Text as the beating heart of the lesson

‘A room without books is like a body without a soul.’

- Sir John Lubbock

In our efforts to make things accessible to pupils we have sometimes made things too easy. This effort to make things accessible has led to the atomisation of materials offered to pupils. A worksheet here, a gobbet of a text there, a random activity supposedly to engage them, too often delivered without thinking about challenge or coherence. There is a pushback to this, and this is a good thing. If we are serious about an ambitious curriculum for all our pupils, we need to think hard about the resources we provide to make sure that they are really stretching them.

And so we need to turn to texts. This applies to most, if not all subjects - to paraphrase Andy Tharby,[1] research lead at the Durrington School, we need to consider texts as the beating heart of the lesson. What do we mean by texts? It might sound obvious, but it is worth spelling out - whatever we are teaching within a topic, whether in primary or secondary, should have, as its main driver and resource, a text which opens up the territory for pupils.

Why should we use a text? There are a number of reasons for using a text as the basis for a unit or topic.

•   It is an efficient way of conveying a lot of information and information is important because we cannot reason or problem solve without foundational knowledge. A text is the most effective way of doing this

•   A carefully chosen text will provide the hinterland and background context for what is being studied

•   The written word is denser than everyday talk. It takes effort, in a good way, to unpack this. A text puts appropriate cognitive load onto pupils.

•   Texts contain tier two and tier three vocabulary. These are the words of the academic disciplines and subject specific domains. They are the keys to scholarship. If we aren’t using them in classroom talk, our pupils will not have access to them. The paradox is that using a text will up level classroom talk when the big words and concepts are highlighted and discussed in advance of the text, or discussed during the reading of the text or unpacked later. The text provides the vehicle for increasing the demand and level of challenge within classrooms.

•   A carefully chosen text is a reflection of the domain from which it comes. It is likely to have expert knowledge underpinning it - and this can be critiqued and debated. This quality of source material cannot be underestimated. It overcomes one of the main problems with downloading resources from the internet - many of which are superficial, often incorrect and have gobbetised and bastardised the original knowledge as to be downright dishonest. So this is a call to honesty and integrity.

So, what’s stopping us? One of the things that is stopping us is time - or apparent lack of it, in order to find appropriate texts. However, if we are going back to the principles of essentialism and have stopped doing the things that make no difference to learning, we will have created some time. Furthermore, if we were to add up all the bits of time which we have spent searching for the ‘perfect’ resource or activity, we would find that we have gained plenty of time. Time which can be used to find a decent text.

A further barrier to using a text is that once we have sourced an appropriate, high quality text, our main work is done. But because we are addicted to the curse of busyness, we might feel guilty that we are not up until midnight crafting power point, creating or sourcing resources. We need to overcome this urge. The paradox is that the sourcing, reading and using a high quality text will improve our subject knowledge. The work itself develops us in a way that looking for trite superficial materials on the internet can never do. This way of working requires a different mindset.

What are the pupils doing? Again, the temptation to be seduced by ‘busyness’ means that we have concerns about what our pupils are actually ‘doing’ when we shift to basing our work on texts. This is a legitimate concern, particularly if we have been encouraged to have lots of activities. The problem is that many of these have been proxies for learning. We need to remind ourselves that learning involves a change in the long term memory. Offering pupils texts is one of the most efficient ways of doing this. The paradox is that learning is not visible, so how can we get a handle on this? First pupils need to be ‘fed’ intellectually. Then we help them to make sense of it, primarily through talk. Then they can do something with what they have learnt.

So how to use a text? Either the teacher reading aloud by way of introduction. Or, pupils having their own copy, if appropriate and if funds allow, or they could follow an extract on the white board (making sure that the font is large enough for all pupils to see). This is what might follow from using a text: in books - these are the words we found really interesting and this is why. Pupils talk together about the words that intrigued them, that they don’t know what they mean and start compiling the key vocabulary and ideas.

What might follow from this is: so, this is what we have learnt - a brief summary, modelled through a visualiser by the teacher to begin with. And then pupils might copy this example into their books. Why would we ask pupils to copy something from the board? Well if done well, namely the teacher summarising what pupils’ ideas are, then this is really their work. The act of copying supports learning.

[1] https://twitter.com/atharby

Essentialism

‘The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.’

- Stephen Covey

We have an awful lot of ‘stuff’ going on in schools that is getting in the way of our core business: teaching and learning. It’s time to take a hard look at this ‘stuff’ and decide whether all of it is really necessary. Take this example from Greg McKeowan:

‘When an executive I work with took on a new senior role in the company, he inherited a process his predecessor had gone to a huge effort to implement: a huge, highly visual report on a myriad of subjects produced for the other executives each week. It consumed enormous energy from his team, and he hypothesised that it was not adding a great deal of value to the company. So to test his hypothesis he ran a reverse pilot. He simply stopped publishing the report and waited to see what the response would be. What he found was that no one seemed to miss it; after several weeks nobody had even mentioned the report. As a result, he concluded that the report was not essential to the business and could be eliminated.’[1]

Getting back to essentials is not easy, it takes real discipline. But it is worth it. There are three strands to getting back to the activities and processes that enhance our main purpose: the first is at organisational level, the second is at a personal level and the third is becoming comfortable with saying no to the activities which do not support the first two.

The first step as an organisation is to go back to first principles: what are we in schools to achieve? We need crystal clarity about what our core purpose is and this takes deep hard work. It means going back to our mission or values statement and to treat it as the solid expression of the school’s purpose. It becomes the criterion by which it is possible to measure everything that goes on within the school. We have to ask ourselves that if our school values state that the ambition is for every child to achieve through a ‘knowledge rich’ curriculum, how does this match with teachers expected to mark every piece of work which means they have little or no time to develop their own subject knowledge, or to source resources that are high quality, or have time to reflect on their practice? There needs to be a thread which connects what we say on our websites with the actual experiences of professionals who want to live up to the aspiration but are bogged down with expectations to perform activities which are not adding value to pupils’ learning. 

Then at an individual level, I need to ask myself what is the highest contribution I can make? Where am I going to have most impact and how am I going to direct my energies to that first and foremost? So much of what we do is urgent, but not important. And we need to remind ourselves that ‘What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.’[2] The important versus urgent matrix helps us to clarify those areas where we are likely to have the greatest impact. In order to get there, we need to make sure that we eliminate things which are neither urgent, nor important. There are many school practices that are candidates for this category and examples such as marking, data, production of differentiated worksheets are discussed in section two.

This brings us to tradeoffs. And this is where it gets uncomfortable. In order to keep the main thing, the main thing, it means having to say ‘no’. And often this means to other people. This is why it is important to have real clarity on the first two aspects of essentialism - when we are clear on those the demands on our focus, activity and purpose become easier to justify when we refuse to do them. To do this, we need to find a form of words that makes sure that it is not personal. We need to remind ourselves that we can do anything but not everything. If our focus is going to be on the essentials it means that we simply cannot say ‘yes’ to everything.

Linked to this, is the ability to ask ‘why’? We need to be doing this at the micro and the macro level. Asking ‘why?’ to others’ requests is not rude, it is about gaining clarity. If we are asked to submit detailed plans for lessons for example, then it is reasonable to ask how these are going to be used and for what purpose? If we are being asked to input data, then again it is helpful to ask ‘why’? When we keep asking why, in a pleasant manner, we are seeking justification for processes - and it might turn out that some of these are important, but others are not. And in the latter case, the asking of why is helpful for the wider system. Everyone is entitled to ask ‘why?’ - from trainee teachers, newly qualified and recently qualified teachers, teaching and learning support assistants, classroom teachers, governors, middle leaders. If everyone stops and asks why something is needed, then often we will find that something is not necessary, it’s just that we have grown used to doing things because they have always been done.

As we do this we shift from asking ourselves ‘how can I make this all work to what is the problem that I want to solve right now?’[3] When we do this it shifts the locus of our efforts onto practices and activities that really do make a difference. And this not only produces clarity, it releases energy. Energy is one of the vital factors in moving our work forward. When overloaded with redundant activities we quickly become overwhelmed, we can resort to a place of learned helplessness, of thinking that nothing really makes a difference. By taking a hard prune at the stuff we do, we release new insights, new observations and quickly realise that improving the outcomes of our core business is possible.

One of the things we need to come to terms with, in the early stages of moving to essentialism is that it will feel uncomfortable - as we learn to set boundaries to make our core business more effective and more efficient, we can feel bereft. There is after all, something comforting about routine, about busyness, about feeling we have too much to do. Stripping back to become liberated can open up psychological holes because we can feel exposed. If we are not so overwhelmed, what are we doing instead? To take some examples - if we are in a school where if it moves, we mark it and we shift to an approach of whole class feedback, where we stop marking everything that a child does, then what do we do with the extra time? Well for a start, we use whole class feedback to identity those pupils whose work is worth sharing, we identify common basic errors such as spelling mistakes and more significant misconceptions that need to be addressed. We do more thinking rather than more activity. And at first this can feel uncomfortable . Because one of the downsides of busyness is that it can be comfortable. We go through the motions, we don’t have to think too hard. And we carry on, because that is the way that we have always done things. This is no longer good enough. We need to shift to a place of deeper thought, greater purpose and this comes from our commitment to move away from the marginal, mostly redundant activities which do little to add value to our core business of developing pupils’ learning and focus instead on the actions and activities which will actually make that happen. So, one of the tradeoffs is that decreased activity will create the space for increased deliberate thinking and this won’t always be comfortable.

[1] https://gregmckeown.com/book/

[2] https://libguides.hull.ac.uk/introduction/matrix

[3] https://gregmckeown.com/book/

Above their pay grade

‘Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning and studying.’

- Pele

We have a tendency to make things too easy for too many of our pupils. Why is this? It is partly because we don’t want to overwhelm them, and we often think that we think they can’t cope. And yet pupils are saying that they relish the challenge of demanding work: work which makes them think and which means that they know more and can do more.

When a group of high prior attaining Yr 9 pupils who were generally underperforming, were asked whether there was a subject where they consistently did their best work, the response was geography. When questioned about the reasons for this, they replied that their teacher regularly gave them material to read from publications like the National Geographic. She told them that their homework was to read this material and also reassured them that it would not matter if they didn’t understand everything. This was because at the start of the next lesson the class would talk about what they did understand and what they didn’t. They relished the intellectual rigour and challenge of this demanding material.

Similarly, in a primary school when pupils were asked what they thought about ability tables in their classroom, their responses related to the level of challenging work they were given: the ‘more able’ enjoyed being the bright ones and having special challenges set by the teacher; the middle group were annoyed that they didn’t get the same work and challenges the top group had, but they had realised that there were only six seats on the top table. Meanwhile the bottom table were affected the most: they felt dumb, useless, they like the sound of some of the challenges the top group had, but they knew they would never get the chance[1]. What is happening here, is that interesting, demanding work is being rationed. These assumptions are based on flawed notions of what children are capable of.

In another example, in history, Richard Kennett, a senior leader in a school in Bristol, when teaching about the Norman Conquest provides pupils in Yr 7 with extracts from Marc Morris’ book. Their homework task is to read the extracts and answer the questions. However, they are not to worry if they can’t answer them all, because this is difficult work. What happens as a result of being given this demanding work? All the pupils, some with a reading age below ten, were able to access the work and offer answers. When asked why the class were being given demanding texts, Richard’s response was that in class they were reading and discussing extracts from Simon Schama’s account of the Norman Conquest. His intention was to show the class that while there might be historical events, historians disagree about the significance and impact of those events. What happened here, was that taking pupils into the disciplinary discourse normally reserved for A Level students it becomes apparent that they are able to access it.

Similarly, in primary, Ashley Booth, in reading Maya Angelou’s ‘The Caged Bird Sings’ a low prior attaining child is able to make sophisticated connections between the captive bird and conditions for some communities during the time of segregation in the United States.

What is sitting behind these examples is scaffolding and support. Not scaffolding by dumbing down through offering pupils easier work, but in providing them with the means to reach into the material. This scaffolding is done primarily through talk.

One of the barriers to offering pupils demanding texts is a concern that they are not able to decode the words, or that not all pupils are at the same level. This might be the case, but we need to separate phonics training from taxing, demanding material. Listening to and discussing substantial texts in the classroom means that all pupils have access to the more demanding material. We also know that comprehension involves making hypotheses about what words mean, and this applies to listening as much as to reading. ‘Listening ability is key to reading ability and does not have to be slowed down by decoding’.[2]To be clear, this is not to make the case that decoding is not important: it is in fact fundamental to reading. The case that is being made, is that pupils should have access to material which is higher than their decoding ability. This is because the learning of concepts and new words efficiently is best served by reading aloud to children together with classroom discussion.

‘Children are intensely interested in grown-up knowledge. They feel empowered. And they are.’[3]  who goes on to argue that children should hear and discuss highly interesting and demanding subject matters. They are eager to do so.  The most efficient and secure way to learn new words is incidental word learning via topic familiarity.

In ‘Respectable: Crossing the Class Divide,’[4] Lynsey Hanley describes her childhood growing up in Chelmsley Wood hear Birmingham. She attended school in the 1980’s and in the book she describes the impact of a teacher who taught her as a ten year old: ‘He took us seriously, not in the sense that he treated us like miniature adults, but that we had a right to be heard, as much as any adult or middle class child had a right to be heard. At the beginning of the year, he instituted two weekly institutions, the quiz and the debate…a chance to learn new things and to have our ideas contested. I never saw stronger evidence that you are made ignorant through what is withheld from you.’

What then, are the things that we are withholding from our pupils? How often do we say to ourselves that this is too hard? How high are we prepared to pitch our material? After all, many of them are saying that this is exactly what they are crying out for.

[1] Willingham, D (2010) Why Don't Students Like School? Jossey-Bass

[2] ibid

[3] Pinker, S (1995) The Language Instinct How the Mind Creates Language: The New Science of Language and Mind Penguin

[4] AL-Kalby, M (2013) The Apple Tree: The Prophet Says Series Prolance

The curse of content coverage

‘Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!’

- Charles Dickens 

Whether we are in primary or secondary context, there is a lot of stuff to teach and there’s a temptation to think that covering more must mean that pupils learn more and that we do not have sufficient time. It can be daunting as we survey just how much we have to get through. But let’s take a moment to unpack the content to be taught. For key stage 1 2 and 3 the content is set out in the national curriculum documents. Beyond English and maths which specify the content to be taught in each year, for the other national curriculum subjects the material to be taught is across a key stage. In key stage 1 that’s two years, in key stage two that’s four years and in key stage 3 it is three years. To expand this to the amount of time available in key stage 2, if we assume one hour a week (although many schools collapse the timetable to do an in depth project, the time allocation still broadly holds) And that there are 40 available weeks a year, across 4 years that’s 160 lessons. Even with the content in history, which has more than other subjects, that’s a fair chunk of time.

If the first argument is that we have time, although never enough, across a key stage, the second argument is that we cannot teach the next lesson or part of the scheme if our pupils have not grasped what we are currently teaching. The idea that we should move on because it is on a plan, if our pupils are not secure, is basically saying that the plan is more important than the pupils. We would never say this out loud, but if we are rushing on through to cover the content, then that is essentially what we are doing.

We can see how this happens. When there is an accountability focus on questions such as  ‘Have you finished this unit yet?’, ‘Have your pupils made ‘progress’?’,  ‘What does their progress look like on the spreadsheet?, then the systems within school are putting pressure on the classroom practice to privilege content coverage over learning. It falls into the trap of implying ‘Well they have been taught it, so they should have got it.’

What should we do to avoid the tyranny of content coverage? The first is to identify the concepts and the big ideas within the material to be taught, and to make sure that these are at the forefront of our planning. Why is this helpful in avoiding the curse of content coverage? The temptation is to go straight to the detail of the national curriculum documents when planning. What happens then is that the curriculum can become fragmented and ‘bitty’. It means that it is harder for pupils to make connections and to understand the bigger picture. So, finding the concepts within the curriculum is important for pupils’ learning.

The concepts are important because they contain the big ideas. And when pupils grasp these big ideas it makes learning more efficient. It has to be said that it is hard to make sure that the concepts and big ideas are made available if all they have are piles of worksheets. The problem is that many of these dumb down the curriculum; they make things too easy and put limits on children’s learning. They also often lead to fragmentation of the curriculum which means that pupils don’t get to see the big picture.

At the moment too much curriculum planning is focused on task completion: these are often proxies for learning, rather than leading to deep understanding. To take an example: children who had spent a lesson on homophones in English were asked about what they had learnt about these. Sadly, those spoken to, were not able to say. They looked up at the board to read the learning objectives, stumbled over what it said and were not able to talk about homophones in their own words. And yet all of them had worksheets stuck in their books which had been ticked off. What had happened was that they had completed the task but it had not led to understanding. Such a pity because homophones are really interesting!

We need to think about the hidden gems which are the concepts. They are important because when children have a grasp of the concepts their learning is likely to be more secure than if they have just completed a few answers on a worksheet. Going through a lot of content gives the impression that we have covered a great deal, when in fact, all that has happened is that children have completed some exercises, a lot of them shallow, which give a superficial impression of learning. What happens when we do this is that they are not able to say, in their own words, what they have learnt and how it relates to a bigger picture. When we make sure that curriculum plans support conceptual development, we are both making planning easier and making learning deeper.

Why is this? Well the concepts act like holding baskets for a lot of information and detail. When children understand concepts, it makes new knowledge stickier. If pupils have access to, understand and are able to use the conceptual, technical vocabulary expertly and confidently, we are leading them into the territory of long-term memory. In addition, when we are planning learning, it is important and efficient to identify the key concepts we want pupils to learn. When we identify these and do work around their original meanings will take pupils deeper into their understanding of the subject.

The problem with racing through content is that it puts a heavy load on the short term memory which can only hold so much information (about four items at any one time) compared to the long term memory which appears to have no limits. The only chance we have to help our pupils shift what they are learning into the long term memory is to focus on the concepts and bigger picture, rather than a racing through the material. Because if we are skating across the surface, then how are we building for long term understanding? To a place where our pupils know more, understand more and can do more?

Creators not consumers

Let’s take a look at the range of things that pupils in our classroom use or consume: worksheets, power points, words, texts, images, paper, glue sticks. These are made available to them as part of their learning. And we need to consider the extent to which these elements are adding value to their learning, or whether they are part of a process that provides evidence, mostly flimsy that something has happened in the lesson. The temptation is to think, well I made all these  resources, the pupils did this with them, therefore learning must have happened. But did it, really? If we are not careful, we are inclined to believe that because they were ‘taught’ through these consumables, therefore something must have been learnt.

We need to shift the focus onto how pupils become creators with these materials. Each of them needs to be considered from two fronts: how, exactly will this worksheet, power point and so on, add value to learning. And secondly, what are pupils going to do as a result of using them? If we are serious about deepening learning, then we need to pay attention to the creation aspect. We need to remind ourselves that learning is a change in the long term memory, that it is what we pay attention to is what gets remembered. There can be so much busyness around the use of these items in classrooms, that if we are not careful, more time is spent on the completion of the sheets, and the sticking in of the sheets into exercise books, than on the point of those sheets. Any proxy placed in books, to show that something has happened.

Instead our focus needs to be absolutely on what pupils are going to do with these resources. What are they going to create as a result of using them? What do we mean by creation? Creation in the classroom means knowing more stuff, having more insights, and over time (possibly in the lesson, possibly at some point in the future) being able to do something on their own terms as a result of the materials offered. The argument here is that it is not the consumption of the materials but what happens intellectually as a result of being offered those materials, that counts. Unless we are prepared to think this through and make it explicit in lessons, then learning is likely to be shallow.

What are some of the things that pupils might do that shift the intellectual space from consumers to creators? Here are some suggestions: The first is to shift from consumption to creation is through talk: pupils should be able to articulate why a particular resource is being used in the lesson. At the heart of this, is clear explanation from the teacher, and the expectation that pupils can articulate the same. Then a pupil might ask what is their response to this information? Do they understand it? If not, what am they going to do about it? The teacher might support this by asking pupils where they might we have met this idea, or similar concept before? And then there could be further questions about pupils are finding hard about this? What else would they like to know? What am they going to do with this new knowledge? Has this information inspired poetry, literature, art or music for example? This might seem stretching it too far, but it we want to deepen understanding, pupils need to have multiple lenses and frames through which to consider new knowledge. What do academics say about this knowledge? How can we turn this knowledge into a format where we can remember it, perhaps through dual coding, for example?

There is a shift in cognitive demand when we back up the material with questions such as these. They turn the information from inert to alive, and take the pupils from consumers to creators. They are having to do something intellectually with what has been provided for them in that lesson. It will become apparent that this process will take longer than just the consumption route. And that is the point: doing fewer things, in greater depth and resisting the urge to get sucked into the curse of content coverage. Content coverage at its worst means throwing lots of stuff (metaphorically, not literally) at pupils in the assumption that this is the work and the expectation they will learn something from it. Jackson Pollocking the lessons with materials does not constitute learning. Keep throwing things, again not literally, making the assumption that pupils will learn as a result, is simply wrong.

We have to be hard-nosed about this. However, when we are clear about our priorities, namely deepening learning, it becomes easier to resist temptation to offer them more, when in fact less is needed. The lens through which we consider this needs to ensure that the curriculum thinking and planning consistently asks is what pupils are going to create, in terms of meaning, understanding and showing their knowledge as a result of this?

Curriculum design for religious education in a post-commission world

The Commission on RE (CORE)’s report made the case for religious education to have a national entitlement, along the same lines as the national curriculum subjects. The reason for religious education being part of the basic curriculum, and having its content determined locally via locally agreed syllabuses, is a complex one rooted in history. But suffice it to say that the variability and confusion (in aims, content and quality) through having so many different locally agreed syllabuses across the country, has led to  a confluence of energy to have a national entitlement, while still maintaining a role for the local input. This proposal has been contested and often for good reasons: what might be lost from a move from local to national determination? Would a national entitlement reflect the localities faith and world views; would opportunities be lost for faith groups and educators to work together? There is much to be considered here, but my own view is that the subsidiarity of RE provision has not led, in every part of the country, to the provision high quality structures, resources, training and high-quality materials for classroom use.

As things stand, the legal and policy recommendations in the CORE report are not likely to be implemented soon, but they remain in the forefront of national discussions about the future of our subject. And so, in the absence of a national entitlement, the work I am doing with schools is guided by the following principles:

 ·     RE planning for religions and world views is underpinned by concepts

·      RE planning is powered through stories

·      RE planning is supported by high quality materials including artefacts

 These principles might change in the future, but these are where I am staking my current thinking until I find a more refined way of going about the business of curriculum planning. I give myself this permission, because I don’t want to fall into the trap of believing that curricular thinking is a one-off process; I want to be open to critique and criticism and open to better ways in the future. For the time being, this work is provisional.

 Why concepts?

Concepts and big ideas are like ‘holding baskets’ – they are the cradle for a lot of information; they help to make sense of disparate knowledge and potentially unconnected facts. Through anchoring the subject’s planning in concepts, we provide a route through for pupils to get to grips with the foundations of key beliefs and practices in religions and world views. The insight into the foundational importance of concepts is supported by cognitive science, for example Willingham’s conclusion: ‘Students can’t learn everything, so what should they know? Cognitive science leads to the rather obvious conclusion that students must learn the concepts that come up again and again – the unifying ideas of each discipline.’ [1]

What follows from this is that if I am planning a unit in Christianity about the birth of Jesus, this will be underpinned by the concept of incarnation. Incarnation is a fundamental element of Christian theology, namely that the divine became human in the form of a baby. Very young children can grasp this, if it is taught explicitly. It then means that the gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus, the nativity plays and the festivities that take place in primary schools, are underpinned by the idea that this is important for Christians because they believe that god became human through the birth of baby Jesus.  Unless that conceptual understanding is in place, it is just a random list of things that children experience without making the deeper connections.

Similarly, if I am planning to teach about the langar in Sikhism, this needs to be understood in terms of the concept of sewa. Without the building of the concept, then it is just understood as a free meal provided at a gurdwara.

Why stories?

Stories are the oldest means of conveying important ideas. Again, their use is supported by cognitive science: ‘Our brains privilege story’ [2]: Willingham and Pinker’s observation reminds us that ‘Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative, mental map, or intuitive theory. Disconnected facts in the mind are like unlinked pages on the Web: They might as well not exist.’ [3] Religious education as a subject domain is rich in stories, including high quality non-fiction commentary, and it is on these that I believe we should draw. There are further rich pickings from the use of story as a driver for the curriculum: they contain the concepts and big ideas; they are very efficient at providing the background knowledge or ‘hinterland’ that we know is essential for pupils remembering things in the long term; they contain sophisticated vocabulary, often tier two and tier three not normally encountered in everyday discourse; and finally, they are inclusive. Everyone can access a great story. It follows from this that a unit I am preparing on the first account of creation in Genesis 1 will be driven by the text, and indeed different versions of the text. It also follows from this that if I am planning to teach about Sadaqat in a unit on Islam I will draw on a story such as ‘The Apple Tree’ by Miriam Al-Kalby [4].

Why high quality sources materials?

Pupils’ experience and their understanding will be degraded if we give them a diminished diet of low quality materials. Many of the worksheets given to pupils do not place sufficient demands on them either cognitively or affectively. How does the colouring-in of a mosque add to their learning? What do pupils learn from labelling the inside of a synagogue? We have an obligation to draw our material from the original artefacts and original sources. And with materials from museums, art galleries and faith communities, we have a cornucopia of material from which to garner high quality ingredients.

I believe that high quality resources, supporting the teaching of stories held together by rich concepts, are absolutely key to implementing the national entitlement.

 [1] Willingham, D (2010) Why Don't Students Like School? Jossey-Bass

[2] ibid

[3] Pinker, S (1995) The Language Instinct How the Mind Creates Language: The New Science of Language and Mind Penguin

[4] AL-Kalby, M (2013) The Apple Tree: The Prophet Says Series Prolance

Death by differentiation

‘Differentiation is one of the darkest arts in teaching’

- David Didau

There’s been a ton of time wasted on differentiation. We need to keep under constant review the impact of the things we do. And the impact of differentiation is limited and often detrimental to learning. These are the reasons why differentiation doesn't usually work:

First, differentiation anticipates in advance what children are capable of - by giving them prepared worksheets according to their ability we are limiting what they might be capable of because the work usually puts a cap on what they can do.

Second, the materials prepared for differentiation are usually closed exercises. So, all that children have to do is complete these. Completion of a prepared materials does not allow them to interrogate the material, struggle with it and make sense of it on their own terms. This applies to all those with materials differentiated in advance.

Third, it cuts down on the possibility of addressing misconceptions. Because the materials have been prepared in advance so that the children can complete them, they usually have less cognitive challenge in them. Cognitive challenge is at the heart of learning - if a child does not have the chance to struggle with demanding material, they are not really gaining new knowledge and developing skills.

Fourth, the completion of the worksheet is often regarded as the work. Children finish something and are praised for it, without checking for sure that they have properly understood something. It is too easy to complete work which has been prepared in advance by guessing, prompting or copying from someone else. This places very little demand on them but has the superficial attraction of making them appear busy. Busy is not the point, learning is.

Finally, they create a lot of extra work for teachers. Extra work is fine if it results in better outcomes, but is a waste of time when it doesn’t.

Above all, differentiation goes against the heart of the principles of the  curriculum which is that all children should be following the same course of work, are entitled to do difficult things and are supported on the way. What then, is the difference between support and differentiation? Well, support consists of the live conversations and additional unpacking of the material during the lesson. Differentiating materials in advance predetermines what children are able to do.

This places different demands on the teacher. Instead of staying up half the night to prepare different coloured resources for the different groups of children, they get a decent night’s sleep. They have time for family and friends rather than slaving over resources. Instead, they use the text or the problem or the big idea and use that as their starting point for the lesson. All children are entitled to the richness and difficulty of authentic material. They talk about it and then ask children to engage with the material, whether it is inferring some important aspects which might not be immediately apparent, and ask them to show what they know and can do with the material. The expectation is that all children will work on this. And the support comes through live conversations with those who haven't grasped it or who are struggling. It expects children to do more with less. And it expects children to think and to do something with it on their own terms. This is light years away from completing a prepared sheet.

A very good example of this was in a maths lesson. What was interesting about this was that the pupils were told ‘This is a beautiful problem’ - note the way that the teacher describes their work as beautiful. He is signposting that this is intriguing, elegant and worthwhile. In talking through with the pupils how to work out a complicated angle between two polygons, he carefully goes through with them how to work out the angles, pausing to take the answers from them. All are listening, concentrating and contributing. It becomes clear that one pupil is not clear how to combine two angles to arrive at the answer. He quickly opens another page on the board and goes through a simpler example, asking her to tell him what the steps are. Then he returns to the main problem and she is able to see what to do. Now what was interesting about this is that the whole group benefited from this additional exercise in working out the angles. It was an efficient way both of addressing one pupil’s misconception and reinforcing at the same time the procedure for the rest of the group. What was interesting that there was a sigh of pleasure from the class when the pupil realised what to do. There is no way that this could have been achieved through a pre-prepared worksheet. Her misconception would have gone unnoticed until the work was taken in. What was happening here was that the feedback was live, the individual and the group benefited.

There are similar examples where the teacher has realised that pupils did not understand the meaning of ‘infer’. Although this had been discussed and checked, it was apparent as she went around the class as they were inferring what the writer intended that they were not going deep enough but only gathering surface information. Again, the class was stopped so that they could go through the difference between surface information which is important but which only takes us so far, and the deeper meaning implied by the writer. This gave a chance for contributions from those who were more secure in this, providing an opportunity for them to consolidate their work on inference and also supported those who were not clear about how to read a text more deeply. Again, there was no way that this could have been anticipated in advance and any pre-prepared worksheets would have masked the fact that some pupils would struggle with this.

True differentiation is a paradox. It is about having incredibly high expectations for every child. It’s about regarding these as an entitlement. It is about offering demanding, concept rich, complex work. And the differentiation bit comes in through ‘unpacking’. This means through high quality talk, questioning, checking for understanding, modelling, explaining. The most effective form of differentiation is through Dylan Wiliam’s responsive teaching – preparing for the top and supporting pupils to get there, rather than deciding in advance which pupils will perform which tasks.

We must resist the temptation to dumb down.

Concepts

‘Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.’

- Immanuel Kant

If we are looking to refine our thinking and planning in the curriculum, it is important to pay special attention to the big ideas. There are two main reasons why the identification and exploration of concepts are important: the first is that they bring coherence to our curricular thinking and planning. And the second is that that they make learning more efficient for our pupils.

We need our curriculum plans to be coherent, they need to have a rationale, otherwise they are just random things we expect pupils to learn. One of the most efficient ways to secure coherence is to identify the concepts. This is because they provide the threads of a journey through the content matter. They signpost the underlying structures. They are laden with meaning. They are very efficient. And yet they are also able to expand. Concepts act as holding baskets for lots of information. If I understand a concept then new material relating to that concept becomes much stickier and is easier to make sense of.

Concepts provide the schema through which meaning is made and connections are formed. They reach back into the past - where have we met this idea before? And they stretch to the future as we consider how new information links to our previous understanding. Paying attention to concepts means that we are developing the intellectual architecture for meaning and for strengthening memory over time.

The second reason why concepts are important is the effect that they have on learning. Identifying the big ideas helps pupils to make sense of what they are being taught. Instead of random lists of stuff to be learnt, the concept acts as an expandable portmanteau which enables a child both to draw on prior knowledge and to include new knowledge. The identification and explicit teaching of concepts will help pupils to make rich connections and will support them in identifying new concepts over time. As we identify concepts, and then start building new information relating to those concepts we are providing a rich picture for pupils. Concepts need to be the driver for learning. Given that we cannot teach everything, Daniel Willingham argues that pupils should learn the concepts that come up again and again - ‘the unifying ideas of each discipline.’

So where might we find the concepts and the big ideas?  A starting point in England are the national curriculum documents. There is a tendency to go straight to the detail of what needs to be taught. However, each of the subjects within the national curriculum has an importance statement - namely the reason why this subject has a place within the curriculum and why pupils should be taught the subject. It is here that we find big ideas such as democracy and civilisation in history, for example. We need to know what these are and consider how they might be included in our planning. There is no need to use them all, but they should all be considered, so that we are very intentional about the ones that we wish to develop. We are in the process of curricular decision making when we do this work.

The second place we might go is to the texts we have selected. Texts with a narrative element are a very efficient way of conveying information to our pupils. The written word in a high quality text is more formal and contains more complex vocabulary than in everyday talk. And using high quality texts is how we power up our pupils’ learning. And there are often big ideas within the texts and so we identify these and make sure that they thread through the lessons.  This becomes deeply satisfying work both for the teacher and pupils. We are a pattern seeking species, we search for meaning and connections and the teaching of concepts plays into these deep intellectual and psychological needs.

One of the potential barriers to the teaching of concepts, is that they are largely tier three words and often have roots in other languages, for example Latin and Greek. While on the surface these might appear difficult, when we pay careful attention to the unpacking of these words both we and our pupils find it deeply satisfying. Spending time on the origins or the etymology of a big word pays dividends. It taps into our desire to make sense of the world and when we go back to the beginnings of the word it helps us to make links and connections. So, the very unpacking of a word, in itself helps to deepen the understanding of the concept. To take an example from maths - the word isosceles comes from two Greek words. Now we are generally pretty good at teaching pupils definitions, so if we were to ask a pupil what an isosceles triangle is, they would generally be able to tell us. But if they knew that the word isosceles comes from isos, meaning equal in Greek and sceles meaning legs, they will have a bigger mental picture of what the term isosceles means. It also means that when they meet isos in other parts of the curriculum for example isobar and isometric, they have a clue that it has something to do with equal. When we do this work, we are supporting pupils up to go deeper in their understanding.

Or we might take the word hubris - the idea that sometimes human beings, through vanity and ambition overreach themselves and come tumbling down. This is a recognisable human trait - boastful words and behaviour often come back to bite us. And when we go into the root of the word hubris and find out that within Greek tragedy it means excessive pride towards or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis, then our learning is deeper. Now hubris, is an important thread in literature and we might decide that we want to use this as a ‘thread’ throughout the curriculum. Other big ideas in English are logos, ethos and pathos and through unpacking these, we provide real resonance for both current and later learning. We are setting up the subliminal signposts for these characteristics and big ideas to be spotted and dwelt upon in future work.

Staff Development

This is what John Tomsett has to say about staff development[1]: ‘In the last six years it has become plain to me that the quality of teacher learning is central to putting staff first. Any teacher, at any stage of his or her career, has to accept, continuously, the professional obligation to improve his or her teaching. Period. And once the teacher has accepted that obligation, the school has to accept the responsibility of providing the very best teacher learning opportunities. School leaders cannot just wish teachers to improve their teaching. School leaders have to put their staff’s learning needs first.’

John also points out that staff learning needs to be aligned with the school’s performance management system. Now the default practice in much of the sector is for the performance management systems to be underpinned by data. The intelligent way to use data is to analyse the results of the public tests, or large scale comparative judgement sessions, in order to develop some hypotheses about what needs to be done to improve outcomes. But this reliance on data is often taken too far. This happens when internally generated school data is used for pay awards. The inherent flaw is that school internal data is neither valid nor reliable. If this is the case, why would it be used as part of a performance management process? 

This is what happens in many parts of the sector: targets are agreed, which usually relate to whole school priorities, departmental or phase priorities and the performance of pupils in individual classes. It is the last which is the hardest to get right. Why is this? Well too often, the indicators for making judgements are based on numbers. So, what is the problem with numbers? Well, these numbers usually relate to the attainment and progress which pupils in a group or class have made. But what do the numbers signify and what are they based on? Any number is only a symbol for what a child knows, understands and can do.  And a number cannot capture the whole picture of a child’s achievement. The further problem with numbers is that they are often driven by tracking systems. As teachers go through the curriculum with their pupils, they are often expected to track their progress on the system. The goal is to improve the numbers or turn the children ‘green’ as proof of progress.  Yet this takes no account of the complexity of learning, nor of the authentic progress pupils might have made, nor of the gaps which remain to be filled.

A further problem with linking performance management to data, this time external data such as SATS or examination results at key stage 4 and key stage 5 is that the results which pupils achieve are not solely down to an individual teacher. At the end of Year 6 pupils will have had at least six years of schooling and the impact of these years should not solely be used to judge a Year 6 teacher’s performance. There are too many external factors in how well pupils do at the end of year 6 to say that one teacher is responsible, and that their pay should be contingent on this. And when it comes to secondary, the performance management targets based on Key Stage 2 SATS results are deeply flawed. How can a teacher in humanities or arts and design technology be held to account for baseline data which are not related in any way to their subjects? Bonkers.

If we are not going to rely on internally generated school data as the basis for performance what might we do instead? To draw on John Tomsett’s work again. As he argues ‘school structures which have informed leaders of teacher learning, and time for teachers to work on improving practice, also require coherence with a school’s performance management system. A feature of our mature, coherent model of performance development and our related CPD programme is our Disciplined Inquiry objective. It is the only objective in our Performance Development. All teachers and teaching assistants – some 120+ colleagues – identify a feature of their practice which they would like to develop and then they evaluate that development of their practice against its impact upon their students’ performance. They are expertly trained in the whole process by colleagues from our Research School who introduce colleagues to, amongst other things, interventions, treatment groups, control groups and effect sizes. They have time to complete their inquiry – we call it their Inquiry Question, or IQ for short – and at the end of the year they write it up on an A3 pro forma.’

This way of working chimes with Philippa Cordingley’s ‘Pockets of Excellence – Beacon or Blindspot?’summarising her research in schools attempting to scale up pockets of high quality practice. Philippa comes to some very interesting conclusions - that the scaling up of excellent practice is subtle and complex. The nub of the paradox appears to be that many school leaders attempt to gain momentum by providing support for teachers. A good thing in itself, but when CPD is provided by leaders and positioned as an executive role, what is often missing is the chance to understand, experiment with, and explore the underpinning rationale of the practice in the same way. When CPD is top down, middle leaders often miss out on developing their learning leadership through working out how to facilitate the learning of their colleagues.

'By contrast, 'exceptional' schools placed a great emphasis on building a shared understanding of the school’s model of pedagogy and its underpinning rationale. By ensuring that all development focused on identifying and removing barriers to learning and building a shared model of and language for teaching and learning, the extensive monitoring in 'exceptional' schools worked to build coherence for learners and develop a commitment to collective efficacy.'

In the exceptional schools the emphasis was on 'highly professionalised CPDL (Continuing Professional Development and Learning), constructed as a professional and accountable partnership between leaders and teachers. Mentors, facilitators and coaches were trained and the effect of their support on colleagues and on their pupils was evaluated. These trained facilitators of professional learning were distributed across all levels of leadership.'

It is this sort of endeavour, rich, professionally rewarding that improves standards. As David Weston of the Teacher Development Trust says, ‘If we are going to have more schools where teachers keep improving, we need to make staff learning just as much of a priority as student learning.’

 [1] Tomsett, J, Uttley J (2020)  Putting Staff First: John Catt Educational

Fewer things in greater depth

‘Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.’  

- E. F. Schumacher

Thoughtful leaders working to create the conditions for high challenge and low threat know that in order to make a difference they have to focus on fewer things in greater depth. This is incredibly difficult in schools which have  intense schedules, unexpected challenges and sometimes crises. But this is no different from any other profession or business. Stuff sometimes gets in the way. That’s how life is. But while these are inescapable facts of life and work top leaders keep their heads clear of unnecessary stuff and keep their eyes on the ball. They know the core business of what they are about and they keep their eye on the main goal.

Einstein said that everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Top leaders invest time in thinking and talking about what the main purpose of their work is. They describe the conditions they want themselves and others to work in and the core results they want to see. So, this is linked to two main things: the conditions in which we work and the main work to be done.

Top leaders make sure that the conditions are right to achieve the goals agreed. Conditions are the space both physical and psychological in which the work takes place. To take the physical first. They know that necessary conditions mean order and simplicity. Overcrowded desks, overcrowded room with stuff which does not serve the core purpose are a distraction. They start by taking a hard look at their surroundings. This is not about high levels of spend on beautiful buildings and expensive gadgets. It’s about the principles of design which value clarity and grace over disorder and chaos. They start with themselves and their own workspace. They take a hard look at everything in their room and ask themselves, ’Is this fit for purpose? what is it doing here? where did I last use it? How likely am I to use it again? ‘And anything which does not fit, goes either in the skip, or out of sight. Clear workspaces support clear thinking.  Then they take a look at the wider school, the corridors, the shared spaces, the hall, and also behind the scenes. They make sure that there is no unnecessary stuff anywhere. So, none of the remnants from last year’s show lying gathering dust at the side of the stage. Beyond a health and safety hazard this sends out the message that clarity and order don't matter.

They encourage colleagues to do the same exercise in their classrooms and workspaces. Why is stuff on the floor? Why are those old resources gathering dust? They are getting in the way of the important stuff which needs both a physical and mental spring clean.

This is not about some regimented cold regime. It is about sending a clear message to ourselves, our colleagues and our subconscious that clarity and simplicity matter. We can get attached to things. But if we are never likely to use them again, why are we keeping them? Anyone who has done this work whether at home or work and has loaded stuff into a skip or a rubbish bin will know the deep satisfaction which comes from getting rid of unnecessary stuff. 

Importantly however, once leaders have done this for themselves and they encourage others to do the same. This can’t be forced, people have to engage with it willingly, but they will understand the difference it makes when they have done it. We feel lighter, more energetic and have more clarity and optimism. But this doesn't all have to be done by one individual on their own. Top leaders who think this is important give time for this to be done on a regular basis. And they make it clear that its ok to get students involved as well. Many hands make light work and the role of students in keeping classrooms and workspaces fit for purpose is an important lesson for their own lives. Thoughtful leaders know how to make this work rewarding and satisfying. Once the big clear out has happened, it is much easier to keep on top of things. It is easier to notice when things are going astray, getting messy and sorting them quickly. It is harder to do this against an already messy backdrop. The bottom line here is to consider having fewer things and making good use of the things we do. And for those worried about never being able to replace the things they throw away accidentally, well it is always possible to replace them and most of them can be found on the internet.

When it comes to the psychological as opposed to the physical aspects of this way of working - fewer things in greater depth, the same principles apply. Thinking about organising meetings, it is worth considering Mark Zuckerberg’s two principles for meetings – the papers for discussion circulated in advance and asking the question at the start of each meeting - are we here to have a discussion or make a decision? That sorts the wood from the trees. This way of working means there is more chance of being consistent in making sure that the top priorities for school improvement are at the top of every agenda. The admin stuff takes second place. Because the admin always gets done, but it should never trump the hard stuff of keeping the improvement priorities at the forefront of the business. And this applies to any business, not just education. Those companies and organisations which thrive keep the main thing the main thing. They allow no distractions. They make sure ask questions at the start of a meeting - what difference have we made to learning or the school improvement priorities since we last met? And leaders start with themselves. Because it is always modelled from the top. What they know is that the ease and grace and deep satisfaction that comes from working in this way is worth it. It is invigorating, exciting and is much, much easier to see the work both as it is achieved and the pathway ahead.

Careful curiosity

‘We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.’

- Walt Disney

When we go back to basics and to questioning everything, there is a danger that we might throw out good stuff as well as the dross. To overcome this, we need to undertake this work through the lens of careful curiosity. The aim is to create a distance where we can consider things dispassionately and truly consider what they might contribute in a way that makes sure that we really do sort the wheat from the chaff.

There are a number of strands to the idea of careful curiosity. The first is to keep in mind what we are trying to achieve: to cut back on anything that gets in the way or takes up time from our core business. This means taking our time, because if we rush then we might just prune back things that would actually add value. We might slash too much, when actually what is needed is less hacking and more nuanced pruning back.

To take some examples, the first from the classroom. Let’s suppose that we are considering the amount of time it takes to put up display boards taking to and maintain in our classrooms and corridors. We might then ask questions about this through the lens of careful curiosity. The first stage is to consider the purpose of classroom displays. Why do we actually have them? Now, how we answer the questions will determine what we do next. If the answers are on the lines because we have always had them, because we are expected to, because they make the classroom look pretty, then those answers are not getting to the heart of the question. They are not getting to the absolute rationale for them as they are just superficial reasons. And the question ‘why’ needs to be asked again, until we are absolutely crystal clear about why we have them, the purpose they serve and the gains they make to pupils’ learning. So, the answers might go like this: ‘We want to showcase pupils’ work.’ ‘We want to share some of the images and artefacts that relate to this subject or topic.’ ‘ We don’t like blank space.’ ‘We want something simple, time efficient that adds to pupils learning.’ ‘We don’t want anything on our walls.’ To which further questions might pose the following:

‘Will we showcase all pupils’ work, or just some?’ If so, how will we manage this? We could use examples from work to praise and share? In which case, does the time taken warrant the impact? It might do, but not necessarily. How are we making sure that these will be used for learning rather than just decoration?

What this process does is to help us to be more intentional about what we are considering cutting back and why. Instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater we take time to consider the reasons for keeping or losing something. This takes us to a deeper space, we are far more likely to use the materials on the boards purposefully, than if they are just there as a matter of habit or to cover up blank space. There might also be a case for having just one image or big word, or nothing to begin with and then adding to the imagery in a careful way over time. The big difference is that we are being intentional about this activity and are crystal clear about what its purpose is meant to be, in terms of pupils’ learning.

Another example might be staff meetings in primary and department or faculty meetings in secondary. The same process applies - why do we have them? What are they meant to achieve? What would happen if we didn’t have them? What is currently on the agenda? Do we have an agenda? Does the meeting focus on the main priority of adding value to learning? Again, when we ask the question why do we have these meetings, these might be some of the responses: ‘We have staff meetings because we have always had them’ in which case the further questions might be: ‘Why? How do we know they are helpful? ‘We use them to catch up with one another.’ Are there other ways of doing this?’ ‘We use them for admin.’ Could this be done through an email? ‘No idea, they are a waste of time.’ ‘Why and who have we raised this with?

Then, to take an example for governing body meetings. What sort of information do governors need about standards? If the response is progress data on a spreadsheet, then we need to ask ‘Is it valid and is it reliable? How do we know?’ Internally generated data from most commercial tracking systems do not present an accurate picture of standards. This is because they are based on levels (even if the term levels is not used) rather than viewing the curriculum itself as the progression model. It might be a more productive question to ask whether governors would find it more helpful to have samples of pupils’ work from across year groups and prior starting points, in order to get a clearer purchase about standards achieved by pupils currently in the school.

The purpose of careful curiosity is to ask questions to make sure that we are able to extract value from anything we are doing. Through a process of careful curiosity, we allow ourselves to take time to think through and justify why we are doing what we are doing. We might come to completely different conclusions, that doesn’t matter, it is the process of thinking through our reasons that is the point.

And of course, if we decide to keep going with what we have already, this is good. What we have done is to take our practice off the shelf, given it a good dusting and considered carefully why we have it in our arsenal. We all have an obligation to ask why - if we think that something is a waste of time, we should ask why it takes place. Done in the spirit of careful curiosity this can be both respectful and challenging. It is not a crime to ask why. The process itself is renewing and refreshing. ‘The disciplined pursuit of less.’

Done is better than perfect

‘Done is better than perfect. I have tried to embrace this motto and let go of unattainable standards. Aiming for perfection causes frustration at best and paralysis at worst.’

- Sheryl Sandberg

The pursuit of perfection is exhausting. And the reason is that perfection does not exist. As Plato pointed out, the real world is a reflection of the ideal world. And for those of us who need a reminder, we live in the real world.

 As we get back on track, we need to remind ourselves that done is better than perfect. The endless fiddling to get something absolutely precise and spot on is a waste of time. Newspaper editors routinely tell rookie reporters and contributors that it is better to meet a deadline with less than a final polish, than to get it in late. The publication must go out. So, time to be less precious.

What does this mean for schools? It means an absolute focus on the things that really matter - the planning and thinking about how a lesson is going to go, the kinds of stimulus, the questions, the work we want students to do. And checking that they have done it and letting them know what they need to do to improve. We need to remember that the tail shouldn’t be wagging the dog. We need to ask hard questions such as - ’Is this moving learning on? If it isn't why are we doing it?’

We all need to check how we are spending our time. Not just during lessons but afterwards. We need to find and share the legitimate short cuts for working efficiently and for focusing on the important stuff like planning. We need to be alert to whether we are taking an inordinate amount of time on things which are not improving learning.

We need to have an overall picture of what is going on in classrooms. We shouldn’t need data drops every couple of weeks to tell us what we should already know. We need to continually ask questions about how things can be made to work more simply and more efficiently. We should be mindful of the work life balance and know that the pursuit of perfection gets in the way of healthy, honest work.

In the wider management of school settings, sensible leaders, mindful both of high challenge and low threat and of a clear understanding of done is better than perfect, apply this to the way they run meetings, communicate with parents and analyse the impact of their work. In thinking about this, they recognise that the work never feels as though it is done. They come to terms with this and accept that enough is enough. This not only makes processes more efficient but also frees up space for thinking about the big picture of direction of travel, ethos and new possibilities.

Some leaders, when reporting to the governing body, for example, do not reproduce information that is already available. They summarise the processes and actions and the impact of these through brief headlines. They are disciplined about keeping the main thing the main thing. They are relentless in asking themselves and the governing body whose role is to challenge and support them about the impact of their actions being top of the agenda. Admin is dealt with under any other business, rather than being at the top of the agenda.

Getting things done trumps getting them perfect.

Help to close the Word Gap

New research from Oxford University Press and The Centre for Education and Youth examines vocabulary at the time of transition and provides recommendations and advice to help close the word gap.

The findings from Bridging the word gap at transition: The Oxford Language Report 2020 do not make for comfortable reading:   

• Nine out of ten teachers think transition between primary and secondary school highlights vocabulary deficiencies.

• Secondary school teachers are twice as likely as primary school teachers to say that pupils are not confident in using general academic vocabulary, including words such as ‘summarise’, ‘compare’ and ‘analyse’.

• Four out of five teachers believe that difficulties with vocabulary leads to a lowering of pupils’ self-esteem, and an increased risk of poor behaviour and dropping out of education.

• The purpose and value attributed to language changes. At primary level, vocabulary is perceived by teachers as being most important for social communication and emotional expression/wellbeing. As pupils move into secondary school, teachers increasingly link the importance of good vocabulary to academic achievement and preparing for the world of work.

• Eight out of ten primary school teachers describe vocabulary as a high, strategic priority in their school; this drops to five out of ten teachers at secondary level.

• Two thirds of teachers say that a lack of time hampers efforts to improve pupils’ vocabulary. More than half of teachers also flagged a lack of additional staff support, such as teaching assistants (TAs).

• Secondary schools are more likely than primary schools to have defined whole school vocabulary programmes, but only one in 20 secondary schools said their programme was ‘very effective’.

• Only one in four teachers has access to training or continual professional development (CPD) from external experts and language specialists. This is despite more than half of those teachers who did have access to external CPD rating this as ‘very helpful’ for supporting their pupils’ vocabulary development.

The solutions are not packaged in a silver bullet: they involve work at many levels.

Oxford University Press has resources and strategies to help address some of the issues identified in the report. These include links to ‘Closing the Vocabulary Gap’, ‘Bringing Words to Life’, Reading and Oral Vocabulary Development in Early Adolescence. I suggest two further links: Transition: Fostering better collaboration between primary and secondary schools and Clare Sealy’s film about promoting reading across the secondary curriculum.

There is more on the ‘Bridging the Word Gap at Transition’ from Loic Menzies Chief Executive of CFEY and Jane Harley Policy and Partnership Director, Oxford University Press.

Leadership support for curriculum development

The development of teacher subject knowledge underpins school improvement. It cannot be left to chance. In the implementation section of the Education Inspection Handbook 2019 it states that ‘teachers have good knowledge of the subject(s) and courses they teach. Leaders provide effective support for those teaching outside their main areas of expertise.’ 

It is the case that many colleagues are teaching outside their main area of expertise. In secondary settings, many will be teaching subjects which were not part of their first degree. Even where they are teaching within their first discipline, it is highly likely that the material they are teaching pupils was not covered during their degree courses. As a result, there is a need for ongoing subject development for colleagues in secondary.

 In primary, the situation is more pronounced. For the most part, colleagues are teaching or coordinating subjects which they have not encountered since their own secondary schooling. The foundation subjects units in PGCE courses do not have the same amount of time allocated as English, mathematics and science. As a result, work needs to be done in schools to develop subject knowledge for all staff.

When teacher subject knowledge is not prioritised, the default setting is to download materials and resources from the internet. Many of these have not been quality assured, often contain incorrect information, are of poor quality and do not provide sufficient challenge for pupils. It is really important that time is given to colleagues to source materials which are high quality. There are three principles to guide thinking about the use of classroom resources. The first is, does it make pupils think, or does it merely expect them to complete the blanks? The second is to ask whether the material is likely to take pupils to a place of mastery, over time: in other words, are they likely to be able to do something on their own terms in a new context, as a result of what they have been taught? And finally, is it beautiful? What is meant here, is not whether it is decorated with sparkles and glitter, but whether the resource links back to the subject domain. This means drawing on the artefacts, art, texts and current debates with the subject. It means using images which reflect the quality of the topic being taught. It means using the language and thought processes and ways of working particular to individual subjects. All of this might seem like a big ask, but those materials, such as the British Museum’s ‘Teaching history with 100 objects’ are available. School leaders need to provide the time for teachers to consider these, rather than downloading quick fixes from second rate sites.

It’s important to go to authentic sources in order to develop subject knowledge and high quality teaching materials. Some starting points for each subject are available here: they are available online, at no cost to schools. In making the time to do this work, we need to take a hard look at how staff meetings and subject meetings are run - they should be focused on subject knowledge and making that knowledge accessible to pupils. The head of one primary school realised that his teachers did not have a wide knowledge of children’s literature, and so used the staff meetings for reading. At the start of the meeting, a range of children’s books were available for staff to select and skim or read. They did this for half an hour and then the final twenty minutes or so were spent on discussing the books. An unexpected result of this was that many staff wanted to take the books home to carry on reading. An efficient way of moving the agenda on, a light touch way of expanding teachers’ repertoire.

A final point on cost. While the materials suggested are available at no charge to schools, it is also important that those leading a subject should be a member of the subject association. Curriculum development is at the heart of what they do, and membership should be a professional entitlement for every subject lead. And the argument here, is that the cost of subscription should be  paid for from the school’s professional development budget.

Making the case for less

We find it hard to throw things away: to trim, to prune back to the essential. There are many reasons for this. Sometimes we just don’t notice how things have piled up. We just get accustomed to there being more and more; sometimes we hang on to stuff in case it comes in useful and sometimes it can all feel too much to try and sort out what’s still needed from what can be thrown away.

However, we cannot just keep adding more and more to our work schedules, otherwise we will go under. But it takes bravery and discipline to ask ourselves, do we really need this? What would happen if we got rid of it? And yet if we want to create the time and space to focus on the important work, we need to roll up our sleeves and do some metaphorical cleaning out of the attics.

Our guiding principle for this work might be William Morris, who said that we should have nothing in our homes unless we know it to be useful or believe to be beautiful: when we place this idea within our work context we might ask ourselves whether the systems and the resources and the materials we are working with, really are useful? And as for beauty: this does not mean that we decorate our worksheets with sparkly butterflies, but instead ask ourselves whether they are fit for purpose: whether they are really clear and carefully designed to make sure that pupils can really learn from them.

The idea of making the case for less has a long pedigree in academic and management literature. Vilfredo Pareto, Professor of Political Economy at Lausanne discovered and described the '80:20' effect, now known as the Pareto Principle. Pareto’s work was in analysing wealth and income distribution trends in nineteenth-century England and he discovered that broadly 20 percent of the people owned 80 percent of the wealth. This insight was developed later by others, such as Joseph Juran, the quality improvement expert who developed ‘Total Quality Management’. Juran refined and developed Pareto's theories to make them applicable in business and management. Juran realised that organisations and people tend to expand activities, materials, and stuff of all sorts, over time, and all of this 'stuff' becomes expensive and cumbersome to keep. He took the Pareto Principle – the top 20% of any country’s population accounts for 80% of its economy – and translated it into business. He developed the Juran Trilogy that addressed the planning, control and improvement of quality in products. While Juran’s focus was on wasteful processes in manufacturing, the principles provide insights into how we go about our work in education. We might ask ourselves a question such as: ‘What is the 20% of our work which has 80% of the impact?’ Or ‘What is the impact of the work we do outside the classroom? Does all of it have real impact? How do we know?’

An unexpected organisational guru for this field is Marie Kondo. This might be surprising as she is known for her advice on decluttering our homes. However, as with Pareto and Juran, there are some insights that might be applied to our work. Kondo says ‘My criterion for deciding to keep an item is that we should feel a thrill of joy when we touch it.’ Now ‘joy’ might not be the first thing that comes to mind when we are thinking about our work and the things we use to get that work done. However, if we unpick it, we might ask ourselves questions such as: ‘Is this the most professional way to go about this? Do I feel a deep sense of satisfaction with these power points and resources that I am offering my pupils? Are they the best and how do I know?’ And when we are able to answer yes to these, then we tap into a professional pride, which on Kondo’s terms might be called joy.

She has some interesting things to say about why so many of us allow ourselves to be surrounded by disorder. Kondo argues that visible mess hel distracts us from the true source of the disorder - in other words, we might have so much paperwork to complete that we forget to ask ourselves why we are doing this and who it is for. She goes on to say that there are usually two reasons for our reluctance to let something go: an attachment to the past or a fear for the future. And translated into a school context, this might be ‘Well we have always done it this way’ or ‘What will happen if we change our policy from marking every piece of work to whole class marking?’ The prospect facing up to the fact that we might need to do things differently and this can take many of us out of our comfort zones.

We need a radical approach to ‘spring cleaning’ many of the things we do in education. This involves taking a close look at the number of meetings we have, to the resources we source and develop and to the way we go about teaching. We cannot afford to hang on to things that no longer serve our purpose. As Kondo says about our homes: ‘Can you truthfully say that you treasure something buried so deeply in a closet or drawer that you have forgotten its existence? If things had feelings, they would certainly not be happy. Free them from the prison to which you have relegated them. Help them leave that deserted isle to which you have exiled them.’

When we release ourselves from some of the things that are getting in the way of cracking on with our best work, work which has impact, it is liberating.

Latest book: Back on Track

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.

Workload: the big picture

Nobody has deliberately set out to increase workload. But increased it has. So what can senior leaders do to address the drivers for this and how can they find ways of cutting through anything which is not absolutely necessary? This chapter explores further the three main strands identified in the Government’s Workload Challenge, set out in the previous chapter: planning and resources, data management and marking.

Planning

First, to planning. It is essential for leaders to have conversations with colleagues about the difference between ‘lesson planning’ and ‘lesson plans’. Planning is critical and is fundamental in providing the structure and architecture for pupils’ learning. Results are better when the following apply: teachers are given time to plan together on a scheme. These should identify the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of the content to be taught. Best practice in planning starts with an overarching question; ideas for opening up the content and the things to be taught over the medium term. These constitute the big picture and framework for what is to be taught. They are the roadmap. This is a useful metaphor for thinking about the curriculum to be taught. A roadmap shows the destination, but provides a number of routes to get there. This allows for teachers’ autonomy in the delivery of the scheme as it unfolds, lesson by lesson. When good quality schemes of work are in place, they should reduce teacher workload.

The Department for Education’s workload review group on planning and resources identified planning a sequence of lessons as more important than writing individual lesson plans. So what leaders could do to support this aspect of the workload challenge is to stop asking for detailed daily lesson plans, if that is current practice. The only situation where daily lesson plans might be an expectation is when senior leaders are supporting a colleague via coaching. Here, precise planning might be needed to improve practice, in which case the plans should be prepared jointly with the senior leader as coach, as part of the larger scheme of work.

The most compelling reason for moving away from compulsory daily lesson plans are that not only are they not necessary, they can get in the way of the bigger ‘flow’ of the sequence of learning. As leaders, this might appear risky. So, let’s be clear about why it might not be risky to do away with daily lesson plans. First of all, what do lesson plans tell senior leaders that they don’t already know? If they have an overview and indeed have had some input into some of the longer-term plans, they do not need a detailed lesson plan to tell them this. If they are honest, how many leaders read the individual lesson plans from every teacher? In a school with 10 teachers and five lessons a day that would be about 250 plans to check; with 100 teachers, 2 500 to check. Each week. Are any senior leaders doing this, seriously? And if they are, wouldn’t the time be better spent going in to the actual lessons to see how things are going? Not as lesson observations, or learning walks, but simply by walking about. And offering support if needed and affirmation for work well done. How much more powerful than reading all those plans, which often bear little relation to what is happening in the classroom.

Second, senior leaders might deem it too risky to do away with lesson plans because they believe that they might be needed for an inspection. Ofsted has made it clear that they do not expect to see lesson plans, only evidence of planning. This has been made clear in its guidance document, Ofsted inspection: myths. Apart from anything else, time is so tight on an inspection that there wouldn’t be time to read files of lesson plans. The only thing which inspections comment on is impact – the impact of the delivery of curriculum plans on children’s learning. It would be technically possible to have perfect plans, which do not translate into meaningful practice for children in the classroom. And the danger of this is that it is possible to be seduced into thinking that the piece of paper is the work, when in fact it is the action in the classroom, which is the work.

Third, senior leaders might believe it is risky to stop insisting on lesson plans as they will have less control and view of quality assurance. But this is like a restaurant checking that all the orders have been placed so that dishes can be prepared. It suggests that the paperwork is more important than the meals that eventually end up in the restaurant. Any decent restaurant will check on the final product. And tweak it to make it better. Rather than thinking that the process stops at the ordering. So, for those leaders reluctant to let go of the safety net of lesson plans, they might want to trial it for half a term. Then check what difference it makes not having them. Those schools which have done this have found that the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom goes up, not down. It is a case of fewer things, done in greater depth.

Given the above, one of the recommendations in the ‘Report of the Independent Teacher Workload Review’ is that ‘senior leaders should consider the cost benefit of creating larger blocks of time for this practice to make the planning activity as productive as possible and reduce the amount of time spent by individual teachers on individual planning. One school which has moved to this model is the Durrington School, and deputy head Shaun Allison has written about how colleagues have subject planning and development sessions. As John Hattie says ‘planning can be done in many ways, but the most powerful is when teachers work together to develop plans, develop common understandings of what is worth teaching, collaborate on understanding their beliefs of challenge and progress, and work together to evaluate the impact of their planning on student outcome’.

Data management

Now, to the workload related to collecting data in schools. This is the advice from the Report of the Workload Review Group on data management: ‘leaders and teachers should challenge themselves on what data will be useful and for what purpose and then collect the minimum amount of data required to help them evaluate how they are doing.’ The move away from levels should help with this. The advice from the NAHT and the DfE’s Commission on Assessment Without Levels report is that key performance indicators are the most efficient way forward. In other words, schools should identify the key ideas and concepts which are taught, and whether pupils have understood and have grasped these. The vital word here is ‘key’: not every aspect of what is being taught, but the big concepts and ideas only. It is not possible to evidence everything, so schools should not be seduced into thinking that this is possible. The right sort of evidence tells a big story about what pupils are able to do. Emma Knights, in her chapter on governance, points out that these principles should also be welcomed and supported by governing boards.

Leaders should keep in mind that the most robust evidence of progress and attainment is what pupils produce and say about what they have learnt. This is why their work, including written work as well as how they articulate their learning, provide the best insights into how well they are doing. Some schools are using tools like SOLO taxonomy to capture whether children’s learning is surface, deep or conceptual. Leaders need to hold in the forefront of their thinking that the data or information is a symbol for what pupils know, understand and can do. Any data collection is meaningless if this relationship is not made, checked and moderated. For example, an inspection team will ask school leaders how well pupils currently in the school are achieving. They will look at any system which the school is using to capture this. Then they will ask to see children’s work and to talk to children about their learning, to gauge whether the information or data collected is in line with what the children are saying and producing. The key question is: is the work done by children broadly at age related expectations? And if it is not, how are leaders and teachers using this information to close the gaps in learning?

One of the problems sometimes seen in schools is that investments are made in commercial tracking systems, which are very similar to old levels. They create a false impression of what pupils can actually do and in some cases they drive how the curriculum is delivered. This is completely the wrong way round. School leaders and teachers need to agree what is to be taught and then work out the simplest way of capturing this. Otherwise, commercial packages drive the learning, rather than the other way round. Some schools, like the Wroxham School keep their tracking to the minimum. Instead, they have regular, high quality conversations with pupils and parents about what they are doing well and where they still need to develop. Pupils, in discussion with their teachers, identify key pieces of work which show what they are capable of. These are used to share with parents and anyone else who needs to know.

It helps everyone if there is a timetable for data or information collection, together with a rationale for its frequency. In this way, all those involved in its input and analysis are clear about what is expected of them and why.

Marking

And finally, to marking. The report of the workload review group on marking acknowledges that ‘marking is a vital element of teaching, but when it is ineffective it can be demoralising and a waste of time for teachers and pupils alike.’ So the critical thing for leaders is to make sure that it is effective. What are the key principles which senior leaders need to consider here? First, that quality always trumps quantity. There is no link between the quantity of marking and pupils’ progress. At its worst, teachers write extensive comments on children’s work and children do nothing with the feedback provided. This is a complete and utter waste of time. Wise leaders are describing how marking fits into the bigger agenda of feedback. Feedback is information and advice, whether verbal or written, which improves a child’s learning. Leaders discuss with colleagues the purpose of high quality verbal feedback. And together they explore how powerful this can be. Then, they agree what high quality, purposeful written feedback looks like. This is linked closely to curriculum planning. In depth feedback might only be needed at the end of a significant piece of work, because most of the feedback will have been verbal and given in a number of lessons, leading up to a final piece of work. And they talk through why anyone would feel the need to have a verbal feedback stamp. Why would anyone use these? A waste of time and ink. And above all, they consider the main audience for the feedback. It is for the child, not the adult.

As a result, there should be no more cries of ‘should I be marking every piece of work?’ Why on earth would you, when most of it is redundant. So leaders’ role in this is to have some big conversations around a few simple themes: What would happen if we didn’t mark at all? If we are going to mark, who is the main beneficiary? How much of this should be done during the lesson? What would it look like if we limited marking to just a few pieces of work?

Tom Sherrington has written a very careful analysis of what high quality marking and feedback looks like. The grid at the bottom of his blog post shows how teachers might do less, more effectively. While it is written with secondary colleagues in mind, it is a useful talking point for colleagues working in all phases. Joe Kirby has analysed marking which is maximum impact, minimum effort. As identified above, much of this takes place during the classroom, because that is where the learning takes place. Feedback should be as close as possible to the action. And Dylan William has thought and written more than anyone else on what meaningful, effective feedback looks like. Any of these would be very good starters for a discussion about marking less and doing it really, really well.

To summarise, in all these elements affecting the workload challenge, there is a simple line running through and it is this: fewer things, done in greater depth, produce better results. The job for senior leaders is to set aside the time, in professional development time and elsewhere, to begin the conversation.

Questions

Are there things that you do, or are required to do, (in marking, data management or lesson planning in particular) that seem pointless? Have you asked why they are done?

Can you point to a meaningful purpose, based on pupil learning, for the work that you do?

Takeaway

Emphasise quality, not quantity – in marking, planning and data management.

The ethic of everybody

‘Inclusive, good-quality education is a foundation for dynamic and equitable societies.’

- Desmond Tutu

Dame Alison Peacock used this phrase when she was speaking at ResearchEd in September 2016. In talking about the work she had done over the years with Cambridge University and others, they identified that one of the strands of her work was an ‘ethic of everybody’. What might be meant by this and how might it relate to being hopeful, not helpless?

If one of our deepest needs is to belong, then how does this relate to the ethic of everybody? It is the ‘quid pro quo’ or the counterbalance of recognising our own need to belong and extending that to others. What we recognise we need for ourselves, should in turn be offered to others. The settings where this is understood are hopeful.

How does this translate into practice? It means that everyone has a voice, that everyone’s views are explicitly sought, that everyone counts. Does this result in a free for all? Is no-one in charge? No, the position statement of ‘everyone has a voice’ does not mean that anything and everything goes. It is instead, an attitude adopted by leaders and adults that things will be done with the best interests of everyone at heart, not that everyone will get their way.

To unpack ‘ethic’ a bit further. Ethic refers to the way we do things here, the manner in which we go about our business. It also has a layer of moral overtone to it - what is the right thing to do, what is the fair thing to do? And It is the combination of these two which contribute to the idea of ‘the ethic of everybody’ - doing the right thing, for the right reasons, for everyone.

Easy to say, harder to do. At a strategic level, school leaders including governors might ask themselves whether their work is underpinned by doing right by everybody. This might sound a statement of the obvious, but it comes into sharp focus when leaders are considering the distribution of funds - do the SEN groups get adequate funding - in most schools they probably do, but are the voices of children on the SEN register heard at a strategic level? Have leaders taken the trouble to ask those pupils what they think about their provision and what could improve it? Have they done similar exercises with other groups of children - the high prior attainers, the children with English a an additional language, the children who have a disabled parent or sibling at home. What is it like being at the school for them? If leaders are going to subscribe to an ethic of excellence, they need to have some checks to see whether their aspiration is tracked through and experienced at ground level.

If we think it is worthwhile looking to be hopeful rather than helpless, then subscribing to the ‘ethic of everybody’ and checking that colleagues and children, indeed everyone, including the school cat, does feel included, lifts the atmosphere, creates energy and possibility.

At the classroom level, what might the ethic of everybody look like? For one thing, the meaning of the words are unpacked. What does ‘ethic’ mean? what does the Greek mean, what might that mean in this classroom? Why is this important? Do we think it is important to include everyone? If we think it is important, what are we going to do to ensure that it happens? Some schools who are working on this, talk about what it feels like to be excluded, left out and ignored. Some primary schools are doing this a part of their circle time or equivalent, and in secondaries that are experimenting with this, they are including it in the tutorial programmes, and evaluating it to see if it makes a difference to the calmness of lessons, the relationships between pupils, and their own self reported indicators of inclusion. There will always be some for whom school is difficult, for a variety of complex reasons, whether from home or from experience, but for the majority it is possible to raise the sense of inclusion, of being part of a school if the ethic of everybody is talked about and attempts made to live up to it.

And what about the children themselves? Can they be encouraged to subscribe to the ‘ethic of everyone’ when there are no adults around, And indeed should they? Well, most children want to be happy and want those close to them to be happy. So by extension shouldn't they make a contribution to the inclusion of others if the want to be included themselves? So it is worth talking about who gets left out, what it was like when we were left out, because everyone has been at some point in their lives and if we see someone being left out, what can we do about it?

The ‘ethic of everybody’ needs to be considered not just in terms of inclusion for all, but a further dimension of contribution. Otherwise we risk doing the ethics rather than expecting all to contribute. I am going to feel powerless if I am done to all the time, I am going to feel patronised and resentful. And eventually I will switch off, so sitting alongside the ‘ethic of everybody’ is that everybody makes a contribution. And that is something beyond that which is a minimum expected of them, but rather what are the unique gifts which I can bring to this school, this classroom, this staffroom. If I’m a part of it I also want to be asked what I think, how I can make things better. Because it is the contributions, the giving of advice and expertise that I become stronger, more confident and yes, hopeful rather than helpless. 

From Hopeful Schools

A cardboard curriculum

‘We’ve been learning about the Jewish people.’

‘Can you tell me more?’

‘Well we’ve learnt about the synagogue. In fact we’ve made one.’

‘What can you tell me about the synagogue?’

‘Well, it’s made out of cardboard.’

There are three things I would like to contribute to the debate on knowledge in religious education: the first is that knowledge facts need to be underpinned by concepts and that these need to be taught explicitly; the second is that knowledge should be taught primarily through sacred texts, iconography, art and music and the third is that knowledge needs to reside in and be protected within the discipline, otherwise we end up with a ‘cardboard’ curriculum.

To take concepts first. My argument is that concepts are ‘holding baskets’ for facts. They help to make sense of multiple pieces of information and this makes them efficient. Concepts are largely, but not exclusively expressions of important ideas within an academic discipline. Our pupils are entitled to know them and to use them. Concepts enable connections to be made across a disparate range of facts; they reside in the long-term memory and can be called on to make sense of new information. Concepts provide the intellectual architecture on to which new knowledge and insights can be pinned. 

Two examples: in Christianity, a fundamental belief is that God became human in the form of Jesus, namely incarnation. It is possible to argue that much Christian belief flows from this concept. I make the case that incarnation should be taught explicitly; that pupils should be expected to use it when talking and writing about Christmas, for example. The most efficient way to do this is to unpack the etymology of incarnation: ‘in’ meaning ‘in’ and ‘carn’ from the Latin for flesh (and from which we get carnation, carnival, chilli con carne). Exploring the etymological routes provides an extra layer of meaning for pupils and in so doing, makes the concept more concrete. And in terms of incarnation being the ‘holding basket’, it means that the nativity accounts, the celebrations at Christmas, for example, are understood in terms of the Christian belief that God became human in the form of baby Jesus at Christmas. This means that all the twinkly stuff, some of it naff, is underpinned by this key understanding of the meaning for Christians. I am arguing that pupils are entitled to know this. There are some who say that etymological work is too demanding for young children and yet there are four year olds who are fluent in dinosaurs and furthermore many of them know that the word dinosaur comes from the Greek for scary lizard. Getting to the roots of words makes children feel clever. A second example from Judaism is the covenant. This, if properly understood, revisited and learnt thoroughly then the obligations on the Jewish community to keep the mitzvoth, for example, are understood in terms of meeting this sacred obligation.

My second argument is that our primary sources of knowledge in the classroom should be sacred texts, artefacts, music and art. Knowledge needs to be located within the realm of the subject, not gobbetised and sanitised via a second rate worksheet. My experience is that pupils rise to the occasion, that they can cope with demanding stuff and are crying out for authentic knowledge. It makes them feel clever.

The final strand of my argument is that it is important to maintain a clear distinction between inter-disciplinary RE and cross-curricular RE. Inter-disciplinary keeps the integrity of subject specific knowledge in tact. Thus, for example, a unit on Christian pilgrimage might draw on the Canterbury Tales in English and Thomas a Becket in history, and a visit to Canterbury Cathedral in order to enlarge on pilgrimage, not be subsumed by the other subjects. Cross-curricular work, by contrast, mostly ends in a muddle. When a theme such as water, is agreed across a number of subjects it can degrade the knowledge within an individual discipline. By the time it ends up in the RE classroom it becomes Jesus walking on water. Or a piece of cardboard. 

If we don’t hold steady on the knowledge and the integrity of the discipline, then we end up in a muddle. And so do our pupils.

I think we can do better than that.

Should it stay or should it go?

We find it hard to throw things away: to trim, to prune back to the essential. There are many reasons for this. Sometimes we just don’t notice how things have piled up, we just get used to there being more and more; sometimes we hang on to stuff in case it comes in useful and sometimes it can all feel too much to try and sort out what’s still needed from what can be thrown away.

However, we cannot just keep adding more and more to our work schedules, otherwise we will go under. But it takes bravery and discipline to ask ourselves, do we really need this? What would happen if we got rid of it? And yet if we want to create the time and space to focus on the important work, we need to roll up our sleeves and do some metaphorical cleaning out of the attics.

Our guiding principle for this work might be William Morris, who said that we should have nothing in our homes unless we know it to be useful or believe to be beautiful: when we place this idea within our work context we might ask ourselves whether the systems and the resources and the materials we are working with, really are useful? And as for beauty: this does not mean that we decorate our worksheets with sparkly butterflies, but instead ask ourselves whether they are fit for purpose: whether they are really clear and carefully designed to make sure that pupils can really learn from them.

The idea of making the case for less has a long pedigree in academic and management literature. Vilfredo Pareto, Professor of Political Economy at Lausanne discovered and described the '80:20' effect, now known as the Pareto Principle. Pareto’s work was in analysing wealth and income distribution trends in nineteenth-century England and he discovered that broadly 20 percent of the people owned 80 percent of the wealth. This insight was developed later by others, such as Joseph Juran, the quality improvement expert who developed ‘Total Quality Management’. Juran refined and developed Pareto's theories to make them applicable in business and management. Juran realised that organisations and people tend to expand activities, materials, and stuff of all sorts, over time, and all of this 'stuff' becomes expensive and cumbersome to keep. He took the Pareto Principle – the top 20% of any country’s population accounts for 80% of its economy – and translated it into business. He developed the Juran Trilogy that addressed the planning, control and improvement of quality in products. While Juran’s focus was on wasteful processes in manufacturing, the principles provide insights into how we go about our work in education. We might ask ourselves a question such as: ‘What is the 20% of our work which has 80% of the impact?’ Or ‘What is the impact of the work we do outside the classroom? Does all of it have real impact? How do we know?’

The final organisational guru for this section is Marie Kondo. This might be surprising as she is known for her advice on decluttering our homes. However, as with Pareto and Juran, there are some insights that might be applied to our work. Kondo says ‘My criterion for deciding to keep an item is that we should feel a thrill of joy when we touch it.’ Now ‘joy’ might not be the first thing that comes to mind when we are thinking about our work and the things we use to get that work done. However, if we unpick it, we might ask ourselves questions such as: ‘Is this the most professional way to go about this? Do I feel a deep sense of satisfaction with these power points and resources that I am offering my pupils? Are they the best and how do I know?’ And when we are able to answer yes to these, then we tap into a professional pride, which on Kondo’s terms might be called joy.

She has some interesting things to say about why so many of us allow ourselves to be surrounded by disorder. She argues that visible mess helps distract us from the true source of the disorder - in other words, we might have so much paperwork to complete that we forget to ask ourselves why we are doing this and who it is for. She goes on to say that there are usually two reason why we are reluctant to let something go: an attachment to the past or a fear for the future. And translated into a school context, this might be ‘Well we have always done it this way’ or ‘What will happen if we change our policy from marking every piece of work to whole class marking?’ The prospect facing up to the fact that we might need to do things differently and this can take many of us out of our comfort zones.

We need a radical approach to ‘spring cleaning’ many of the things we do in education. This covers taking a close look at the number of meetings we have, to the resources we source and develop and to the way we go about teaching. We cannot afford to hang on to things that no longer serve our purpose. As Kondo says about our homes: ‘Can you truthfully say that you treasure something buried so deeply in a closet or drawer that you have forgotten its existence? If things had feelings, they would certainly not be happy. Free them from the prison to which you have relegated them. Help them leave that deserted isle to which you have exiled them.’

When we release ourselves from some of the things that are getting in the way of cracking on with our best work, work which has impact, it is liberating.