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Guest Author: Julian Williams

Julian Williams is Senior Vice Principal for Quality of Education at an all-through school in East London. www.linkedin.com/in/julian-williams-head-of-secondary-senior-vice-principal

Introduction: Shifting Mindsets in an All-Through School

After stepping into leadership across both the primary and secondary phases, I realised how much secondary schools can learn, not just about curriculum, but about culture and consistency too. The ‘primary mindset’ has reshaped how I view strategy, pedagogy, and what really makes learning stick.

Over the past four years, we’ve been developing a genuinely all-through curriculum, from EYFS to Key Stage 5. It’s been a long-term process of aligning leadership, sequencing knowledge, and challenging long held assumptions about how learning is designed and delivered. Along the way, we’ve built a shared curriculum language, redefined expectations around progression, and had to confront difficult questions around professional agency and curriculum ownership.

At the heart of this journey were three key decisions:

• Creating all-through leadership roles (Directors of Science and Maths, and a Strategic Lead for Reading) to ensure subject leadership from EYFS to KS5.
• Mapping curriculum start and end points from the early years onward, identifying the core knowledge and concepts that must be taught and retained at each stage.
• Developing subject specific pedagogical approaches and threshold concepts across phases to ensure coherence in how we teach, not just what we teach.

This article is not a blueprint or finished model. It is a reflection on our journey so far: what we’ve learned, what’s worked, and what we’re still working through.

Curriculum: Progression with Purpose

One of the most important insights from the primary phase is that curriculum isn’t just a sequence of topics; it’s a deliberate architecture. In primary, this is often deeply embedded: teachers understand the importance of core knowledge, repetition, and building secure foundations. Planning starts with end goals and works backwards.

In contrast, secondary curriculum design has sometimes prioritised coverage over coherence, especially in knowledge rich models that unintentionally compress complex ideas into narrow timeframes. We’ve shifted toward a model that takes primary style depth seriously, where “why now?”, “what next?” and “what came before?” are central planning questions.

This shift aligns closely with the (old) Ofsted EIF’s emphasis on ambitious, coherently planned and sequenced curricula. But while external validation is welcome (our approach was recognised during inspection and cited in feedback) it is not the driving force behind our work. Ofsted can only ever provide a snapshot; the real validation lies in pupil progress, teacher clarity, and long-term curriculum impact.

Case Study: Science from EYFS to KS3

Our science curriculum has been the clearest expression of this thinking. We began by reviewing primary provision and then developed a cross-phase strategy that now runs from EYFS to Year 9.

Some of the core features include:

• A precise and consistent scientific vocabulary across all key stages
• A structured model for working and thinking scientifically, with shared pedagogical routines
• Centralised progression maps that identify threshold concepts and tackle common misconceptions
• A mastery-based approach at KS3 that mirrors the clarity and depth of primary, with medium term plans created centrally

This work led to the award of the Primary Science Quality Mark, but more importantly, it has built much stronger subject knowledge leadership and teacher confidence, particularly in the primary phase. For some teachers, seeing how their lessons link to later GCSE content has been transformational. For secondary colleagues, the realisation that their starting point is often a re-teach of primary content has sharpened their sequencing and assessment planning. As Mary Myatt puts it,

“Curriculum is not content to be got through. It’s content to be lived in.”

This has been a guiding principle for us; ensuring that science is not just covered but truly understood.

Culture and Consistency: Embedding Shared Practice

One of the most valuable characteristics of strong primary settings is their cultural consistency. Routines, behaviours, and pedagogical habits are not left to chance; they’re embedded in the school day. Transitions, expectations, modelling, questioning, and pastoral care all form part of an integrated cultural curriculum.

In secondary, fragmentation across departments can make this kind of coherence harder to achieve. Even where curriculum intent is strong, variability in implementation often undermines the pupil experience. The primary phase reminds us that pastoral care is curriculum, and that consistency doesn’t mean conformity; it means clarity, purpose, and shared language.

Case Study: Reading Comprehension, From Fragmentation to Focus

Reading is a clear example. After years of exploring various models, we worked closely with school improvement partners to develop a structured, consistent approach to comprehension in primary. Each week follows a prescriptive sequence:

• Explicit teaching of vocabulary
• Lessons focused on retrieval, summarising, predicting, and inference
• A final session combining these skills in mixed comprehension

We use pre-selected texts and extracts to ensure quality and progression. Teachers now spend less time planning from scratch and more time refining delivery. The impact has been significant: reading outcomes and progress have risen consistently over two years, and our approach was praised by Ofsted for its clarity and focus.

This model is also grounded in research: the EEF’s “Improving Literacy in Key Stage 2” report highlights the value of structured comprehension instruction, alongside explicit vocabulary teaching and guided practice.

However, KS3 didn’t reflect the same improvements. Pupils entered with stronger skills, but these weren’t yet matched by secondary structures. We’ve since introduced an additional reading comprehension lesson to the English timetable and are now embedding more explicit comprehension teaching across subjects.

Yet we’re also alert to the risk: structure can flatten joy. Some colleagues worry that this model reduces reading to a routine. As always, we’re seeking the balance between rigour and enjoyment, prescription and inspiration.

Consistency vs Agency: A Leadership Dilemma

Perhaps the most difficult leadership challenge in all of this has been navigating the line between consistency and teacher agency. Structured approaches have delivered visible improvement; but they can also risk deskilling teachers, particularly newer staff. Over recent years, we’ve observed that some early career teachers lack confidence in designing sequences or adapting lessons to meet need. COVID, ITT changes, and workload pressures have all contributed.

This isn’t about reverting to planning everything from scratch. It’s about asking: are we overcompensating with structure at the expense of professional growth? As Tom Sherrington has argued, the best curriculum models offer “flex within a frame.” Our next challenge is to ensure the curriculum builds not just pupil progress, but professional fluency too.

What Primary Can Learn from Secondary

While this reflection has focused on what secondary leaders can learn from primary, the learning goes both ways. In our setting, subject depth and clarity around curricular end points (particularly in science and humanities) have been areas where secondary colleagues have supported their primary peers.

Understanding how concepts develop at GCSE and A level has helped shape planning in earlier years. Primary teachers in our all- through setting now have far greater insight into the disciplinary thinking expected later in a pupil’s journey. This is difficult to replicate outside of an all-through context; but it’s a compelling argument for better cross-phase subject collaboration, even between separate schools.

Conclusion: Beyond the Phase Divide

Ultimately, this isn’t about primary versus secondary. It’s about recognising that the strongest curriculum thinking happens when we move past phase silos and start

designing from the ground up, with progression, pedagogy, and professional respect woven through every decision.

For secondary leaders, the real learning from primary isn’t just structural. It’s cultural. It’s about rhythm, clarity, modelling, and shared purpose. When we lead through the lens of the all-through, we’re forced to confront gaps we’ve too often ignored, and to build something more coherent in their place.

For leaders working across phases, the challenge isn’t complexity; it’s coherence.

We’re not the finished article. This reflection is just a snapshot of our learning so far: there is much still to improve, refine and rethink. But what’s clear is this: building an all-through curriculum has made us more thoughtful, more ambitious, and more connected to the fundamental question behind every lesson we teach: what are we trying to build, long term, and for whom?