Real Personalised Learning

Cambridge Education is pioneering new pedagogy through a set of online tools and resources.

Government policy around ‘Personalisation’ and ‘Every Child Matters’ talks about supporting children from pre-school to adult life making them ‘Lifelong learners’ by placing them ‘at the centre’ and ‘in control of their own learning’. For this to happen in reality we need to work out what actually helps individuals to become better and better ‘independent learners’ throughout their life?

What is common to all learners at all stages?

If learners can be given a structured way of learning independently then their ability to take control of their own learning improves. This structured framework has to work for all learners in all lifelong contexts so it needs to be built around a basic building block which I call the ‘Learning Cycle’. This is explored in more detail in the ‘PbyP Framework document’ but is summarised below.

It starts when the learner sets themselves a goal. This goal could be anything from taking their first steps to starting out on a GCSE course
This goal or target is normally based on what the learner has seen other people doing. This may inspire them to do something similar or just give them ideas, either way it helps to solidify in their mind what success might look like.
This goal or target is by definition, something they can’t do already or something they want to improve. So PROGRESSION is a key element. The learner needs to feel that when they have achieved this goal they will have progressed in some way. This means that targets can be placed in a LADDER going from least hard to most hard.
Having decided on their goal, helpful people, parents, friends, teachers, facilitators, coaches etc help them to come up with ways of achieving this goal. They may also help to challenge if the goal is too easy. For example, a parent knowing their child is determined to learn to walk might strategically place cushions around the room.
The learner then must be provided with opportunities to achieve their goal.
There will be some evidence that the goal has been reached (or not)
The individual must learn to assess themselves as well as having ‘experts’ validate their achievements. To help them do this they should have the opportunity to assess others as well as validate others.
Having set the goal, done an activity, gathered evidence and understood the assessment, the learner is free to either set the same goal again or go for another one – hence the cycle continues

How to use the PbyP web tools to take control of your own learning?

PbyP identifies a large numbers of goals arranged in ‘skills ladders’ so that each goal has harder versions higher up the ladder. For example the skill of presenting to an audience has ‘Do a show-and tell to your class’ at rung one of the ladder up to ‘Do a public presentation to over 1000 people that is evaluated as very good by over 2/3 of the audience’ nine rungs higher up the ladder. Clearly these small statements don’t encompass all of the skills associated with presenting to an audience, that is not their purpose. The statements are intended to give learners an achievable route to a much harder goal through successive steps that they understand and can retain control over.

Having chosen a goal, the learner can then log in to an online community where every piece of evidence from other learners who have already achieved that goal can be looked at. This serves to inspire the learner and gives them a much better and rounder understanding of what the goal actually involves. In reality learners look towards this rich variety of interpretation before they read the basic goal statement.

A whole range of web tools and support then help the learner decide how they will achieve their goal and collect evidence of this achievement.

Having collected evidence of their achievement, the learner then submits this for anonymous online assessment by other learners who have already achieved this goal and are therefore ‘experts’. In this way every member of the PbyP community is both a learner and an ‘expert’ assessor. When the work is returned, if it is successful then it goes into the learners e-portfolio which they can access from anywhere as a permanent record of where they are on their chosen skills ladders.

How PbyP is being used in Schools

Schools select which sets of skills ladders they wish to use. Most secondary schools choose either the Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills or the UK Key Skills . Primary schools also use the PLTS and UK Key Skills and some schools are now using our newest set of skills ladders, The Foundations EYFS ladders with their Early Years children. It is possible to use more than one set of ladders with the same learners, they will have a separate online Profile for each set.

Getting staff and students set up on the system takes very little time so the next real challenge is to work out which activities you currently do that allow children to progress their skills. Setting up such opportunities and allowing children the space to succeed or fail is the key to starting to engage with personalisation. Most schools have found that setting children the task of delivering a lesson to each other is a good starting point for exercising real life skills.

We of course run delegate courses, training and consultancy on all aspects of personalisation.

Delegate course: £249 plus VAT for each delegate.

The PbyP Get Started pack: £340 - £395 plus VAT for 30 users.

Find out more

For more information please call 01223 463757 or email us at