How best to approach DPR: Some considerations for school management

As there are many features to DPR, school management often asks how best to approach its implementation. DPR is more than just an assessment tool, rather it assists the whole school curriculum planning and its implementation. In other words, DPR can be categorised as a whole school learning management system.

Here are some of the ways schools have considered their initial approach to implementing DPR:

Trial DPR with a subject or two, such as Maths and English

Advantage:

• Getting the curriculum right can be challenging. This may indicate the school is attempting to manage its curriculum by prioritising key subjects first

Disadvantage:

• Having a dual system in school for curriculum approach, data collection and progress reporting can be confusing for staff and students

Trial DPR with a subset of year groups first or with KS3

Advantage:

• The school may want to build a strong foundation with the lower year groups first

Disadvantage

• DPR maps out the curriculum for the five years, integrating the required knowledge vertically between years, leading to a clear connection between topics. This approach may deprive key year groups accessing these key learning intentions
• DPR also helps KS4 students access key resources through its resources portal. Our statistical analysis shows that Y10/11 benefit the most from these resources as the exam pressure motivates them to look out for relevant and meaningful resources through DPR

Target all year groups and all subjects but phase in DPR assignment for later on

Advantage:

• This allows teachers and students to become familiar with the main curriculum functions of DPR: familiarity with the main learning intentions and their assessment of them.

Disadvantage:

• Assignments are an extension to the main learning in class and for any assignments set, the DPR ensures an explicit link is made with the established learning intentions
• The school would have two systems for setting and tracking homework
• Assignments force students to log into DPR every day to find out their assigned tasks. DPR assignment will help with both student and teacher engagement

Our recommendation:

Getting the curriculum right is one of the main priorities of any school. So if the school is confident with the curriculum intent, we recommend that DPR be accessible to all year groups with the assignment feature. DPR in return will help all stakeholders to access the school curriculum and help maintain a learning focus at any given point in the school year.

Our data shows that the year 10 and 11 use DPR the most. For example, not only do they log in to DPR the most but they also use the DPR resources to complete independent work. The DPR is a powerful platform and schools would do well to take full advantage of its capacity from the offset.