and problem solving tests and tend to get along better with classmates of different racial, ethnic and social backgrounds.
• Professor David Hopkins, Nottingham University, stated in his evaluation of SFA in the pilot schools in Nottingham;
  “We found learning behaviour inside schools had improved. Children were learning how to problem solve and work in groups and were able to transfer these skills to other curriculum areas.
  One result, which has excited researchers, is that boys were making as much progress as girls, despite conventional research and national trends, which branded boys slower.”

The Success for All Literacy Programme

The Success for All programme has been developed based on Slavin’s research, using co-operative learning strategies within literacy teaching. Since literacy is the key to all learning, we have created teaching and learning materials for every stage of the primary curriculum and provide training and on-going support to teachers, programme facilitators and head teachers.

At the heart of the programme is 90 minutes of uninterrupted, daily literacy from Year One to Year Six. Children are grouped across classes and year groups by their reading comprehension level. This gives each teacher the opportunity to work intensively with children grouped at the same reading comprehension level.

The programme emphasises prevention and early intervention to respond to any child's learning problems and prevent early reading failure. 

Ensuring success for all children whatever their background

We are completely committed to improving the quality of children’s learning in geographical areas of social deprivation, where for whatever reasons, traditional methods of teaching and learning have failed to raise children’s levels of achievement. We believe that by relentlessly pursuing excellence for every child, and implementing radical new strategies, we can make a difference to this.

The “Fade or flourish: how primary schools can build on children’s early progress”, report by the Social Market Foundation (July 2006), concluded that Success for All met all the criteria necessary in successful teaching approaches to literacy.

In their summary of proposals they stated that;

A proven record of preventing literacy failure

Success for All has a proven record of preventing literacy failure in schools facing challenging circumstances. Currently, we are working with approximately 110 different schools across the UK, in collaboration with twelve EAZs/LEAs, from Scotland, Manchester, Leeds and Hull in the North of England to London and Somerset in the South. Most of our schools are in areas of high social deprivation and face all of the challenges and limitations of aspiration and achievement associated with this. In all schools, the programme has made an impact on the percentage of children achieving age-appropriate National Curriculum levels.

Curriculum: Nursery to Year Six 

• Provides teachers with a complete literacy programme. 
• Supports teachers with training and coaching. 
• Uses proven research strategies and best practices for teaching literacy. 
• Engages children with co-operative learning strategies. 
• Accelerates the learning of all children. 
• Improves classroom management and attendance. 
• Emphasises development of oral languages, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

Schools can implement all parts of the programme or just those components that best meet their individual needs.

There are 6 main parts to the programme, all of which can be adopted as a whole-school approach or implemented separately depending on the needs of the school.

Foundation Stage - We have two foundation stage programmes that provide young children with an experimental and child-central curriculum, which gives them the necessary foundation for success in KS1. Curiosity Corner in Nursery and KinderCorner in Reception have an integrated approach and have been written to meet all of the requirements of the Curriculum Guidance for the foundation stage. These consist of 36 weekly thematic units in Curiosity and 16 two-week thematic units in Kinder.

KS1 - The SFA Roots Programme in year 1 gives children the building blocks to become successful readers and writers. Using a systematic, synthetic phonics programme, which has been endorsed by the Rose Review, children gain confidence in their ability to apply their knowledge to the reading process. Schools can implement the SFA FastTrack phonics programme as a stand alone programme.

"Children should be given reading material that is well within their reach in the form of decodable books, that is to say, early reading books specially designed to incorporate regular text which children can decode using the phonic skills they have secured."

Independent review of the teaching of early reading - Jim Rose

KS2 - The SFA Wings Programme exposes children to carefully selected literature covering all the different genres to develop their skills as effective readers and writers. The aim of the Wings programme is that by the end of year 6 children have a love of reading and are able to question and clarify their understanding of any text. 

Year 6 Literacy Skills Consolidation Package - This programme has been developed over the last three years to consolidate and extend children's prior learning, enabling them to demonstrate their skills during national testing. The Year Six Teaching Package consists of ten units that covers five important text genres and develops children's ability to articulate their thinking about text through a focus on key literacy, presentational and functional devices. The package also includes detailed guidance on teaching five genres of writing (recount, non-chronological report, persuasion, balanced report and story). 

KS3 Reading Project - This is Success for All's latest development project and has been made possible through a grant from the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.
We are at present writing materials that meet the interest levels of children in KS3 both at the lower level and extension materials in NC level 6.

Conflict Resolution / Getting Along Together
The Getting Along Together programme aims to ensure that every child is equipped to deal with sources of potential conflict, thus defusing it before it is allowed to escalate.
Working alongside peers, listening and applying problem solving strategies to obstacles are all skills that deserve to be taught if we value children’s ability to co-operate and fully engage in the learning process. 
The Success for All Getting Along Together package is a series of scripted lessons designed to support the co-operative learning process.

What we offer 

• Awareness-raising sessions for groups of schools / conferences. 

• Training in the use of co-operative learning strategies in the classroom, both in primary and secondary settings.

• Training in any of the six component parts with follow up support. 

• The curriculum materials to support the teaching of all parts of the SFA literacy programme.

• Whole school implementation of the Success for All programme for those schools that really want to change their teaching and learning style and raise standards of literacy.