Over recent months I have found myself reflecting on two educational conversations. Here in Australia, much of what I have been reading has focused on implementation, the science of learning and strengthening curriculum and teaching. At the same time, many of the educational voices I continue to follow in England have been writing about belonging, relationships and the broader purpose of education. Although these conversations have different emphases, I have found myself thinking that they are much more closely connected than they sometimes appear. Strong schools do not separate purpose from practice because each depends upon the other.

My experience of leading schools has continually reinforced this belief. I have seen the difference that a deeper understanding of how children learn can make to children’s outcomes. Carefully sequenced curricula, explicit teaching, retrieval practice and deliberate practice help pupils remember more, develop greater confidence and achieve more over time. Understanding learning has transformed educational practice because it helps teachers make better decisions about what they teach, when they teach it and how they help learning endure.

Leading a multi-academy trust made up predominantly of Church of England schools reinforced something equally important. Every Church school is shaped by a theologically rooted Christian vision that explains who it exists to serve and the contribution it hopes to make to its community. Through the Statutory Inspection of Anglican and Methodist Schools (SIAMS), schools are expected to demonstrate how that vision influences leadership, curriculum, relationships and everyday decision-making. Purpose is not simply articulated; it is expected to be lived.

Working within that context also meant regularly preparing for both Ofsted and SIAMS inspections, often within relatively short periods of one another. I think those two inspection frameworks complemented each other well. Ofsted focused our attention on the quality of education and the extent to which children were learning successfully. SIAMS challenged us to demonstrate how the school’s vision shaped every aspect of school life and enabled every child and adult to flourish. We did not have the option of concentrating on one while neglecting the other, and I believe our schools were stronger because of it.

The schools that achieved the greatest and most sustainable improvements knew why they existed and worked relentlessly to ensure that curriculum, teaching, assessment, relationships and leadership reflected that purpose. Understanding how children learn explained how to improve learning. Educational purpose explained why that learning mattered. The science of learning was not the purpose of our work; it was one of the most powerful ways of realising it.

Without a clear educational purpose, implementation can become an exercise in consistency, compliance and technical precision. Without a deep understanding of how children learn, even the strongest vision struggles to improve children’s outcomes. The schools that make the greatest difference recognise that both deserve the same degree of intellectual rigour, leadership attention and continual refinement.

How strong schools hold purpose and practice together

From my experience, successful schools share a small number of characteristics that consistently hold educational purpose and evidence-informed practice together. In particular, they:

• Are clear about why they exist. They define the knowledge, understanding, character and judgement they want every young person to develop, and that purpose informs strategic decisions throughout the organisation.

• Build a curriculum that reflects that purpose. They carefully select, sequence and revisit the knowledge that matters most so that learning develops coherently over time.

• Teach in ways that make learning last. They draw upon the best available evidence about learning so that important knowledge is understood, remembered and applied with confidence.

• Develop teachers as expert professionals. They invest in curriculum expertise, professional judgement and collaborative improvement because excellent teaching is continually developed.

• Create cultures where belonging enables learning. High expectations, strong relationships and a shared sense of purpose help every child feel known, valued and able to succeed.

• Use assessment to strengthen learning. Assessment identifies misconceptions, informs teaching and evaluates whether the curriculum is achieving its intended purpose.

• Design systems that make excellence reliable. Leadership, professional learning, curriculum, assessment and organisational routines work together so that every child consistently experiences high-quality education.

School leaders will always have immediate priorities demanding their attention. That is simply the reality of leadership. Even so, I think it is worth returning regularly to two ideas that sit beneath every improvement decision. Why does this school exist? How do children learn most successfully?

The first provides direction. The second helps us realise it. When schools remain disciplined in both, they are far more likely to improve outcomes that endure, strengthen belonging and make a lasting contribution to the communities they serve.

Share

Get in touch - lois@reliable-excellence.com

References

• Church of England Education Office. (2023). The Statutory Inspection of Anglican and Methodist Schools (SIAMS): Evaluation Schedule. Church House Publishing.

• Education Endowment Foundation. (2021). Cognitive science approaches in the classroom: A review of the evidence. Education Endowment Foundation.

• Ofsted. (2023). School inspection handbook. Ofsted.

• Sweller, J., Ayres, P., & Kalyuga, S. (2011). Cognitive load theory. Springer.

Understanding how learning becomes secure requires us to look beyond individual lessons and consider what happens over time. Knowledge does not become durable simply because it has been explained clearly once or practised successfully during a single lesson. Children build secure understanding by returning to important ideas, thinking about them again in different contexts, refining their understanding through feedback and connecting new learning with what they already know. Every successful opportunity to revisit learning strengthens the likelihood that knowledge will remain available when pupils need it months or even years later. When schools begin to think about learning in this way, the focus shifts from delivering content efficiently towards designing experiences that allow important knowledge to become established over time.

Although deliberate practice has become a familiar phrase within education, it is often used to describe a collection of classroom strategies rather than the broader principle from which it originated. Retrieval quizzes, repeated exercises, fluency activities and rehearsal are all valuable approaches, yet none captures the complete picture on its own. Deliberate practice is better understood as the intentional design of repeated opportunities for pupils to think carefully about important knowledge, receive meaningful feedback and strengthen their understanding across an extended period of time. This way of thinking places the emphasis on how learning develops rather than on any single teaching technique.

The original concept of deliberate practice emerged through the work of psychologist Anders Ericsson, whose research explored how expertise developed across disciplines including music, sport, medicine and chess (Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer, 1993). His research demonstrated that expert performance was associated with purposeful practice directed towards specific aspects of performance, accompanied by feedback and sustained over long periods. Although schools are not often preparing concert pianists or elite athletes, the underlying principle transfers well into education. Children do not become confident readers, writers, mathematicians or scientists because they encounter important knowledge once. Their understanding grows stronger when schools provide repeated opportunities to revisit, refine and extend that learning over time.

Viewing deliberate practice through this lens changes the way we interpret classroom activity. A retrieval quiz may provide an excellent opportunity to strengthen learning, but so might a carefully structured discussion, a guided writing lesson, a mathematical explanation, a science investigation or a piece of independent practice. The activity itself is not what determines whether deliberate practice is taking place. What deserves attention is whether pupils are returning to significant knowledge, thinking carefully about it, receiving feedback and using that feedback to improve their understanding. The same principle can be found across every phase of education and every curriculum subject because it is concerned with how learning develops rather than with the particular method chosen by the teacher.

Seeing deliberate practice as a principle rather than a classroom technique also changes where responsibility sits within a school. Individual teachers play an essential role in creating high-quality learning experiences, but no teacher can secure long-term learning through isolated lessons alone. Whether pupils revisit important vocabulary, mathematical procedures, historical concepts or scientific ideas depends upon decisions that reach far beyond one classroom. Curriculum planning determines what knowledge is revisited. Assessment systems identify what needs further attention. Professional development shapes teachers’ understanding of how learning develops. Leadership decisions influence how much curriculum time is protected for revisiting essential knowledge. When these elements work together, pupils encounter coherent opportunities to strengthen learning throughout their time in school rather than relying upon the preferences or habits of individual teachers.

This wider perspective also has implications for education systems as a whole. Curriculum frameworks often describe what pupils should learn, while assessment arrangements measure what they can demonstrate at particular points in time. Neither automatically guarantees that sufficient opportunities exist for important learning to become secure. Schools frequently feel pressure to move rapidly through extensive curriculum content, even when pupils would benefit from spending longer revisiting foundational knowledge. Education systems that genuinely value deep understanding create space for schools to strengthen learning over time rather than rewarding coverage alone. Ambitious curricula are realised through what pupils continue to remember and apply long after teaching has taken place.

Schools seeking to design learning that endures are likely to make deliberate decisions across several aspects of their work rather than introducing another classroom initiative. These decisions often include:

• Identifying the knowledge, vocabulary, concepts and procedures that provide the strongest foundations for future learning and ensuring they receive sustained attention across multiple year groups.

• Designing curriculum sequences that deliberately revisit significant learning across weeks, terms and years instead of treating topics as completed once teaching has finished.

• Using assessment to identify which aspects of learning require further strengthening rather than simply recording whether pupils answered correctly on one occasion.

• Providing regular opportunities for pupils to improve their work following feedback so that advice leads directly to another attempt.

• Developing teachers’ understanding of memory, learning and curriculum progression through sustained professional development rather than isolated training events.

• Protecting curriculum time for thoughtful review and practice instead of allowing retrieval opportunities to disappear whenever the timetable becomes pressured.

• Monitoring whether deliberate practice is implemented consistently across subjects and year groups so that every pupil benefits from the same high expectations.

Weekly spelling tests provide a familiar illustration of why this broader approach is valuable. Many pupils successfully learn a list of words, perform well in a Friday test and appear to have mastered the required spelling pattern. Several weeks later, those same words often begin to reappear incorrectly in independent writing. The assessment captured performance at one point in time, but it did not necessarily strengthen long-term learning. A school designed around deliberate practice treats the spelling test as one point within a much longer sequence. Previously taught spelling patterns return through reading, writing, retrieval, editing and purposeful application over many weeks so that pupils continue strengthening their understanding well beyond the original lesson.

Several complementary areas of cognitive science help explain why this approach has such a positive influence on learning. Research into retrieval practice demonstrates that actively recalling previously learned information strengthens long-term retention more effectively than simply reviewing notes (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). Studies of spaced practice show that revisiting learning over extended periods produces stronger retention than completing all practice together (Cepeda et al., 2006). Cognitive load theory explains that secure knowledge places fewer demands on working memory, allowing pupils to devote greater attention to more complex thinking (Sweller, 1988). Although these fields developed independently, they all point towards the same conclusion: pupils learn more successfully when important knowledge is revisited thoughtfully over time.

Discussions about school improvement understandably devote significant attention to improving the quality of teaching because excellent teaching remains indispensable. At the same time, schools that wish pupils to retain, connect and apply their learning must also consider how that learning is strengthened after it has first been introduced. Deliberate practice offers a useful way of thinking about curriculum, assessment, professional development and leadership because it directs attention towards the experiences pupils have across months and years rather than within isolated lessons. Designing learning that lasts is ultimately an organisational responsibility. When schools intentionally create repeated opportunities for pupils to revisit important knowledge, refine their understanding and build lasting confidence, they give far more children the opportunity to experience lasting success in education.

Share

References

• Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354–380. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354

• Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363–406. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.100.3.363

• Roediger, H. L., III, & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x

• Rosenshine, B. (2012). Principles of instruction: Research-based strategies that all teachers should know. American Educator, 36(1), 12–19, 39.

• Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12(2), 257–285. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog1202_4

Throughout my career in education, I have seen how much thought and care leaders put into improving outcomes for children. Schools are constantly exploring approaches that might strengthen teaching and learning. The difficulty is that even strong ideas require more than simply introducing them; they need to be understood within the context of the school, connected to a clear purpose and supported by the conditions that allow them to succeed.

We have seen this with many approaches in education. Systematic phonics, for example, has strong evidence behind it, but the introduction of a programme alone does not improve reading outcomes. The impact comes from teachers understanding the approach, receiving appropriate support, using assessment effectively and adapting their practice in response to pupils. Similarly, playbooks can help schools clarify effective practice, but a document itself does not change classroom teaching. Improvement comes through the professional conversations, modelling, coaching and feedback that help people understand and embed that practice.

Artificial intelligence is likely to follow the same pattern. Its potential is significant, but the value it creates will depend on the decisions schools make around its use. Technology can support schools in many ways, from reducing unnecessary administrative workload to helping teachers and leaders use their time more effectively. However, the technology itself is not what creates improvement. The important work is deciding where it can genuinely add value and where human expertise remains essential.

This is why AI should be approached in the same way as any other school improvement strategy. The strongest schools understand their priorities, identify areas for improvement and consider whether a proposed approach will help them move closer to their goals. They are willing to explore new ideas, but they also evaluate carefully whether those ideas are improving outcomes for children.

A sensible response for school leaders

For leaders considering how to respond to AI, the starting point is not to ignore it or rush towards it. It is to apply the same disciplined thinking that supports effective school improvement: understand your context, identify the problem(s) you are trying to solve and evaluate whether a change is making a meaningful difference.

1. Know your school before introducing new solutions

Before exploring possible uses of AI, leaders need a clear understanding of their current reality. What is working well? Where are the greatest opportunities for improvement? What are teachers and pupils already doing? Where are people spending time on tasks that could be improved?

This allows schools to move beyond simply asking, “What can AI do?” and towards a more useful question:

“What problems are we trying to solve, and where might AI help us?”

A school that understands its priorities is much more likely to identify meaningful uses of AI than a school that begins with the technology itself.

2. Strengthen professional judgement across the organisation

As information becomes easier to generate, professional judgement becomes even more important. Teachers and leaders need to evaluate whether information is accurate, appropriate and useful, and whether a particular tool or approach will genuinely improve learning.

Sustainable improvement depends on people understanding the purpose behind decisions and making thoughtful choices aligned with the school’s aims. There are times when leaders need to provide greater direction, particularly when practice is inconsistent or outcomes are not where they need to be. However, long-term success depends on developing the expertise of the people within the organisation.

This is why professional learning, instructional coaching and meaningful feedback remain central. The aim is not simply to implement approaches consistently; it is to build the understanding needed to improve practice over time.

3. Continue building pupils’ capacity to think and judge

One of the understandable concerns around AI is whether schools need to introduce new curriculum content to prepare children for a future shaped by technology. However, predicting exactly what knowledge and skills pupils will need in the future is difficult. A more useful starting point is to return to what we already know about learning.

We know that children need secure knowledge in order to think critically, evaluate information and make sound judgements. These capabilities are becoming increasingly important in an AI-enabled world, where pupils will encounter vast amounts of information and will need to decide what is accurate, useful and trustworthy.

This reinforces an important principle about learning: knowledge and skills are deeply connected. Children cannot evaluate ideas they do not understand or make informed judgements without knowledge to draw upon. Knowledge provides the foundation that allows critical thinking, reasoning and problem solving to develop.

Many of these opportunities already exist within a strong curriculum. For example, when pupils evaluate the reliability of a historical source, test a scientific explanation, justify a mathematical method or analyse the effectiveness of a persuasive text, they are developing the judgement they will need to navigate a world where information can increasingly be generated by technology.

The implication for schools is not necessarily that we need to add more content. Instead, we should be increasingly intentional about the opportunities already within our curriculum to build the knowledge that enables thoughtful judgement. By continuing to develop pupils’ understanding of the world, we place them in a stronger position to evaluate information, use technology wisely and respond confidently to future changes.

4. Experiment carefully and evaluate impact

Schools cannot wait for every question about AI to be answered before engaging with it, but neither should they adopt tools without careful consideration.

The most effective organisations create opportunities to explore, test and learn. They begin with a clear purpose, gather feedback from those involved and evaluate whether a change is producing the intended benefits. Small-scale experimentation can help schools understand where AI is genuinely useful while also identifying potential risks.

Ultimately, the question is whether a particular use of AI helps schools provide better learning experiences for children.

Artificial intelligence may change aspects of education, but it does not change the fundamental work of schools. The schools that use it well will be those that continue to focus on what has always mattered: understanding their purpose, developing expertise, evaluating evidence and improving practice.

In moments of rapid change, it becomes even more important to return to the question that guides every decision we make in education:

How do we ensure that every child experiences high-quality learning, every day?

Share

Get in touch - lois@reliable-excellence.com

References

• Christodoulou, D. (2014). Seven Myths About Education. Routledge.

• Education Endowment Foundation. (2024). Implementation guidance report. Education Endowment Foundation. https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/guidance-reports/implementation

• Hattie, J. (2023). Visible Learning: The Sequel. Routledge.

• Schwartz, R., Ferguson, R., D’Souza, S., & Wilkins, A. (2024). Centennials: The 12 Habits of Great, Enduring Organisations. Wiley.

For many school leaders, that vision is an attractive one. The more difficult question is how to build it. Joyful rigour is built over time, particularly in schools where teaching, culture or systems require strengthening. Developing expertise takes time, yet children only experience each year at school once. They should not have to wait for the school we are trying to build before experiencing the school they deserve.

The starting point is recognising that joyful rigour is not created by focusing on one priority at the expense of the other. It can be tempting, particularly when standards need to rise, to concentrate every ounce of energy on strengthening instruction with the intention of returning to the joyful parts of school later. Equally, it can be tempting to protect enjoyable experiences while avoiding the disciplined work required to improve teaching. Neither approach leads to joyful rigour. Leadership begins by demonstrating that both matter equally from the very beginning.

Fortunately, we know far more about how to build rigorous teaching than we once did. Research into cognitive science has strengthened professional understanding of curriculum design, explicit instruction, retrieval practice, cognitive load and assessment. It has also deepened our understanding of how adults develop expertise. Learning something new places demands on working memory, while new habits require deliberate practice, timely feedback and repeated opportunities to become automatic. Knowing what excellent teaching looks like is only the starting point. Instructional coaching, carefully designed professional development and disciplined implementation provide teachers with opportunities to practise, refine and embed those habits until they become increasingly fluent.

Teaching is a complex profession, and learning to teach exceptionally well requires both time and practice. When teachers are developing new instructional habits, much of their attention is naturally devoted to recalling explanations, modelling accurately, checking understanding and making deliberate instructional decisions. This is not a weakness. It is simply how learning works. Effective coaching accelerates that journey, but it cannot remove it entirely. As expertise develops, instructional habits become increasingly automatic, releasing greater capacity to notice children’s thinking, respond instinctively to misconceptions and allow warmth, humour and personality to become more visible within the lesson. Rigorous teaching does not become joyful because expectations have been lowered. It becomes joyful because expertise creates the freedom to combine ambitious learning with genuine human connection.

Children, however, should not have to wait for that process to unfold before they experience joy at school. This is why protecting joy deserves the same deliberate attention as strengthening teaching. Even schools facing the greatest challenges usually contain examples of the culture they want to create. They may already have a much-loved learning celebration, a successful production, a community fundraiser, an enrichment visit, sporting success, artwork displayed with pride or trusted adults who help children feel known and valued every day. Leaders should notice those moments, curate the strongest examples, protect them and give them a platform. Where they do not yet exist, schools should intentionally establish a small number of meaningful traditions that can be sustained well. The goal is not to fill the calendar with events. It is to ensure children continue to experience belonging, enjoyment and connection while instructional expertise develops.

At first, this can feel like two separate priorities. Schools are deliberately strengthening teaching while deliberately protecting the experiences that make childhood memorable. That is not a compromise. It reflects the reality that children deserve both from the moment they arrive.

Over time, those two strands begin to merge. As teachers become increasingly fluent in the habits of rigorous instruction, they naturally begin to weave joy more consistently into everyday learning. They have greater capacity to notice the moments worth celebrating, respond with humour, adapt to children’s thinking and create lessons that are intellectually demanding as well as deeply engaging. Joy gradually becomes less dependent on special events because it is increasingly present within the daily experience of the classroom. Productions, concerts and enrichment opportunities still matter, but they are complemented by classrooms where children experience the satisfaction of thinking hard, succeeding and feeling connected to the adults who teach them.

This is how joyful rigour is built. It is not achieved by postponing joy until standards improve, and it is not achieved by sacrificing academic ambition in the name of children’s happiness. It develops when leaders invest in both with equal conviction: creating the conditions for teachers to master the craft of teaching while protecting the experiences that make children love coming to school. Over time, those two strands become increasingly intertwined until joyful rigour is no longer an aspiration but the lived experience of the school.

Creating joyful rigour means recognising that excellence develops over time, while childhood does not. Leadership is about ensuring children experience belonging, enjoyment and ambitious learning today, while patiently helping teachers develop the expertise that allows those qualities to become increasingly intertwined across every classroom. If our ambition is to ensure every child experiences high-quality learning, every day, joyful rigour is not something we introduce once everything else is in place. It is the standard we should work towards from the very beginning.

Share

References

• Bambrick-Santoyo, P. (2018). Leverage Leadership 2.0: A Practical Guide to Building Exceptional Schools. Jossey-Bass.

• Lemov, D. (2021). Teach Like a Champion 3.0. Jossey-Bass.

• Rosenshine, B. (2012). Principles of Instruction: Research-Based Strategies That All Teachers Should Know. American Educator, 36(1), 12–19, 39.

• Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2020). Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation from a Self-Determination Theory Perspective: Definitions, Theory, Practices, and Future Directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 61, 101860.

How do we ensure every child experiences high-quality learning, every day? It is a question that sits behind curriculum design, assessment, behaviour, professional learning and school improvement. Every decision made by leaders and teachers ultimately succeeds or fails through its influence on learning. As our understanding of learning has developed, so too has our understanding of what effective teaching looks like. One of the clearest examples is the growing emphasis on adaptive teaching. Increasingly, it has become the language of evidence-informed practice because it reflects what we know about how children learn and how teachers can help more pupils succeed within an ambitious curriculum.

Every classroom presents teachers with pupils who arrive with different experiences, different levels of prior knowledge and different misconceptions. Some grasp new ideas quickly, while others require further explanation, additional practice or carefully chosen support before learning becomes secure. These differences are entirely normal. They are not problems to eliminate but characteristics of every class that teachers must understand if learning is to flourish.

Responding to those differences has always been part of good teaching. What has changed is our understanding of how that responsiveness should look in practice. As research into learning has expanded, greater attention has been given to the decisions teachers make while teaching rather than simply the activities pupils complete. Adaptive teaching reflects this change in professional thinking. The focus has shifted from planning different activities to making responsive instructional decisions that help more pupils succeed within the same ambitious curriculum.

A shared destination

Every lesson begins with a decision about what pupils should learn. Before resources are produced, examples selected or explanations prepared, teachers identify the knowledge, understanding or skill that pupils should secure. That intended outcome provides direction for every decision that follows. Adaptive teaching does not alter the destination. It influences how teachers help pupils reach it.

This principle represents an important shift in professional thinking. For many years, differentiation was often interpreted as creating different activities for different groups of pupils. In some classrooms this evolved into simplified tasks for those who were struggling and more demanding work for those who appeared ready to move ahead. Although these approaches were usually motivated by a desire to support learners, they sometimes reduced access to the very knowledge that pupils most needed to acquire.

Adaptive teaching begins from a different assumption. Every pupil is entitled to an ambitious curriculum because powerful knowledge should not depend upon how quickly a child learns. The learning goal remains shared across the class. Variation lies in the teaching, the support and the opportunities pupils receive to secure that learning.

Strong teaching creates the conditions for adaptation

Discussion about adaptive teaching can sometimes create the impression that responsiveness begins when teachers notice pupils struggling. In reality, adaptation begins much earlier than that. Its quality depends almost entirely upon the quality of the instruction that comes before it.

Clear explanations, carefully chosen examples, expert modelling and guided practice provide pupils with the knowledge they need to begin thinking successfully about new ideas. They also provide teachers with the first opportunity to observe how learning is developing. Without secure initial instruction, there is very little useful evidence upon which adaptation can be based.

This reflects what cognitive science tells us about learning. New knowledge is constructed by connecting new information to existing knowledge held in long-term memory. That process is strengthened through retrieval, practice and feedback. Effective teaching makes these connections easier to establish by reducing unnecessary cognitive load and directing pupils’ attention towards the ideas that are most important. Adaptive teaching builds upon these foundations; it does not replace them.

Learning leaves clues

One of the most distinctive features of expert teaching is the ability to notice learning while it is happening. Every classroom interaction offers clues about pupils’ thinking. A hesitant response, an unexpected misconception, a confident explanation or an error in a worked example all reveal something about what pupils currently understand.

This evidence is gathered continuously. It is collected through questioning, observation, discussion and pupils’ written work. Unlike formal assessment, which often looks back at what has been learned, responsive assessment allows teachers to shape learning while it is still taking place. Small misunderstandings can be addressed before they become embedded, while secure understanding can be extended before pupils lose momentum.

Perhaps one of the most underestimated aspects of adaptive teaching is the professional expertise required to interpret these clues accurately. Knowing that a pupil has answered incorrectly is relatively straightforward. Understanding why they answered incorrectly, and deciding what should happen next, demands secure subject knowledge, pedagogical expertise and a deep understanding of how learning develops.

Small decisions, significant consequences

Much of adaptive teaching consists of decisions that appear almost invisible to anyone watching a lesson. A teacher may choose to model another example, rephrase an explanation, return briefly to prior learning or provide additional guided practice before pupils continue independently. At other times, support may be gradually withdrawn because pupils have demonstrated that they are ready to take greater responsibility for their learning.

None of these decisions alters the intended outcome. Instead, they increase the likelihood that more pupils will reach it. Scaffolds such as sentence stems, visual representations and worked examples are introduced when they help pupils think more successfully and removed when they are no longer required. Their purpose is temporary. They support learning without reducing ambition.

These adjustments may appear modest in isolation, yet together they shape the quality of learning that pupils experience every day. They illustrate why adaptive teaching is far more dependent upon professional judgement than additional resources. The expertise lies in recognising which adaptation is required, when it is required and when it is no longer needed.

Professional judgement remains central

The growing availability of high-quality curriculum materials has transformed classroom practice in many schools. Teachers now have access to carefully sequenced curriculum, high-quality resources and evidence-informed guidance that would have been difficult to imagine only a decade ago. These developments strengthen teaching considerably, but they do not diminish the importance of professional expertise. They change where that expertise is invested.

Every curriculum eventually meets a real classroom. Pupils respond differently, misconceptions emerge unexpectedly and understanding develops at different rates. Adaptive teaching is the professional judgement that bridges the gap between a well-designed curriculum and the pupils sitting in front of the teacher. It ensures that a degree of flexibility sits alongside curriculum fidelity and that responsiveness does not become reduced ambition.

High-quality learning for every child, every day

Adaptive teaching has become a defining feature of evidence-informed practice because it reflects a more sophisticated understanding of learning. It recognises that ambitious expectations, explicit instruction, responsive assessment and professional judgement work together to create the conditions in which more pupils experience success.

Perhaps this explains why adaptive teaching has gained such prominence in recent years. It offers a way of responding to the natural diversity found in every classroom without compromising the ambition of the curriculum. The destination remains shared, while the teaching responds thoughtfully to the evidence of learning that emerges along the way.

Ultimately, adaptive teaching is not simply another approach to classroom practice. It is the practical application of a simple principle: every child deserves access to high-quality teaching that responds to their learning while maintaining ambitious expectations. Adaptive teaching is one of the clearest expressions of our commitment to ensuring every child experiences high-quality learning, every day.

Share

Subscribe now

References

• Education Endowment Foundation. (2021). Teacher Feedback to Improve Learning: Guidance Report.

• Education Endowment Foundation. (2021). Teaching and Learning Toolkit.

• Education Endowment Foundation. (2025). Metacognition and Self-Regulation: Guidance Report.

• Leswell, M. (2025). The Shift to Adaptive Teaching: A Research-Informed Guide. Impact, Chartered College of Teaching.

The availability of high-quality curriculum materials does not, however, reduce the importance of professional expertise. It changes where that expertise is invested. When less time is spent creating resources, more time can be devoted to understanding the curriculum, implementing it thoughtfully and ensuring that every pupil benefits from it. Great curriculum materials provide the foundation for improving learning, but they achieve their greatest impact when accompanied by thoughtful professional judgement.

Every curriculum meets a real school
Every published curriculum is written for an imagined classroom. Curriculum designers make informed assumptions about teaching time, pupils’ prior knowledge and the sequence of learning they are likely to experience, but they cannot know the reality of every school. They cannot anticipate assemblies, performances, educational visits, timetable constraints or the variations in knowledge that pupils bring with them.

The first responsibility of teachers and leaders is to bridge the gap between the curriculum as designed and the curriculum as experienced. This is not an invitation to rewrite carefully considered curriculum according to personal preference. Instead, it requires schools to understand the curriculum well enough to implement it successfully within their own context while preserving its ambition and coherence.

Coherence is worth protecting
The strength of knowledge-rich curricula is the deliberate sequencing of knowledge over time. Individual lessons make sense because they contribute to a much larger journey of learning, with each unit preparing pupils for what comes next. That coherence is easily weakened if curriculum decisions are made lesson by lesson or year by year without considering their wider consequences.

School leaders and teachers inevitably make decisions about curriculum throughout the year. Time is finite, and published curricula often contain more material than schools can realistically teach once the demands of school life are taken into account. Deciding what must be protected, where there is flexibility and how each year prepares pupils for the next requires careful professional judgement. These decisions are strongest when they are made collectively, with a shared understanding of the curriculum’s overall design rather than from the perspective of individual classrooms. Protecting curriculum coherence means safeguarding the long-term learning journey rather than simply delivering the next lesson.

Great teaching still depends on curriculum knowledge
High-quality resources remove much of the work involved in producing slides, worksheets and lesson activities, but they do not reduce the need for teachers to know the curriculum deeply. If anything, they make that knowledge even more important.

Teachers need to understand why knowledge has been sequenced in a particular way, anticipate misconceptions before they arise and recognise how each lesson connects to previous and future learning. Teachers should not encounter the next slide for the first time alongside their pupils. Secure curriculum knowledge allows teachers to explain ideas with greater precision, adapt explanations when pupils struggle and make better decisions throughout the lesson. High-quality curriculum materials reduce preparation, but they increase the importance of curriculum understanding.

Ambition requires intelligent implementation
Every classroom contains pupils whose starting points, confidence and prior knowledge differ. Published curricula cannot anticipate every variation, yet ambitious curriculum should remain the entitlement of every child. The professional task is not to reduce ambition when pupils find learning difficult, but to consider how they can be supported to succeed within it.

This may involve carefully planned scaffolding, additional practice, timely feedback or targeted opportunities to revisit essential knowledge before new learning is introduced. Such decisions depend on teachers understanding both the curriculum and the pupils sitting in front of them. The curriculum remains constant, while teaching becomes increasingly responsive to how pupils reach it. Thoughtful implementation enables more pupils to succeed without weakening the ambition of what they are expected to learn.

Where professional expertise now matters most
The growth of high-quality curriculum materials represents genuine progress for the profession. Teachers should spend less time searching for resources and producing worksheets because those tasks are no longer where their expertise has the greatest value. The profession benefits when that time is redirected towards understanding curriculum, strengthening teaching and improving pupils’ learning.

As more schools adopt high-quality, knowledge-rich curricula, successful implementation will depend less on the resources themselves and more on the professional thinking that surrounds them. Curriculum design and professional expertise are not competing priorities. They are complementary. A great curriculum provides the architecture for learning, while thoughtful professional judgement ensures that architecture becomes a lived experience for every child, every day.

Share

Subscribe now

References

• Christodoulou, D. (2014). Seven myths about education. Routledge.

• Counsell, C. (2018). Taking curriculum seriously. Collection of essays and conference papers.

• Rosenshine, B. (2012). Principles of instruction: Research-based strategies that all teachers should know. American Educator, 36(1), 12–19, 39.

• Sweller, J., Ayres, P., & Kalyuga, S. (2011). Cognitive load theory. Springer.

• Wiliam, D. (2011). Embedded formative assessment. Solution Tree Press.

• Willingham, D. T. (2009). Why don’t students like school? Jossey-Bass.

As Paul Bambrick-Santoyo argues, the purpose of leadership is not simply to manage organisations but to improve outcomes for students. That requires leaders who are continually developing their own knowledge and judgement, rather than simply complying with external expectations.

In busy schools, compliance can become an understandable substitute for professional learning. Leaders are balancing safeguarding, behaviour, staffing, budgets, parental concerns and countless operational demands. Faced with this reality, education systems often respond by producing frameworks, templates, checklists and implementation guidance. These resources have an important role. Just as effective teaching provides scaffolding when pupils are learning something new, leaders also benefit from clear guidance when developing unfamiliar knowledge. Scaffolding helps us to begin learning, but it should not become the final destination.

Our ambition should not be to produce leaders who can faithfully follow a checklist. It should be to develop professional judgement: leaders who understand the evidence, can interpret their context and make thoughtful decisions about what their schools need. Frameworks may support learning, but they cannot replace the thinking that leadership demands.

Every school begins from a different starting point. One may be strengthening behaviour systems, another refining curriculum, or rebuilding after a period of instability. School improvement is always contextual. However, the principles that underpin successful learning remain consistent. One of the most valuable things an education system can do is reinforce those principles through a shared direction of travel, creating coherence while still allowing schools the professional autonomy to apply evidence intelligently within their own contexts.

England’s National Professional Qualifications (NPQs) are one attempt to achieve this. The NPQ suite provides nationally recognised leadership development programmes for teachers and leaders at different stages of their careers, from aspiring middle leaders through to executive leadership. Over the course of my career, I have completed the NPQ Middle Leadership, NPQ Senior Leadership, NPQ Headship and NPQ Executive Leadership and facilitated elements of the programmes myself.

Like any large-scale national initiative, NPQs have attracted criticism. Some have questioned aspects of the curriculum, others the consistency of delivery or their relevance across very different school contexts. Those debates are both inevitable and healthy. Developing leadership across an entire education system is a significant undertaking and no programme will ever meet every leader’s needs perfectly. That should not prevent us from recognising the value that sustained national leadership development can bring.

The greatest value of the NPQs is their commitment to sustained professional learning. Rather than treating leadership development as a one-off event, the programmes continually bring leaders back to the evidence underpinning effective leadership, teaching, implementation and school improvement. Ideas are revisited at different stages of a career, allowing understanding to deepen as experience grows and creating opportunities to refine thinking over time.

That sustained engagement also develops professional habits. Reading educational research becomes part of leadership practice rather than something reserved for quieter periods. Assignments require ideas to be justified with evidence, implementation to be thought through carefully and professional judgement to be articulated clearly. Those habits often remain long after each qualification has finished because they become part of how leaders approach their work.

Equally valuable is the professional dialogue that develops throughout the programmes. Some of the richest learning comes through discussions with facilitators and fellow leaders who understand the realities of leading schools. Those conversations challenge assumptions, test ideas against practice and create a shared professional language that frequently continues well beyond the programmes themselves.

One example stands out from my time as CEO. Across the Trust, schools were supporting children with a wide range of additional needs and were at very different stages in developing inclusive practice. We already had examples of strong practice within individual schools, but engaging with the NPQEL prompted me to interrogate that practice more rigorously through an evidence-informed and implementation science lens. It wasn’t about replacing what we were doing; it was about strengthening my professional judgement. The programme encouraged me to think more carefully about why an approach should work, what evidence supported it, what conditions needed to be in place for success, where implementation might falter and how consistency could be achieved across schools with very different contexts. That strengthened both the strategy itself and our confidence that it could be implemented effectively and sustainably across the Trust.

On reflection, what stands out most is that this learning continued throughout every stage of my career, including periods spent leading schools facing significant challenge where time and budgets for professional development were often extremely limited. Even when the immediate demands of leadership threatened to consume every available hour, there remained an expectation that learning would continue.

That expectation reflects what we know about learning itself. Whether we are developing pupils or developing leaders, learning is rarely transformed by isolated events. It develops through repeated retrieval, deliberate practice, reflection, feedback and opportunities to revisit important ideas over time. Sustained professional development applies those same principles to leadership. By continually reinforcing the evidence, creating shared language and encouraging ongoing professional dialogue, national leadership programmes help leaders deepen their understanding rather than simply accumulate information.

Individual schools cannot create that coherence on their own. National leadership development has the potential to establish shared language, strengthen understanding of evidence-informed practice, support thoughtful implementation and encourage leaders to continue learning throughout their careers. It cannot, and should not, produce identical schools. Instead, it provides a common foundation from which leaders can exercise informed professional judgement within their own contexts while contributing to a shared direction of travel across the wider education system.

No national programme will ever transform every leader or solve every challenge facing schools. Leadership remains deeply contextual, and professional judgement can never be reduced to a framework. However, systems that invest in sustained leadership development are far more likely to create coherence than those that rely on isolated courses or occasional conferences.

Ultimately, the purpose is not to produce leaders who know the right answers. It is to develop leaders who continue asking better questions, refining their practice and learning throughout their careers. If our collective ambition is to ensure that every child experiences high-quality learning, every day, then sustained leadership development must be recognised as an essential part of creating the conditions in which that ambition can become reality.

Subscribe now

Share

References

• Bambrick-Santoyo, P. (2018). Leverage Leadership 2.0: A Practical Guide to Building Exceptional Schools. Jossey-Bass.

• Coe, R., Aloisi, C., Higgins, S., & Major, L. E. (2014). What Makes Great Teaching? Review of the Underpinning Research. Sutton Trust.

• Didau, D. (2026). Better Schools, Better Teachers? The Learning Spy.

• Education Endowment Foundation. (2019). Putting Evidence to Work: A School’s Guide to Implementation.

• Kraft, M. A., & Papay, J. P. (2014). Can Professional Environments in Schools Promote Teacher Development? Explaining Heterogeneity in Returns to Teaching Experience. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 36(4), 476–500.

How do we ensure that every child experiences high-quality learning, every day?

In Australia, schools are increasingly being asked to become evidence-informed. National and state bodies are producing guidance on effective teaching, curriculum, assessment and implementation, while policy conversations place greater emphasis on using research and data to improve outcomes for students.

This is a positive development. Evidence can help leaders and teachers move beyond preference, habit and ideology. It can provide a stronger foundation for decisions about curriculum, assessment, teaching, behaviour and professional learning, and help schools focus more clearly on the practices most likely to improve learning.

However, access to evidence does not automatically lead to better experiences for students. A school may know a great deal about cognitive load, retrieval practice, explicit instruction, formative assessment or implementation science, yet still struggle to translate that knowledge into consistent classroom practice. Teachers may attend high-quality professional learning, agree with the principles being presented and return to classrooms where little changes.

If every child is to experience high-quality learning every day, schools need more than access to research or a collection of evidence-based strategies. They need leaders who can create the organisational conditions in which teachers are able to understand, apply and refine evidence-informed practice over time.

Evidence does not improve schools by itself. Improvement happens when leaders create the conditions in which evidence can shape everyday practice.

The leadership work of translation

The starting point for evidence-informed improvement is not the search for a new strategy. It is a worthwhile problem.

Schools are often drawn towards broad ambitions such as raising standards, improving engagement or strengthening teaching. These ambitions are understandable, but they are rarely precise enough to guide improvement. Leaders need to understand where students are struggling, what they are not yet understanding, which groups are being underserved and what patterns are visible in assessment, attendance, behaviour, curriculum access or classroom practice.

A school may decide that it wants to improve literacy, for example. That can quickly lead to a long list of possible interventions. A more useful starting point might be the recognition that students are struggling to write extended analytical responses, that their vocabulary is limited in particular subjects, or that the curriculum does not provide sufficient opportunities to practise writing in a structured way. The more clearly a school understands the problem, the more carefully it can consider what evidence is relevant and what response is likely to be worthwhile.

Research does not remove professional judgement; it gives that judgement a stronger foundation. Evidence can indicate what is likely to be effective, for whom and under what conditions, but it cannot prescribe exactly what a particular school should do with its own students, staff, curriculum and constraints. Leaders need to interpret the evidence in the light of the problem they are trying to solve, the knowledge and confidence of their staff, and the practical conditions required for change to succeed.

This is also where schools need to avoid turning evidence into compliance. Teachers may be asked to use retrieval practice, cold call, worked examples, mini-whiteboards or explicit instruction because these approaches are associated with evidence-informed practice. Each can be valuable, but none is valuable simply because it is visible. Their value lies in the learning purpose they serve.

When teachers are expected to reproduce techniques without understanding the principles behind them, schools can achieve surface consistency without improving professional judgement. Staff may use the language of evidence-informed practice while remaining unsure about why a strategy is useful, when it should be used or how it should be adapted for different content and learners.

Professional learning needs to build understanding as well as establish shared practice. Teachers should have opportunities to explore why reducing cognitive load matters, when modelling is most useful, what makes practice effective, how feedback can support learning and why checking for understanding should shape subsequent teaching. The aim is to develop teachers who understand learning well enough to make thoughtful instructional decisions within a coherent school approach.

Creating the conditions for practice to change

Schools are busy organisations. Leaders are responsible for attendance, behaviour, safeguarding, curriculum, assessment, wellbeing, staffing, parental communication and financial stewardship, alongside the daily work of supporting students and staff. In this environment, improvement can become fragmented when every worthwhile idea is treated as equally urgent.

Leaders need to decide what deserves focused attention now, what can wait and what should stop. This is not a matter of lowering ambition. It is a recognition that improvement requires time, attention and repetition. When schools attempt to implement too many changes at once, staff become overwhelmed and leaders lose the ability to see which changes are making a difference.

A small number of coherent priorities allows a school to work with greater depth. It enables professional learning, coaching, curriculum development, assessment and quality assurance to reinforce the same shared focus. Teachers are more likely to see how different elements of school life connect, rather than experiencing each new initiative as an additional demand.

If a school is seeking to improve students’ writing, for example, leaders may decide that students need more explicit modelling, more structured opportunities to practise and more consistent feedback on sentence construction and paragraph development. That decision should then shape the work of the organisation. Teachers need time to examine examples, adapt curriculum materials and rehearse new approaches. Middle leaders need to know what to discuss with teams. Coaching needs to focus on the agreed priority. Assessment needs to provide useful information about whether students’ writing is improving. Quality assurance needs to help leaders understand whether the intended changes are reaching classrooms.

A single training session cannot carry this work. Improvement becomes more reliable when the routines and systems around teachers make the desired practice clearer, more manageable and more likely to endure. The task of leadership is to ensure that the school’s structures support the practice it says it values.

Inquiry, evaluation and adaptation

Evidence-informed improvement should not be a rigid process in which schools simply adopt a programme and wait for results. It should also not become an entirely local exercise in which teachers experiment without drawing on what is already known. Evidence-informed inquiry offers a more useful approach.

In an evidence-informed inquiry, leaders and teachers begin with a clearly defined problem, engage with relevant research, select a promising response and study what happens when it is applied in their own context. The question is not ‘What would we like to try?’ but ‘Given what we know from research, and what we know about our students, what is the most promising change we can make and how will we know whether it is working?’

This approach encourages teachers to think carefully about the relationship between evidence, practice and learning. It also helps leaders see implementation as a process of learning, refinement and adaptation rather than a simple exercise in delivery. Schools do not need to wait until every detail is perfect before beginning, but they do need to create regular opportunities to review what is happening and respond thoughtfully to what they find.

Monitoring impact is part of this work. It should not mean collecting endless data or mistaking activity for improvement. Leaders need to establish whether the intended change is reaching classrooms, whether teachers understand and are using the practice well, whether students are experiencing something different and whether their learning is improving as a result.

No single source of evidence provides a complete answer. Student work, assessment information, classroom visits, teacher feedback, student voice, curriculum review and professional discussion can each provide part of the picture. Taken together, they help leaders understand whether implementation is becoming embedded or whether it remains superficial. They also make it possible to adapt with purpose. If teachers understand an approach but struggle to use it within an existing curriculum, the issue may be with resources or planning rather than commitment. If practice appears consistent but students are not making stronger progress, leaders may need to revisit their understanding of the problem or the evidence informing their response.

What leadership development should provide

Australia is developing a stronger policy environment around evidence-informed practice. National and state organisations are producing useful evidence summaries, guidance and resources, while schools are increasingly expected to use research and data to inform improvement work. The missing link is often the leadership bridge between evidence and enactment: the practical capability required to turn evidence into coherent priorities, shared understanding, consistent practice and sustained improvement.

Principals, deputies and middle leaders need development that helps them lead this work in their own settings. Such a programme would help leaders identify a worthwhile learning problem, interpret evidence without becoming compliance-driven and turn that evidence into a small number of coherent school priorities. It would support them to build teacher understanding rather than technique compliance, and to use coaching, routines, curriculum, assessment and quality assurance to embed change.

It would also give leaders a structured way to run an evidence-informed inquiry, evaluate impact and adapt their approach in response to what they find. Most importantly, it would be grounded in the real work of school improvement rather than treating evidence as an abstract body of knowledge to be learned separately from practice.

Leadership development should leave schools with more than a certificate. Leaders should complete a programme with a school improvement artefact that has been developed, tested and refined in their own context: a professional learning sequence, a coaching model, an assessment review, a curriculum implementation plan, an inquiry report or a quality assurance framework. The value lies not only in what leaders learn during the programme, but in what their schools are better able to do afterwards.

Evidence-informed policy will only improve outcomes for students when it is translated into evidence-informed practice. That depends on leaders who can use evidence wisely, make deliberate choices about implementation, build professional understanding and monitor whether changes are improving learning. The work is not simply to know more about research. It is to create schools in which better practice becomes part of the way the organisation works.

Share

Subscribe now

Get in touch - lois@reliable-excellence.com

References

• Australian Education Research Organisation. (2024). Implementation in schools: A deliberate and structured approach.
  https://www.edresearch.edu.au/resource-collections/implementation-schools-deliberate-and-structured-approach

• Australian Education Research Organisation. (2024). Evidence-based teaching practices: A commissioned report.
  https://www.edresearch.edu.au/research/research-reports/evidence-based-teaching-practices-commissioned-report

• Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. (2014). Australian Professional Standard for Principals.
  https://www.aitsl.edu.au/docs/default-source/national-policy-framework/australian-professional-standard-for-principals.pdf

• Education Endowment Foundation. (2024). Putting evidence to work: A school’s guide to implementation.
  https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/guidance-reports/implementation

• Sharples, J. (2013). From research to practice: The role of implementation in education. Education Endowment Foundation.

• Wiliam, D. (2016). Leadership for teacher learning: Creating a culture where all teachers improve so that all students succeed. Learning Sciences International.

For many years, I thought I had a reasonably good answer. I had trained as a teacher, progressed into leadership and spent much of my time observing lessons, coaching colleagues and thinking about how schools improve. Around that time, I began encountering writing and research that challenged some of the assumptions I had absorbed during my own training and early career. It introduced me to a body of knowledge about memory, cognitive load and learning that I had barely encountered before.

I remember talking to a close friend about it. We had trained together and, by that point, both held roles that involved observing lessons, coaching teachers and providing feedback on teaching and learning every day. We admitted something to one another that felt deeply uncomfortable. We had both been teaching for around five years before we had seriously engaged with research around memory, cognitive load and learning. The conversation makes me smile now, although at the time we were mortified. Here we were, helping other teachers improve their practice, yet neither of us had spent much time thinking about how learning actually happens.

Our experience was far from unusual. Teacher training looked different. We learned about planning, assessment, behaviour management and curriculum design. We explored approaches that sought to engage children through inquiry, discovery and authentic experiences. Mantle of the Expert, project-based learning and inquiry-led approaches were exciting and intellectually stimulating. They encouraged creativity, collaboration and deep engagement with ideas. Many of us embraced them because we cared deeply about children’s learning and wanted school to be meaningful and inspiring. What was often missing was a clear understanding of how memory works and the implications this has for teaching. The science of learning was not absent because teachers were uninterested in evidence. In many cases, it simply was not part of the professional conversation in the way it is today.

My friend and I reached a straightforward conclusion - we urgently needed to learn more.

Over the years since, I have had versions of that same conversation with teachers, middle leaders, principals, trust leaders and system leaders. Many have described the moment they first encountered the science of learning as both exciting and unsettling. It offered a compelling explanation of how learning happens, while also challenging assumptions they had held for years and raising difficult questions about practice.

What has become increasingly clear to me is that this experience is not unique to the science of learning. Throughout my career I have found myself leading work in areas where I was still developing my own understanding. I experienced it when moving from teaching Year 6 to leading the implementation of systematic synthetic phonics; when preparing schools for new Ofsted and SIAMS inspection frameworks and my favourite example came much later during the national conversation in England about reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC). Suddenly, school leaders across the country found themselves staring at photographs, ceiling panels and building plans, attempting to determine whether their buildings contained a material that very few had heard of only months earlier. My point is that leadership rarely requires us to know everything in advance. More often, it requires us to learn quickly, seek expertise and help others make sense of change.

As my understanding of the science of learning developed, I began to think differently about knowledge. The relationship between curriculum, memory and learning became clearer, and ideas I had previously considered separately started to fit together more coherently. I became increasingly focused on what children were learning, how that learning was secured over time and how schools could support that process. This also led me to consider the wider purpose of knowledge. If knowledge is central to education, it should do more than enable children to perform well in assessments. It should help them make sense of the world, participate fully within it and develop the understanding, confidence and agency to lead rich and meaningful lives.

Around the same time that I was exploring the science of learning, I was introduced to Martin Robinson’s Trivium 21c. Initially, I struggled with it. A year or so later, after the birth of my first daughter, I picked it up again and found myself drawn to a section called The Good Life. Robinson reflects on what he wants for his daughter. He wants her to know things and be able to do things. He wants her to question, explore and make sense of the world. He wants her to communicate what she has learned, discovered and created. Ultimately, he wants her to live a good life. It felt like a powerful articulation of what many of us hope education might help young people achieve.

The Trivium has its roots in classical education and centres on three interconnected ideas: knowledge, logic and rhetoric. Knowledge provides the foundation. Logic enables young people to think with and about that knowledge. Rhetoric enables them to communicate, persuade, create and contribute. What appealed to me was the clarity it brought to the purpose of education. Schools are places where young people develop the knowledge, understanding and capability required to participate fully in the world around them.

The science of learning and the Trivium helped me answer different questions. The science of learning helps us understand how children acquire, retain and retrieve knowledge. It explains why curriculum, memory, practice and feedback matter. The Trivium asks what that knowledge is ultimately for. It reminds us that education should equip young people to think critically, engage thoughtfully with ideas and contribute meaningfully to society.

This distinction helped me reconcile what can sometimes appear to be competing educational narratives. A knowledge-rich curriculum, retrieval practice, explicit teaching and carefully sequenced learning are not a narrower vision for children. They are ways of helping more children acquire the knowledge that enables them to reason, communicate and participate fully. Performance, sport, debate, creativity, leadership, enrichment and service are not separate from that work. They are opportunities for children to apply, refine and communicate what they know.

I saw this most clearly when I took over a school with a relatively affluent intake that was achieving less well than schools serving communities with greater levels of disadvantage. The school had many strengths. Children were happy, families were supportive and staff cared deeply about the school. However, its approach to teaching and learning had not kept pace with developments in research about how children learn, and outcomes did not reflect either the potential of the children or the ambition of the community.

Our starting point was not to discard what was already in place. We began with an honest conversation about teaching and learning. Staff considered where they saw themselves on a broad pedagogical spectrum, from more inquiry-led and student-directed approaches to more teacher-directed approaches. We discussed the expectations against which the school would be held accountable, including national assessment and inspection, but we also discussed a larger question:

What education did we want to provide for our children?

The Good Life gave us a useful way of holding that conversation. We wanted children to acquire secure knowledge, but we also wanted them to reason, question, communicate, create and contribute. The science of learning did not sit apart from that vision. It helped us strengthen the foundations on which it depended.

The work developed through professional learning, coaching, peer observation and regular conversations about classroom practice. Some teachers had already taught themselves a great deal about the science of learning, and they opened their classrooms to colleagues. Teachers observed whole-class reading taught through direct instruction, alongside practical strategies such as checking for understanding, retrieval practice and deliberate practice. These approaches became visible through observation, coaching and discussion, allowing colleagues to see them in use and adapt them thoughtfully within their own classrooms.

We began using knowledge-rich curriculum materials, initially drawing on high-quality existing resources and then refining them as our understanding and confidence grew. We implemented systematic synthetic phonics at pace because we judged it too important to delay. We developed a shared set of teaching principles, informed by Rosenshine’s work, which staff could draw upon when planning and teaching. These were not intended as a checklist to be applied mechanically in every lesson. Instead, they gave teachers a practical toolbox for making informed decisions about explanation, modelling, questioning, checking for understanding, practice and review. We also reviewed intervention so that it was more sharply focused on the knowledge pupils needed to secure, and used flexible groupings where they were useful while retaining high expectations for every child. The aim was to develop greater consistency in the conditions that enable children to learn well, while retaining professional judgement about how those conditions were created.

Within a year, 95% of our Year 1 pupils passed the phonics screening check, representing a substantial improvement on the school’s previous outcomes and placing results significantly above the national average. Pupil outcomes at the end of Year 6 in reading, writing and mathematics were also significantly above average. This academic progress was accompanied by a strong and positive staff culture. Staff wellbeing survey results were high, and an Ofsted inspector commented on the happiness and positivity of the team. We also broadened pupils’ opportunities beyond the core curriculum. Participation in visual art increased, with work showcasing a clear progression of knowledge. This provided a foundation for expanding our service and charitable work, including courageous advocacy rooted in the school’s Christian vision. Alongside this, the school continued to achieve success in sport, winning a number of awards and trophies.

Strengthening teaching through the science of learning had not required the school to become narrower or less distinctive. It enabled us to pursue our vision with greater clarity. Children were learning more securely while continuing to experience a rich education that included performance, sport, creativity, service, contribution and more.

Although the school served a relatively affluent community, around 12 per cent of pupils were disadvantaged. This made the work particularly important. Talent is distributed widely, but opportunity is not. Every child deserves access to powerful knowledge, teaching that enables them to learn it successfully, and opportunities to use that knowledge in meaningful ways. For children who may have fewer opportunities to acquire this knowledge beyond school, the quality and reliability of classroom teaching matters even more. The science of learning can help schools make that entitlement more dependable.

When I look back now, I do not think the school was failing before this work began. Children were safe and happy, staff were committed, and there was much to value. The work was about becoming more deliberate: understanding learning more deeply, strengthening practice and ensuring that the daily experience of children matched the school’s ambitions for them.

The question that continues to drive my thinking is the same one that sits at the heart of Reliable Excellence: how do we ensure that every child experiences high-quality learning, every day? The science of learning has become an important part of my answer because it helps schools strengthen the core purpose that sits beneath every wider aspiration: enabling children to learn securely, use what they know and lead fulfilling, meaningful lives.

Share

Subscribe now

Get in touch - lois@reliable-excellence.com

References

• Bjork, R. A., & Bjork, E. L. (2020). Desirable Difficulties in Theory and Practice.

• Christodoulou, D. (2014). Seven Myths About Education. Routledge.

• Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. E. (2006). “Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching.” Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 75–86.

• Robinson, M. (2013). Trivium 21c: Preparing Young People for the Future with Lessons from the Past. Crown House Publishing.

• Rosenshine, B. (2012). “Principles of Instruction: Research-Based Strategies That All Teachers Should Know.” American Educator, 36(1), 12–19.

• Willingham, D. T. (2009). Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. Jossey-Bass.

How do we ensure that every child experiences high-quality learning, every day?

Answering that question requires us to think carefully about how learning happens. If we want more children to learn successfully, we need teaching approaches that align with what we know about memory, attention, practice and understanding. Recently, explicit instruction has been promoted in Australia as an important driver of improving outcomes for children. There are good reasons for this. Explicit instruction aligns closely with a substantial body of evidence about how learning happens and can be highly effective, particularly when students are learning new knowledge and skills.

However, discussions about the science of learning can sometimes become discussions about explicit instruction. While the two are connected, they are not the same thing. The science of learning provides an understanding of how learning occurs. Explicit instruction is one response to that understanding. Confusing the two risks narrowing professional conversations and overlooking the importance of professional judgement in translating evidence into effective classroom practice.

The science of learning is not a teaching method. It is an understanding of how learning occurs. It draws upon research from cognitive psychology and related disciplines to help us understand memory, attention, cognitive load, retrieval, practice and feedback. These insights help explain why some approaches are more likely to support learning than others.

Importantly, the science of learning does not prescribe a single way of teaching. Rather, it provides principles that can guide professional decision-making.

Understanding that working memory is limited helps teachers appreciate the importance of clear explanations, carefully sequenced learning and avoiding unnecessary distractions. Understanding the role of retrieval encourages teachers to revisit previously taught content and strengthen long-term memory. Understanding the importance of practice helps teachers provide opportunities for students to develop fluency and competence.

Explicit instruction is one response to these findings. It is often an excellent response. However, it is not the only response.

A student encountering a concept for the first time may benefit from highly explicit modelling, worked examples and guided practice. Later in the learning process, the same student may benefit from independent practice, discussion, problem-solving or extended application. The science of learning supports both decisions because the purpose of teaching has changed. The teacher is responding to what is known about learning and to the needs of the learner.

This is where professional judgement becomes essential.

Professional judgement sits at the heart of effective teaching. It is not a rejection of evidence and it is not complete freedom to teach however one chooses. It is the ability to understand evidence, interpret it thoughtfully and apply it within a specific context. It involves understanding the principles that underpin learning and making informed decisions about how best to support students at a particular moment in time.

This distinction matters greatly for leaders.

When improvement efforts focus solely on a particular programme, strategy or teaching approach, implementation can become compliance-driven. Teachers may learn to reproduce techniques without fully understanding the principles that make those techniques effective. Over time, this can lead to superficial adoption rather than genuine improvement.

When teachers understand the evidence that underpins their practice, they are better equipped to adapt, refine and respond to the needs of their students while remaining faithful to the principles that support learning. Sustainable improvement depends not only on what teachers do, but on what they understand.

This challenge becomes even more significant at system level. Large education systems have an important role in identifying approaches that are likely to improve outcomes for children. However, identifying an approach is only the beginning. Sustainable improvement requires investment in leadership development, professional learning, coaching and implementation support. Teachers and leaders need opportunities to understand the evidence, explore its implications and develop the expertise required to apply it effectively within their own contexts.

Without this infrastructure, there is a risk that educational reform becomes reduced to compliance. Schools may adopt the language of a reform without fully understanding the principles that sit behind it. Some schools will build deep expertise and strong implementation, while others will interpret the same expectations very differently. Variation becomes inevitable.

The most successful systems do more than promote effective practices. They build the capability of teachers and leaders to make informed professional decisions. They create a shared understanding of learning while recognising that effective implementation requires knowledge, expertise and judgement. The goal is not to create identical classrooms. The goal is to ensure that decisions across those classrooms are consistently informed by a secure understanding of how learning happens.

Announcing a preferred approach is relatively straightforward. Developing the professional knowledge required to implement that approach effectively across hundreds or thousands of schools is considerably more demanding. Sustainable improvement depends not only on identifying effective practices but also on building the capability of teachers and leaders to understand, apply and refine those practices over time.

Children only experience one education. They cannot wait for the next initiative, the next debate or the next shift in policy direction. They need classrooms where teaching is informed by the best available evidence and delivered by professionals who understand how learning happens.

The goal should not be to win pedagogical arguments. The goal should be to help students learn.

The science of learning provides a valuable foundation for achieving that aim. It helps us understand how learning happens and offers principles that can guide professional decision-making. Explicit instruction is often an important part of that picture, particularly when students are acquiring new knowledge and skills. However, it is most powerful when understood as one tool within a broader evidence-informed approach to teaching.

Schools are at their strongest when teachers understand both what they are doing and why they are doing it. Lasting improvement comes not from adherence to a single method but from developing the professional expertise required to make sound decisions in service of student learning.

The science of learning should provide the foundation, while professional judgement determines how those principles are translated into effective classroom practice. Together, they offer a more reliable path to improving outcomes for every child than any single pedagogical approach alone.

Share

Subscribe now

References

Bjork, R. A., & Bjork, E. L. (2020). Desirable Difficulties in Theory and Practice. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 9(4), 475–479.

Rosenshine, B. (2012). Principles of Instruction: Research-Based Strategies That All Teachers Should Know. American Educator, 36(1), 12–39.

Sweller, J., Ayres, P., & Kalyuga, S. (2011). Cognitive Load Theory. New York: Springer.

Willingham, D. T. (2009). Why Don’t Students Like School? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

How do we ensure every child experiences high-quality learning, every day?

One way to explore that question is to examine examples of educational improvement at scale. If a system succeeds in improving outcomes for large numbers of children, particularly those facing disadvantage, it can provide valuable insights into the conditions that make improvement possible.

England’s experience during the first two decades of this century provides an interesting example. During this period, outcomes improved substantially, particularly in London. Improvement was evident in both primary and secondary education. By the early 2010s, pupils in London primary schools were outperforming the national average in English and mathematics. Similar patterns emerged in secondary schools. Schools serving disadvantaged communities achieved outcomes that had previously seemed unlikely, and disadvantaged pupils in London began to outperform disadvantaged pupils elsewhere in England by a considerable margin. Research published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that disadvantaged pupils in Inner London were around 19 percentage points more likely to achieve five good GCSEs, including English and mathematics, than disadvantaged pupils elsewhere in England.

Explaining this improvement has generated considerable debate. Researchers have pointed to demographic changes, immigration patterns, changing communities and wider economic factors. Others have focused on policy reforms, accountability systems and school improvement programmes. The scale of the improvement suggests that no single explanation is likely to be sufficient.

One of the most striking features of this period was a growing determination to improve outcomes for all pupils, particularly those facing disadvantage. Educational outcomes became more visible and schools were increasingly expected to demonstrate impact. High expectations for disadvantaged pupils became a more prominent feature of professional and policy discussions. While accountability alone cannot improve outcomes, it helped create a shared focus across the system.

At the same time, schools became less isolated. Improvement increasingly became something that happened between schools as well as within them. Programmes such as London Challenge sought to connect schools to expertise and create networks through which effective practice could spread. Stronger schools worked alongside those facing greater challenges and experienced leaders were deployed to support schools requiring improvement. Expertise became more accessible and school improvement became a collective endeavour rather than an individual struggle.

Alongside this, significant investment was made in developing people. Leadership was increasingly viewed as a discipline that could be deliberately developed rather than simply acquired through experience. The National College for School Leadership expanded leadership development opportunities and the National Professional Qualifications became an increasingly important part of the leadership landscape. Organisations such as Future Leaders and Teaching Leaders emerged to identify and develop talented teachers and leaders capable of driving improvement in challenging contexts. Together, these initiatives helped build a pipeline of leadership talent across the system.

The profession also became more deliberate about attracting and developing talent. Teach First emerged as one of the most visible examples of this shift. By recruiting high-achieving graduates and placing them in schools serving disadvantaged communities, the programme sought to strengthen the workforce in areas where recruitment had historically been difficult. Many participants went on to become school leaders, contributing to the wider leadership capacity of the system.

Organisational capacity was also developing. Early academy trusts such as Ark and Harris demonstrated how expertise could be shared across groups of schools. Leadership development, curriculum resources, professional learning and school improvement capacity could be coordinated across multiple institutions. Effective approaches no longer needed to remain within individual schools. They could be refined, adapted and spread more widely. As trusts expanded, they created new mechanisms through which improvement could be sustained and scaled.

The infrastructure surrounding schools also evolved. Organisations focused on social mobility, educational research and school improvement became increasingly influential. The Sutton Trust played an important role in highlighting educational disadvantage and advocating for greater opportunity. The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) was established with a £125 million endowment from the government to identify effective approaches for improving outcomes, particularly for disadvantaged pupils. Through large-scale trials, evidence reviews and practical guidance reports, the EEF became one of the most significant contributors to the evidence infrastructure supporting schools.

Research also became increasingly visible within professional conversations. Findings from cognitive science, curriculum research and implementation studies became more accessible to teachers and leaders. Professional development increasingly drew upon research evidence and organisations emerged to help schools translate evidence into classroom practice. Schools gained access to a growing body of knowledge about learning, teaching and implementation.

Viewed individually, each of these developments appears significant. Viewed collectively, they suggest the emergence of something larger. Schools operated within an ecosystem that generated knowledge, developed leadership, supported implementation, spread expertise and maintained a focus on pupil outcomes. Researchers produced evidence. Organisations translated evidence into practical approaches. Professional development providers built capability. School improvement programmes connected schools to expertise. Trusts created mechanisms through which effective practice could travel beyond individual institutions.

The improvement seen in London and across parts of England cannot be attributed to any single organisation or policy. Educational change is rarely that simple. The period is perhaps most notable for the number of organisations, programmes and institutions that were working towards similar goals. Their approaches differed and their priorities were not always identical, yet together they contributed to an environment in which improving outcomes for disadvantaged pupils became a sustained and system-wide endeavour.

The significance of this period is reflected not only in the improvements that occurred at the time, but also in the persistence of the so-called London effect. More than a decade later, London remains one of the highest-performing regions in England for disadvantaged pupils. Recent data shows that disadvantaged pupils in Inner London are substantially more likely to achieve strong GCSE outcomes in English and mathematics than disadvantaged pupils nationally. While the reasons remain contested, the pattern suggests that something more enduring than a single programme or policy may have taken place.

Looking back at this period highlights an important feature of educational improvement. High-quality learning depends upon what happens in classrooms, but the conditions that support that work are often created beyond the school gates. Leadership development, research, professional learning, school improvement support, networks and organisational capacity all influence what schools are able to achieve. If every child is to experience high-quality learning every day, attention must be paid not only to what happens within schools, but also to the ecosystem that surrounds them.

Share

Subscribe now

Get in touch - lois@reliable-excellence.com

References

Blanden, J., Greaves, E., Gregg, P., Macmillan, L., & Sibieta, L. (2015). Understanding the Improved Performance of Disadvantaged Pupils in London. Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Hutchings, M., Greenwood, C., Hollingworth, S., Mansaray, A., Minty, S., Rose, A., & Glass, K. (2012). Evaluation of the City Challenge Programme. Department for Education.

Kidson, M., & Norris, E. (2014). Implementing the London Challenge. Institute for Government.

Sibieta, L. (2025). Annual Report 2025. Education Policy Institute.

How do we ensure that every child experiences high-quality learning, every day?

When people talk about successful schools, they often talk about successful leaders. Stories of improvement frequently focus on individuals whose vision, determination and energy transformed an organisation. Leadership undoubtedly matters. Strong leaders establish direction, create momentum and influence the culture of the organisations they serve. However, what happens when the exceptional leader leaves?

This question matters because children only experience one education. They cannot wait for the right teacher, the right leader or the right initiative to arrive. If high-quality learning depends entirely upon exceptional individuals, then pupils’ experiences will inevitably vary. Sustainable improvement requires something more dependable. It requires leaders who create the conditions in which effective practice becomes commonplace.

Schools and education organisations are complex environments. Hundreds of decisions are made every day by teachers, support staff, middle leaders and senior leaders. No individual, regardless of their talent or experience, can directly influence every interaction that shapes a child’s experience. Lasting improvement therefore depends less on what leaders do personally and more on the conditions they create for others to succeed.

Creating those conditions begins with clarity of purpose. Schools perform many important functions and operate within increasingly complex environments. Attendance, safeguarding, wellbeing, staffing, budgets and accountability all demand attention. Effective leaders understand the importance of each of these responsibilities while maintaining a clear understanding of why the organisation exists. The central purpose of a school is learning. When decisions, priorities and resources are consistently connected back to that purpose, greater coherence begins to emerge.

Clarity of purpose provides direction, but direction alone does not improve outcomes. Improvement depends upon the expertise of the people working throughout the organisation. The quality of learning experienced by pupils is heavily influenced by the knowledge, skill and judgement of the adults who teach and support them. Leaders who create sustainable improvement therefore invest heavily in developing others. Professional learning becomes an ongoing process rather than a series of isolated events. Coaching, feedback, collaboration and deliberate practice help individuals refine their expertise over time, increasing the organisation’s overall capacity to improve outcomes for children.

As expertise develops, leaders face another challenge. Many schools contain examples of exceptional practice, yet excellence confined to individual classrooms does not guarantee that every child will benefit from it. Effective leaders therefore focus on helping strong practice become shared practice. Curriculum design, assessment approaches, professional learning and quality assurance processes work together to support consistency. Rather than relying upon a handful of exceptional individuals, organisations become increasingly capable of delivering high-quality experiences for all pupils.

Maintaining this focus requires both ambition and discipline. Every child deserves access to challenging learning, an ambitious curriculum and excellent teaching regardless of their background or circumstances. High expectations communicate what is possible, but expectations alone are insufficient. Teachers need support to develop their practice. Pupils need carefully designed instruction and appropriate scaffolding. Improvement becomes more likely when challenge and support exist alongside one another.

Modern leadership also requires strong professional judgement. Leaders have access to more information, research, resources and advice than at any point in history. Social media accelerates the spread of new ideas, while artificial intelligence can generate recommendations, plans and resources within seconds. Access to information is no longer the primary challenge. The challenge is deciding which ideas are worth pursuing, which align with organisational priorities and which are most likely to improve outcomes for children. Effective leaders remain curious and informed, but they also exercise discipline. They evaluate evidence carefully, consider how change will be implemented and focus attention on the approaches most likely to make a meaningful difference. Artificial intelligence may enhance access to information and increase organisational capacity, but it cannot replace professional judgement. Questions of purpose, values, relationships and culture remain fundamentally human responsibilities, requiring leaders to determine not only what can be done, but what should be done.

Viewed in this way, leadership becomes less about personal performance and more about organisational capability. Strong leaders recognise that their role is not simply to drive improvement themselves. Their role is to create the conditions in which improvement can occur throughout the organisation and continue over time. They build clarity, develop expertise, strengthen systems and create cultures in which people can succeed.

Children only experience one education. They cannot wait for the right teacher, the right leader or the right initiative to arrive. Creating the conditions for consistently high-quality learning requires leadership that develops people, builds capability and maintains an unwavering focus on learning. The most successful leaders understand that their greatest contribution is not simply improving an organisation themselves, but creating the conditions in which improvement can continue long after they have gone.

Share

Subscribe now

References

• Bambrick-Santoyo, P. (2018). Leverage Leadership 2.0: A Practical Guide to Building Exceptional Schools. Jossey-Bass.

• Bryk, A. S., Gomez, L. M., Grunow, A., & LeMahieu, P. G. (2015). Learning to Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better. Harvard Education Press.

• Fullan, M. (2020). Leading in a Culture of Change (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

• Robinson, V. M. J. (2011). Student-Centered Leadership. Jossey-Bass.

• Senge, P. M. (2006). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (Revised ed.). Doubleday.

Reliable Excellence explores an important question:

How do we ensure that every child experiences high-quality learning, every day?

Research has significantly improved our understanding of teaching and learning. Schools now have access to a substantial body of evidence about curriculum design, explicit instruction, assessment, feedback and practice. Across many education systems there is far greater agreement about effective teaching than there was twenty years ago, yet improvements in classroom practice often happen more slowly than expected.

Part of the explanation lies in the difference between understanding an idea and embedding it across an organisation. A school may recognise the value of a knowledge-rich curriculum or understand the principles of effective instruction, but turning that understanding into consistent practice across dozens of classrooms requires sustained effort over time. The work extends well beyond selecting an approach. Staff need opportunities to develop expertise, leaders need to provide support and feedback, curriculum materials often need refining and professional learning needs to reinforce the intended direction. Each element depends upon leadership attention and organisational capacity.

This is a reality that can sometimes be overlooked in discussions about school improvement. Research tells us a great deal about what is likely to improve outcomes for children, but schools operate within environments where improvement competes with many other demands. Leaders are balancing staffing pressures, attendance concerns, wellbeing, behaviour, parental expectations, budgets and compliance requirements alongside their ambition to improve teaching and learning. Every improvement priority draws upon the same finite resources of time, expertise and attention.

The schools that make sustained progress are rarely those attempting to implement the greatest number of initiatives. More often, they have developed clarity about what matters most and have created the conditions for that work to become embedded over time. Leaders understand the current reality of the organisation, listen carefully to staff, identify barriers and focus their efforts on a manageable number of priorities. Improvement gathers momentum because people have sufficient time to develop confidence and competence before attention shifts elsewhere.

Staff turnover adds a further layer of complexity. Schools are constantly welcoming new colleagues whilst supporting others into different roles or organisations. This means improvement cannot rely upon individual enthusiasts carrying a particular approach. Effective practice needs to become part of the organisation itself. New staff should encounter established routines, clear expectations and shared ways of working that help them contribute quickly and effectively. Over time, the organisation becomes increasingly capable of sustaining its direction despite inevitable changes in staffing.

For this reason, leadership is closely connected to implementation. School improvement depends upon a leader’s ability to translate ideas into systems, routines and habits that influence daily practice. This involves understanding how change happens, where resistance is likely to emerge and what support people need in order to develop new ways of working. Successful implementation is usually characterised by consistency, persistence and a willingness to remain focused long enough for new practices to become established.

Many schools already know a great deal about effective teaching and learning. The question is how that knowledge becomes part of everyday practice. Creating the organisational capacity to make good ideas stick may be one of the most significant responsibilities of school leadership. When effective approaches become embedded within the organisation itself, they become more reliable, more sustainable and more likely to be experienced by every child, every day.

Share

Subscribe now

References

• Bambrick-Santoyo, P. (2018). Leverage Leadership 2.0: A Practical Guide to Building Exceptional Schools. Jossey-Bass.

• Fixsen, D. L., Naoom, S. F., Blase, K. A., Friedman, R. M. & Wallace, F. (2005). Implementation Research: A Synthesis of the Literature. University of South Florida.

• Fullan, M. (2020). Leading in a Culture of Change (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

• Kotter, J. P. (2012). Leading Change. Harvard Business Review Press.

How do we ensure that every child experiences high-quality learning, every day?

A commitment to every child inevitably raises questions about expectations. If schools exist to help children learn, then every pupil should encounter ambitious learning experiences that extend their knowledge, develop their understanding and increase what they are able to do. Yet while most schools would readily agree with this principle, translating it into the daily experiences of every child is considerably more demanding.

High expectations are often discussed as a characteristic of individual teachers. Many people can recall a teacher who believed in them, challenged them and refused to accept less than their best. Such teachers can have a profound impact on pupils’ lives. However, if high expectations depend primarily upon individual commitment, then pupils’ experiences will inevitably vary from classroom to classroom. School leaders must therefore consider how high expectations can be embedded across the organisation.

Expectations become visible through the opportunities pupils are given and the standards they are routinely asked to meet. If schools believe every child can succeed, then every child must be given access to challenging content, expert instruction and the support needed to succeed with demanding work. High expectations are reflected in the decisions schools make about curriculum, teaching, assessment and the wider learning environment. The ways in which schools can communicate high expectations are almost limitless. What matters is that organisational decisions consistently reinforce the belief that every child can succeed. Examples might include:

• A knowledge-rich curriculum that reflects a belief that every child is entitled to access powerful knowledge. It begins from the premise that all children can learn more than they currently know and the role of the school is to make that learning accessible.

• Frequent use of explicit instruction that makes complex learning achievable. By carefully modelling new ideas, checking understanding and guiding practice, teachers reduce unnecessary barriers that might otherwise prevent pupils from succeeding.

• Effective scaffolding which sets ambitious goals while temporarily providing the structures pupils need to be successful. As knowledge and confidence grow, those supports can gradually be removed. The destination remains unchanged even when the route varies.

• Flexible groupings that respond to pupils’ current needs by providing additional support or challenge without placing limits on future learning.

• Regular opportunities for feedback and deliberate practice that helps pupils refine their understanding and improve the quality of their work. High expectations are communicated when pupils are expected to revisit, improve and strengthen their learning rather than simply complete tasks and move on.

All these types of decisions increase the likelihood of ambitious learning for every child and promote equity. Schools serve pupils with different starting points, experiences and needs. Genuine equity requires those realities to be understood and addressed. Yet understanding barriers should lead to greater support, not lower expectations. The goal is not to make learning easier, but to make success attainable.

Creating an environment of high expectations requires leaders to ensure that curriculum, teaching, assessment, professional learning and school routines consistently reinforce ambitious learning. When high expectations depend on individuals, pupils’ experiences inevitably vary. However when they are embedded within everyday practice, more pupils encounter the challenge, support and opportunities needed for successful learning.

References

• Bambrick-Santoyo, P. (2018). Leverage Leadership 2.0: A Practical Guide to Building Exceptional Schools.

• Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.

• Rosenshine, B. (2012). Principles of Instruction: Research-Based Strategies That All Teachers Should Know. American Educator, 36(1), 12–19.

Share

Subscribe now

Get in touch - lois@reliable-excellence.com

How do we ensure that every child experiences high-quality learning, every day?

Schools exist to help children learn. Research from cognitive psychology has helped establish a widely accepted definition of learning as a relatively lasting change in what pupils know, understand and can do. If learning is the central purpose of schooling, decisions about school improvement should ultimately be judged by their contribution to the quality of learning experienced by pupils.

This raises an important practical question. Once a school has established clarity about its purpose, where should improvement begin?

Many schools respond by attempting to improve multiple areas simultaneously. Curriculum is reviewed, assessment systems are redesigned, teaching and learning frameworks are refreshed and professional development programmes are expanded. Alongside these changes, leaders may also be addressing attendance, behaviour, safeguarding, wellbeing and a range of other priorities. Each initiative may have merit and each may be intended to improve outcomes for pupils. Yet when large numbers of changes are introduced at the same time, organisations often struggle to implement any of them particularly well.

Education is not short of good ideas. Schools have access to a substantial body of knowledge about effective teaching, curriculum design, assessment and school improvement. Most can identify areas that would benefit from attention and many have access to high-quality resources, research and expertise. Success depends less on identifying what should change and more on helping people translate knowledge into practice. Lasting improvement requires staff to develop new knowledge, adopt new habits and sustain those habits over time.

For this reason, successful improvement is often narrower than leaders initially expect. Meaningful change requires attention, repetition and follow-through. Teachers need opportunities to understand new approaches, see them modelled, practise them in authentic settings and receive feedback on their implementation. Leaders need time to monitor progress, solve problems and support colleagues as new ways of working become established. When numerous priorities compete for attention, each receives less of the time and support needed for successful implementation.

School leaders therefore face an ongoing tension. Most schools can identify several areas that would benefit from improvement and many of those areas are genuinely important. Delaying action can feel uncomfortable, particularly when leaders are aware of weaknesses that need addressing. At the same time, pursuing too many priorities often results in superficial implementation. Organisations become busy, but the quality of practice changes more slowly than intended.

A more productive approach is to begin with a small number of priorities that have the potential to make a significant difference for pupils while also strengthening the organisation's ability to improve. The precise starting point will vary from school to school. In some contexts, safeguarding may require immediate attention because it provides the foundation upon which all other aspects of school life depend. Elsewhere, behaviour may be the most pressing priority because learning depends upon pupils being able to attend, participate and focus. Other schools may decide that attendance, reading, curriculum or assessment offer the greatest opportunity for improvement.

The key consideration is not where a school begins, but whether leaders have chosen deliberately. Effective starting points tend to share several characteristics. They are important for pupils, influence multiple aspects of school life and create opportunities for staff to develop new knowledge and expertise. They also provide a meaningful opportunity to strengthen the organisation's capacity to implement change successfully.

This point deserves particular attention. Schools become stronger not only by improving individual initiatives but by becoming better at improvement itself. Every significant change requires leaders to build shared understanding, develop professional knowledge, establish clear expectations and sustain implementation over time. These capabilities are developed through experience rather than planning alone.

Consider a school that decides to strengthen behaviour for learning. Success depends upon far more than introducing a new policy. Staff require training, opportunities to rehearse routines, ongoing support and clear feedback about implementation. Leaders need to communicate expectations consistently, monitor practice carefully and respond to issues as they arise. Through this process, the school is not simply improving behaviour. It is developing the habits, routines and expertise required to implement change successfully.

The same principle applies whether the focus is safeguarding, attendance, reading, curriculum or assessment. Each improvement effort provides an opportunity to strengthen the organisation's collective capability. Teachers gain confidence in adopting new approaches. Leaders become more skilled at implementation. Professional development becomes more purposeful and more closely connected to classroom practice. Over time, schools become more capable of turning intention into execution.

This is why the first improvement priority matters so much. Its significance lies not only in the outcomes it produces but also in the lessons it teaches. A school that improves one important area well becomes better equipped to improve the next. Success creates momentum, strengthens trust and develops expertise that can be applied elsewhere. Improvement becomes cumulative, with each achievement creating the conditions for further progress.

For leaders committed to improving learning, the temptation to address every issue simultaneously will always be strong. Sustainable improvement, however, rarely emerges from the accumulation of initiatives. More often, it grows from disciplined focus, careful implementation and the willingness to improve one area exceptionally well before moving on to the next.

If learning is the central purpose of schooling, leaders must think carefully not only about what to improve but also about how improvement occurs. Schools build improvement capacity through the process of improvement itself. Lasting change starts somewhere, not everywhere. The strongest organisations begin with focused action and build from there.

References

• Bambrick-Santoyo, P. (2018). Leverage Leadership 2.0: A Practical Guide to Building Exceptional Schools. Jossey-Bass.

• Bryk, A. S., Gomez, L. M., Grunow, A., & LeMahieu, P. G. (2015). Learning to Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better. Harvard Education Press.

• Fixsen, D. L., Naoom, S. F., Blase, K. A., Friedman, R. M., & Wallace, F. (2005). Implementation Research: A Synthesis of the Literature. University of South Florida.

• Robinson, V. M. J. (2011). Student-Centered Leadership. Jossey-Bass.
  

  Share

  Subscribe now

Get in touch - lois@reliable-excellence.com

How do we ensure that every child experiences high-quality learning, every day?

Many schools begin with a clear commitment to helping children learn. Teachers enter the profession because they want to make a difference. Leaders devote enormous energy to improving outcomes for pupils. Governors and trustees give their time because they care about the success of schools and the children they serve. Yet maintaining a consistent focus on learning over time is often more difficult than it first appears.

Part of the challenge lies in understanding what schools are ultimately trying to achieve. Research from cognitive psychology has helped establish a widely accepted definition of learning as a relatively lasting change in what pupils know, understand and can do. Learning is not simply what pupils are doing during a lesson, and it is not the same as engagement, participation or performance. Instead, learning concerns what remains after teaching has taken place and what pupils are able to retain and apply over time.

If learning is the central purpose of schooling, it follows that schools are most successful when their decisions, systems and resources are aligned towards improving the quality of learning experienced by pupils. In practice, however, achieving and maintaining that alignment is not straightforward.

Schools are complex organisations with responsibilities that extend far beyond teaching and curriculum. Alongside learning, they must attend to safeguarding, attendance, behaviour, wellbeing, inclusion, staffing, finances, compliance, estates and community relationships. Each of these responsibilities carries significant consequences if neglected. School leaders therefore spend much of their time balancing competing demands, responding to emerging issues and making decisions across a wide range of areas.

Most people working in education care deeply about children and are motivated by a desire to help them succeed. Yet difficulties arise because the work of schools generates a constant stream of legitimate priorities, each demanding attention and each capable of making a compelling claim on limited time, energy and resources.

This tension is not unique to education. Complex organisations naturally accumulate activity over time. New concerns generate new responses, additional systems are introduced to improve accountability and initiatives are launched to address areas of need. Viewed individually, many of these decisions are sensible and well-intentioned. Difficulties emerge gradually as priorities multiply, responsibilities expand and the connections between different strands of work become less clear.

In these circumstances, organisations can become busier without becoming more effective. Staff work hard, leaders respond responsibly to challenges and teams pursue worthwhile objectives. Yet as attention becomes spread across a growing number of priorities, it becomes harder to maintain collective clarity about what matters most. The result is often a gradual reduction in organisational coherence.

This is organisational drift. Drift rarely occurs because people make poor decisions or abandon their values. More often, it emerges when immediate pressures begin to shape decision-making more powerfully than a shared sense of purpose. Over time, the original reason the organisation exists can become less visible beneath layers of activity, even when that activity is valuable in its own right.

Schools therefore do not drift because they lack commitment to learning. Rather, learning must continually compete for attention within organisations responsible for many important functions. As time and energy are directed towards an expanding range of legitimate priorities, it becomes easier for decisions to be shaped by urgency than by purpose. The consequence is not necessarily poor practice, but a gradual weakening of organisational coherence that makes it harder to ensure every activity contributes meaningfully to the quality of learning experienced by pupils.

This is why coherence matters. Coherence exists when people understand how their work contributes to a shared purpose and when decisions across the organisation are connected by a common understanding of what success looks like. Within coherent organisations, different teams may perform different functions, but those functions remain aligned because they are directed towards the same outcome.

A clear understanding of learning provides that point of connection for schools. It creates a lens through which priorities can be evaluated and decisions can be made. Rather than asking whether a new idea or initiative is interesting, popular or aligned with current trends, schools can ask a more fundamental question: how will this improve the quality of learning experienced by pupils? This helps schools evaluate competing priorities against a shared purpose and reduces the likelihood of organisational drift.

Viewing school life through the lens of learning does not diminish the importance of other responsibilities. Attendance is important because pupils cannot learn if they are absent. Behaviour is important because attention is a prerequisite for learning. Safeguarding is essential because children cannot learn effectively if they are unsafe. Staff wellbeing deserves careful attention because exhausted teachers struggle to provide consistently high-quality instruction. Financial stewardship is critical because schools require sustainable resources to support effective teaching and learning over time. Learning is therefore not one priority among many competing priorities. It is the purpose that gives coherence to them all, providing a way of understanding how different responsibilities contribute to the educational experiences and outcomes of pupils.

Maintaining this perspective requires continual effort. As organisations grow and circumstances change, people need regular reminders of what the school exists to achieve and why particular priorities have been chosen. Without this work, even successful schools can gradually lose coherence as new initiatives emerge, competing demands accumulate and attention becomes increasingly fragmented.

For this reason, leadership is ultimately an act of alignment. The role of leaders is not simply to manage complexity but to create coherence by helping teachers, leaders and governors maintain a shared understanding of purpose and ensuring that decisions, resources and priorities remain connected to the outcomes that matter most. If learning is the central purpose of schooling, schools must continually reconnect their work to that purpose, maintaining focus on what matters most: ensuring that every child experiences high-quality learning every day.

References

• Bjork, R. A., Dunlosky, J., & Kornell, N. (2013). Self-regulated learning: Beliefs, techniques, and illusions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 417–444.

• March, J. G. (1994). A Primer on Decision Making: How Decisions Happen. New York: Free Press.

• Senge, P. M. (2006). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (Rev. ed.). New York: Doubleday.

• Willingham, D. T. (2009). Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Share

Subscribe now

Get in touch - lois@reliable-excellence.com

How do we ensure that every child experiences high-quality learning, every day?

Answering that question begins with understanding what learning is. Research from cognitive psychology has helped establish a widely accepted definition of learning as a relatively lasting change in what pupils know, understand and can do. While learning is often inferred from performance, participation or engagement, these are not the same as learning itself. Learning concerns what remains after the lesson has finished and what pupils are able to retain and apply over time.

If learning is the central purpose of schooling, an important question follows. What implications should this have for the way schools are organised and led?

One answer is that learning should become the organising principle of the school itself. Schools are complex organisations with a wide range of responsibilities. Alongside teaching and curriculum, they must attend to pastoral care, safeguarding, wellbeing, attendance, behaviour, enrichment, staffing, finances, compliance and community engagement. Each of these matters is important, and many are essential. Yet complexity creates a risk. Without a clear organising principle, schools can gradually become collections of worthwhile activities rather than coherent organisations working towards a shared purpose.

The consequences of this are often subtle rather than dramatic. Decisions are made with good intentions, new initiatives are introduced to address genuine concerns and opportunities are pursued because they appear beneficial. Viewed individually, many of these decisions seem entirely reasonable. Over time, however, priorities can begin to multiply, resources become spread across too many areas and staff become less certain about what matters most. The result is not necessarily poor practice, but reduced coherence.

A shared understanding of learning provides a way of addressing this challenge. When leaders, teachers and governors are united by a common understanding of what the school exists to achieve, decision-making becomes clearer. Rather than evaluating proposals according to preference, tradition or enthusiasm, schools can ask a more fundamental question: how will this improve the quality of learning experienced by pupils? The value of this question lies not in providing easy answers but in providing a common direction. It encourages schools to think carefully about priorities and creates a framework through which different decisions can be evaluated.

This alignment matters because organisational consistency depends upon people working towards the same goal. Teachers may focus on classroom practice, middle leaders on curriculum, senior leaders on whole-school improvement and governors on strategic oversight. Although these groups perform different functions, they all contribute to the same educational endeavour. When each understands learning in a similar way, it becomes easier to make coherent decisions and maintain focus over time. Where such alignment is absent, schools can find themselves pursuing multiple priorities simultaneously without a clear sense of how those priorities connect to their core purpose.

Governors and trustees have a particularly important role within this process. Their responsibility is not to determine classroom practice but to help ensure that the organisation remains focused on its purpose. A governing board with a secure understanding of learning is better positioned to evaluate strategy, scrutinise priorities and allocate resources wisely. Rather than becoming absorbed by individual initiatives, governors can provide challenge and support through a consistent question: how does this contribute to the quality of learning experienced by pupils?

Viewing school life through the lens of learning does not imply a narrow conception of education. Schools exist to provide far more than academic instruction alone. Sport, music, drama, outdoor education, leadership opportunities, pastoral support and community service all contribute to children's development. The question is not whether these experiences matter, but how they contribute to what pupils know, understand and can do. When these activities are deliberately connected to a school's educational purpose, they become part of a coherent learning experience rather than a collection of disconnected additions.

This perspective also changes the way schools think about improvement. The goal is not to accumulate initiatives or respond to every new idea that emerges from research, policy or public debate. Instead, improvement becomes a process of strengthening the quality of learning experienced by pupils. Sometimes this may require introducing something new. Equally often, it may involve refining existing practice, improving implementation or stopping activities that consume time and energy without making a meaningful contribution to learning.

Ultimately, schools are at their strongest when learning provides a common point of reference for everyone involved in the organisation. Shared clarity about what learning is creates alignment between classrooms, leadership teams and governing boards. It enables schools to make decisions more coherently, direct resources more effectively and maintain focus on the outcomes that matter most for pupils.

If learning is the central purpose of schooling, then learning should also become the organising principle of the school. Only when everyone is pulling in the same direction can schools maximise the quality of learning they provide and ensure that every child experiences high-quality learning every day.

References

• Elmore, R. F. (2004). School Reform from the Inside Out: Policy, Practice, and Performance.

• Fullan, M., & Quinn, J. (2016). Coherence: The Right Drivers in Action for Schools, Districts, and Systems.

• Senge, P. M. (2006). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization.

• Willingham, D. T. (2009). Why Don’t Students Like School?
  

  Share

  Subscribe now

Get in touch - lois@reliable-excellence.com

How do we ensure that every child experiences high-quality learning, every day?

Before we can answer that question, we first need to answer another:

What exactly do we mean by learning?

Learning is the central purpose of schooling. Children arrive each day expecting to learn, and schools are entrusted with helping them acquire knowledge, develop understanding and expand their future opportunities. Before schools can improve learning, they therefore need to be clear about what learning is.

This matters because organisations cannot reliably achieve something they have not clearly defined. If schools are serious about ensuring that every child experiences high-quality learning, they need a shared understanding of both what learning is and how it happens.

Research from cognitive psychology has significantly improved our understanding of learning. The work of researchers such as John Sweller, Daniel Willingham and Robert Bjork has helped establish a clearer picture of how knowledge is acquired, retained and forgotten. While different researchers emphasise different aspects of the process, there is broad agreement that:

Learning is a relatively lasting change in what pupils know, understand and can do.

This definition highlights an important distinction. Learning is not simply being exposed to information, completing activities or performing successfully during a lesson. It involves changes that endure beyond the immediate experience of teaching.

The reason learning is defined as a lasting change becomes clearer when we examine how knowledge is acquired and retained. Cognitive Load Theory, developed by John Sweller, highlights that working memory has limited capacity. At any given moment, pupils can process only a relatively small amount of new information. Learning is therefore more likely when new knowledge is introduced in manageable steps and connected to what pupils already know.

As knowledge accumulates, information stored in long-term memory becomes organised into increasingly complex mental structures, often referred to as schemas. These structures allow pupils to think about ideas as meaningful wholes rather than as isolated pieces of information. A fluent reader no longer processes individual letters one at a time but recognises words and patterns automatically. An experienced mathematician sees relationships and procedures that would place far greater demands on the working memory of a novice learner. Over time, ideas that once required considerable effort become easier to access and apply, freeing attention for more complex thinking.

Daniel Willingham captures this relationship between thinking and memory through the observation that memory is the residue of thought. What pupils think about during lessons matters because learning is shaped by attention. Learning is not something that can be transferred directly from teacher to pupil. Instead, learners actively process, connect and organise new information using what they already know. If pupils are thinking deeply about the content they are intended to learn, learning becomes more likely. If their attention is focused elsewhere, learning becomes less likely regardless of how busy or engaged they appear.

This understanding also explains why successful performance during a lesson does not always indicate that learning has occurred. Robert Bjork's work demonstrates that pupils can appear highly successful while information remains temporarily available in working memory or while substantial support is being provided. Equally, activities that feel more difficult, such as retrieval practice, often strengthen learning because the effort involved in recalling knowledge helps make it more accessible in the future.

Learning therefore extends beyond what pupils can do in the moment. Hermann Ebbinghaus' work on forgetting demonstrated that knowledge is easily lost unless it is revisited and used over time. Lasting learning depends upon knowledge being strengthened, connected and retrieved repeatedly so that it remains available when needed.

These insights have important implications for schools. Curriculum sequencing becomes important because new learning is shaped by what pupils already know. Explicit instruction helps pupils manage the limitations of working memory through carefully designed explanations, modelling and guided practice. Retrieval practice helps strengthen memory and improve long-term retention. Checking for understanding provides teachers with accurate information about what pupils have learned and where further teaching may be required.

Although these practices may appear different, they are grounded in the same understanding of learning. The goal is not simply to cover content, complete activities or deliver lessons. The goal is to ensure that pupils acquire knowledge, retain it over time and can draw upon it when needed in the future.

If we are serious about ensuring that every child experiences high-quality learning every day, we must begin with a clear understanding of what learning is and how it happens. Only then can we judge whether our curriculum, teaching and organisational systems are making learning increasingly likely for every child.

References

• Bjork, R. A., & Bjork, E. L. (2011). Making Things Hard on Yourself, But in a Good Way: Creating Desirable Difficulties to Enhance Learning.

• Elmore, R. F. (2004). School Reform from the Inside Out: Policy, Practice, and Performance.

• Fullan, M., & Quinn, J. (2016). Coherence: The Right Drivers in Action for Schools, Districts, and Systems.

• Sweller, J., Ayres, P., & Kalyuga, S. (2011). Cognitive Load Theory.

• Willingham, D. T. (2009). Why Don’t Students Like School?

Share

Subscribe now

Get in touch - lois@reliable-excellence.com