Frequently asked questions

We expect all local authorities in their new role as commissioners of education and under their duty to raise educational standards to be promoting and monitoring personalisation of learning to ensure that all schools meets the needs of parents and pupils in their area. Through their National Strategy consultants and other school improvement staff, local authorities will play a vital role in promoting and spreading best practice about personalised learning to all their schools.

Under the New Relationship with Schools, local authorities will have access to up-to-date and authoritative information to monitor and assess how their schools are serving all pupils: from the pupils data now available; from the School Improvement Partners (SIP) they employ;and from the more frequent inspections carried out by Ofsted. Also, through the SIP - a nationally accredited expert, typically a current or former head teacher - local authorities will be able to support, challenge and hold schools accountable locally around personalised learning specifically, and continuous school improvement, more generally.

Personalised learning is our next stage of reform: a way of raising standards further, ensuring every child realises his or her full potential - a radical change that provides a truly tailored education for every child, enabling them to reach the highest possible standards that equip them fully for life in our rapidly changing world.

Personalised learning contains elements of individualised learning and one-to-one tuition. But personalised learning is not about letting students work at their own slowest pace. Most categorically, personalised learning is not about a return to 'child centred education'. It has a strong focus:

• on standards, identifying what individuals already know, what they need to do to improve and how best they can do so.
• on pedagogy, developing effective teaching and learning skills through a range of whole class, group and individual teaching, improving learning and ICT strategies so as to best transmit knowledge, to instil key learning skills and to accommodate different paces of learning.
• on inclusion, working to dismantle barriers to learning whatever their causes and to foster the best possible conditions for learning.

Consistently high quality teaching is at the heart of personalised learning. This is about working more effectively, not harder or longer. Personalising learning will mean challenging and altering some deeply embedded - and often unquestioned - habits and practices, which will take time to change. Schools and local authorities will need to take a fresh look at how they can effectively support teachers' professional development and put in place systems for innovation and sharing best practice.

As announced in the 2005 Schools White Paper, significant investment is being made to meet the step change required in personalised learning. £335 million from the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) is specifically earmarked to provide resources to secondary schools to deliver personalised learning for their 11-14 year olds, which will be invested by 2007-08. In addition, £230 million will be earmarked for personalised learning in primary schools over the same period. A further £60 million in each of 2006-07 and 2007-08 will be shared amongst the primary and secondary sectors and targeted at those schools with the largest numbers of pupils who have fallen behind in English and maths. Local Authorities, in consultation with their Schools Forums, will decide how to distribute this funding most appropriately amongst their schools.

New funding for personalised learning in schools was announced in the 2006 Budget. An additional £220m in 2006-07, and £365m in 2007-08, will be paid direct to schools to help them to provide greater personalisation of learning in and beyond the school day, especially for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.  The extra funding will be routed through the School Standards Grant - Personalisation (SSG)(P)).

In the Pre-Budget Report in December 2006, the Chancellor announced further funding through the SSG of £130 million in 2007-08 to be paid directly to schools to help them deliver personalised learning and extended services.

For further information on this, please see funding

Some schools have moved quite a long way down the road of personalised learning and have strong evidence to support it. These schools include those which were once in special measures, or those with pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and in challenging circumstances.

Though class size is a factor in the extent and way in which teaching is tailored to pupils' needs, personalised learning is possible and appropriate in a class of 30.

Personalised learning does not depend on individual learning programmes for each pupil in the class. It requires effective whole class interaction, with good use of questions and fielding of pupil responses, as well as guided group learning and closer support and intervention for those pupils who need it. It may involve the focused use of teaching assistants and other adults with targeted groups. Above all, it means good assessment for learning, since this is a key to tailoring teaching and learning more closely to pupils needs, with planning to objectives, a clear sense of subject progression, oral and written feedback, listening and observing, carefully framed questions to ascertain understanding and pupil peer and self-assessment.

Personalised learning involves the teaching, curriculum or school organisation being designed to reach as many pupils as possible with diverse needs and experiences for as much of the time as possible.  Personalised learning and differentiation are linked, but not the same thing. Personalised learning is an approach to teaching and learning that stresses deep learning as an active, social process and which is explicit about learning skills, processes and strategies (such as information processing or reasoning). It's not about individualised learning, but about building independence through interaction, intervention, stimulation and collaboration. Guided group learning would be a good example of how personalised learning can be developed in the classroom, but so would effective teacher questioning in whole class interaction.
Personalised learning places a limit on how far differentiation should be taken and sets high expectations for all pupils. Individualised learning risks the weaker students most, for they are the ones who benefit from a well-structured learning environment.  Moreover, individualised learning weakens the broader curriculum experience of any child, by reducing the social, moral and intellectual dimension that is an inevitable part of learning together.
So personalised learning places a strong emphasis on high expectations, teacher and practitioner intervention, group learning, social interaction, using language for learning and developing the language of learning. In personalised learning, whole class and group interaction, supported by tailored, focused intervention for pupils who are underachieving at any level, become the keys to accelerate the progress of the individual beyond what she or he can do alone, ensuring best progress for all.

Personalised learning depends on knowing pupils better as individuals and as learners, but this does not mean labelling them in a particular style of learning. Personalised learning means matching teaching and learning more closely to the needs and aspirations of pupils so that they become better learners, broadening the range of learning skills and strategies which pupils can use in order to become independent learners. The learning styles idea is unhelpful when used to limit pupils' scope as learners, but it can be a helpful reminder to teachers to ensure that pupils are fully engaged in their learning by providing a range of different learning experiences and opportunities in which all pupils are emotionally, physically and intellectually involved.

There is advice on learning styles and writing on the standards website and guidance on training on learning styles in Excellence and Enjoyment: Learning and Teaching in the Primary Years under the theme of Understanding how learning develops.