What is personalised learning?
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Personalised learning is a highly structured and responsive approach to learning for each individual child and young person. It creates an ethos in which all pupils are able to progress, achieve and participate. It strengthens the link between learning and teaching by engaging pupils and their parents as partners.
The Children’s Plan and personalised learning
Personalised learning is about a new culture of teaching and learning. The Children’s Plan identifies the essential components as follows:
"The distinctive feature of the pedagogy of personalisation is the way it expects all pupils to reach or exceed expectations, fulfil early promise and develop latent potential.
"Personalised lessons are stretching for everyone. At the heart of personalisation is the expectation of participation, fulfilment and success. The hallmarks are ambitious objectives, challenging personal targets, rapid intervention to keep pupils on trajectory, and vigorous assessment to check and maintain progress. There are clear plans to support those who do not or cannot maintain trajectory."
Key components of personalised learning
Personalised learning typically has five key components that enable pupils to engage actively in the management and design of their own learning:
- learning how to learn: helping pupils develop a repertoire of learning skills and strategies to support their development as self-directed learners
- assessment for learning: using a range of assessment techniques, with the emphasis on formative assessment that engages the learner
- teaching and learning strategies: deploying the full repertoire of strategies, with pupil and teacher make informed decisions about which to use and when
- curriculum choice: providing pupils with guided opportunities to develop individual learning pathways that develop skills rather than knowledge
- mentoring and support: ensuring pupils have a one-to-one mentoring relationship with an adult, and benefit from peer support
Management of personalised learning
Personalised learning requires effective structures and systems to support it. These are summarised in four management strategies:
- minimising within-school variation: reducing inappropriate variations to ensure consistent, high quality learning experiences for all pupils
- student voice and choice: engaging children and young people to become active partners in designing their learning, and to make real choices
- information and communication technology (ICT): developing technology that enables access to learning and provide effective data to support it
- school systems and structures: re-thinking the way that time, space and people are organised so that personalised programmes can be developed
Leadership for personalised learning
Personalised learning needs leadership that can take the school forward through a period of significant change. Five areas of focus emerge.
- culture and values: securing a set of values focused on the learning of individual pupils and supporting it with clear management strategies
- learning-centred leadership: using and encouraging modelling, monitoring and dialogue to exert a powerful influence on staff and pupils
- distributed leadership: building leadership capacity across the school, linked to teams and the learning situation rather than to hierarchical status
- networks and partnerships: developing partnerships with other individuals or organisations that contribute to effective learning
- leading change: using a best practice change process in order to lead the shift towards personalised learning
Making it happen: practical activities
A number of practical activities are available on the Making it happen page.
Reflective questions
Q: As a school leader, how would you define personalised learning? Is this definition consistent among all leaders in your organisation?
Q: How does leadership in your school promote a culture of high expectations and aspirations for all learners?
Q: How does leadership ensure that the learning opportunities in your school meet the needs of all learners, including gifted and talented and those with special needs?
Q: How does leadership in your school support provision for the Every Child Matters agenda?
Q: What would your leaders say is the key component of personalised learning?
Related publications and resources
Leadership for personalising learning: a framework
| Key components of personalised learning | Management for personalised learning | Leadership for personalised learning |
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