Why I wrote Back on Track

This book has been a long time brewing. My earliest prompts on this subject were in the early days of my teaching career. I have always been conscious of time, not in terms of saving time or of being uber efficient, but of time as an elusive, precious thing. As a child I had a sense that I only had so much of it, and that I wanted to make the most of it. A lot of my thinking about time has had an impact on how I use my time professionally.

For me there is a hierarchy of activities that take up time. At the bottom of this hierarchy are those which are not negotiable and can’t be ignored – in my view, these need to be completed as efficiently as possible. At the other end of the hierarchy are those activities which take more time and headspace because they involve thinking, reading, writing and generally gazing into the middle distance. If I want to prioritise the latter, I need to crack on with the former quickly.

As a young teacher I was pretty diligent about completing the paperwork, but I realised fairly early on that most of it could be done quickly. It didn’t need to be turned into an art form; anything requested by colleagues or senior leaders could be dispatched back fairly swiftly. There were two reasons for this: one was that I realised that if there were mistakes there was someone further up the food chain who could pick this up and the other was that the admin got in the way of what I considered to be my main priority outside of lessons which was finding interesting demanding material for my classes.

For the most part, I could understand why the admin and forms were required. But if I couldn’t see why they were needed, I would ask why, and unless there was an answer that led back to impact on pupils, I would be reluctant to do it. I wasn’t always popular with senior leaders, particularly when I worked for the local authority. Again, with a sense of time and how that time should be best spent, as far as I was concerned, meant that I took the view that I would attend meetings if I could see that they had an impact on pupils in classrooms, and if I couldn’t, I didn’t.

As far as meetings are concerned, there’s nothing like a well-run meeting. A feeling that some proper stuff has been thrashed out, everyone has had the chance to have their say, the chair has held the room, thinking and action have moved on. This level of high quality meeting is not the default position either in education or elsewhere in my experience. But this isn’t a book about meetings, or admin, or data, it’s a book that asks the fundamental questions of why we have meetings, why we do admin and why we collect data. What exactly is it all for? This isn’t to say that it all needs to be chucked out, but it is to make the case that a lot of it isn’t really necessary. And a fair amount is getting in the way of what we should be doing which is finding interesting things to teach to our pupils and figure out the best way to give them this.

What created greater urgency for writing this book, is the way much of the sector regards workload. While there are some pockets of sensible practice in relation to expectations of colleagues, combined with a sensitive understanding of what it takes to do good work. But there are still too many colleagues who are in schools where, if it moves, we mark it, data is a deity and planning is submitted in triplicate along with half a dozen ways of differentiating.

The lockdown has shed a light on our work and has shown what is essential and what might be cut back or eliminated. This book poses the idea of doing fewer things, really well. ‘Back on Track’ has six sections. The first section makes the case for ‘fewer things in greater depth’ and is informed by the work of Greg McKeown’s ‘Essentialism’, the ‘Pareto Principle’ and Cal Newport’s ‘Deep Work’. It explores the professional attitudes and organisational culture which support doing fewer things in greater depth. The second section considers some of the elements of our work that might be reconsidered if we are to get our priorities realigned. For example, considering how differentiated worksheets might have less impact than scaffolding or that it makes no sense to race through the curriculum if our pupils have not properly understood what they have been taught. This section also lays out the case for authentic sources and materials, rather than second rate worksheets being offered to pupils.

I have included a section on the curriculum. Given that the quality of education within the education inspection framework places greater emphasis on the curriculum, this aspect of provision has become a higher priority for schools. But in order to do the deep work of curriculum thinking, planning and delivery, we need to create the space to do it properly. It is not something that can just be tacked on to an overworked profession. By paying attention to the things we can cut back, we come to the place of our deep work.

Then I consider the accountability processes and structures within schools themselves. The arguments in this section make the case that many processes such as marking, data generation, assessment, staff development need an overhaul. The next section provides some commentary on the quality of education judgement in the school inspection handbook.

And the final section offers some suggestions for each of the subjects within the national curriculum, to help us get back on track.  I hope it’s helpful.