There are far too many distractions from the sustained hard work needed to deliver and maintain effective PD programmes that lead to improved teaching and improved outcomes. I worry that just as we’re making progress, more distractions are coming.

It seems so obvious to me visiting schools – everywhere – that there’s just so much mileage in improving everyday responsive teaching practice so that every student is engaged, thinking, talking, consolidating, making meaning, achieving a high success rate. There is also mileage in deepening teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge – knowing which examples to use, how to build secure schema, making learning concrete, weaving together the abstract ideas, language and a rich array of experiences. And in many settings there is mileage in supporting teachers and students to enact more effective routines for learning, with higher expectations for lesson engagement, work rate, study habits etc .. And already that is a very full agenda. It’s enough!!

Significantly, this is where true equity and inclusion reside: strong instructional teaching, a rich curriculum and excellent conditions for learning.. so that all students have secure knowledge and experience success. So, given how much work this represents and how much further there is to go in many if not most schools, why would we change course or add in anything else? To me there is no separate inclusion equity and empowerment agenda outside this of real substance … The problem is that improving things takes years. It’s hard. Improving these core agendas requires perseverance, persistence .. fuelled by strong developmental PD that also takes time to get right. When things inevitably feel hard going people often want to do something else. I liken it to finding it hard going when climbing a mountain. Instead of keeping going to the summit, people start looking for ways around it or thinking of a different mountain. Instead of persevering, the easier route is to wonder ‘maybe it’s just the wrong mountain!?’.

But this is a huge mistake. When ministers and others are talking about grit or competencies or oracy, creativity, trauma, SEND or supporting any number of marginalised groups – as if this is a separate additional agenda, my heart sinks . Because the pegadogy-curriculum-behaviour agenda we already have is already the answer to these issues. Same for wellbeing. If we put every ounce of effort into improving the quality of the daily classroom experience of every child we’d make success for all a reality not a slogan. We’re making good progress but already it feels that unless leaders resist – instead of pushing forward and capitalising on recent gains, we’ll be reverting to the mush of 15-20 yrs ago where people actually fell for the ludicrous emperor’s new clothes of Building Learning Power, resilience and all that ..

It’s not that many other agendas don’t have value – they do – but you can’t just layer them onto core practices that still have so much scope for improvement. Deeper knowledge, richer experience, better behaviour.. for all; keep firmly focused on that and the rest follows. Sadly, keep going, keep working on it, keep doing the hard yards, deepen don’t add – are not political messages anyone wants to give.

The agenda we have is right .. I see so many schools and FE colleges making great strides .. but we just need to be the allowed time, the space and the resources to see it through.

End.

(First posted June 6 as a thread on X.)

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