A recent article about a small Bush School study in Sydney reminded me of experiences from my own leadership and inspired me to write about what we place around academic instruction in schools. Twenty-five Year 1 pupils spent two hours a week in Centennial Parklands over ten weeks, learning about the natural environment through activities including building shelters, painting with ochre, writing poetry and recording their experiences in journals. The children recalled greater confidence, enjoyment and connection with nature, while teachers and parents described stronger engagement with school. Some pupils also made improvements in mathematics, although the scale and design of the study mean that we should be cautious about drawing conclusions about academic attainment from it.
What interested me was the recognition that time spent away from formal classroom instruction can still help to create the conditions in which formal instruction succeeds. We know that a carefully sequenced curriculum, strong subject knowledge, explicit teaching, assessment and deliberate practice are central to improving academic outcomes. Children, however, do not encounter these things in isolation. They need to attend school, regulate their behaviour, sustain attention, experience success and develop sufficient connection with the adults and institution around them to invest effort in what they are being taught.
This leaves us with an important leadership question: if schools want stronger academic outcomes, what conditions must they create around academic instruction?
Protect pupils’ attention through clear and consistent behaviour systems
In every school I have led that required rapid improvement because pupil outcomes were too low, behaviour was one of the first things I attended to. This was not because behaviour sat above teaching and curriculum in importance. It was because teachers could not teach the curriculum successfully while attention was repeatedly disrupted, expectations varied between classrooms and too much professional energy was being spent negotiating routines that should have been secure.
A reliable behaviour system protects pupils’ right to learn. When routines are predictable, transitions are efficient and expectations are consistently upheld, teachers have more time to explain, model, check understanding and respond to misconceptions. Pupils can think without continual interruption. For children who already find concentration, language or self-regulation difficult, the difference made by a calm and orderly classroom can be considerable.
The first practical step is to define clearly what pupils and adults should be doing at the important points in the day. This includes entering a classroom, preparing to learn, gaining attention, moving between activities, asking for help and responding when something goes wrong. These routines should be few enough to remember, precise enough to teach and consistent enough to become familiar. Pupils should not have to work out a completely different set of expectations every time they change classrooms.
Consistency does not come from publishing a new behaviour policy or issuing staff with a common list of sanctions. Pupils experience the system through hundreds of small interactions: how adults greet a class, respond to low-level disruption, acknowledge effort and follow up an incident. Leaders need to train staff, model expected practice and spend time in classrooms examining whether the agreed approach is visible. Coaching and feedback are just as important here as they are in improving teaching.
A strong system also recognises that universal provision will not be sufficient for every pupil. Where difficulties persist, leaders should draw on information from teachers, families and specialists to understand what is contributing to them. Targeted support can then be added without removing the expectations every child needs. Warm relationships and clear boundaries work together because pupils need adults who know them well and adults whose responses they can trust.
Make every minute of academic instruction count
When outcomes are weak, an understandable response is to increase the time allocated to English and mathematics. Sometimes this is exactly the right thing to do, particularly when the existing curriculum does not give pupils enough time to secure foundational knowledge. Before extending lessons or narrowing the timetable, however, leaders should examine how well the time already available is being used.
An audit of instructional time should go beyond counting the minutes shown on a timetable. Leaders need to consider how promptly lessons begin, how much time is lost to transitions and disruption, whether explanations are clear and whether pupils spend enough time thinking about and practising the content being taught. Additional time has limited value if it reproduces the same weaknesses already present in ordinary lessons.
Research into extending the school day reaches a similar conclusion. Additional time can have a positive effect, particularly when it is used for focused teaching or well-designed intervention, but simply keeping pupils in lessons for longer does not guarantee stronger learning. The content must be carefully selected, teaching must be strong and pupils must have sufficient opportunity to practise and receive feedback.
Intervention should therefore begin with a clear diagnosis of what pupils do not yet know or cannot yet do. It should connect closely with the curriculum pupils encounter in class and be delivered by adults who understand both the content and the intended teaching approach. Leaders should review whether pupils are improving and discontinue or adapt provision that is not producing the expected benefit.
There is also a point at which further narrowing may remove some of the experiences that help pupils attend, participate and identify with school. The decision should not be framed as a choice between academic rigour and an enjoyable timetable. Leaders should protect the time required for pupils to learn essential academic content while asking whether each part of the wider timetable has a clear educational purpose and is taught well.
Teach pupils how to participate successfully in learning
Successful participation in a lesson requires behaviours that can easily be mistaken for fixed features of a child’s character. Listening to an explanation, beginning work promptly, persisting when an answer is not immediate, responding to feedback and asking for help appropriately all contribute to academic success. We cannot assume that every child arrives already knowing how to do these things.
Schools should identify the learning behaviours they expect and teach them explicitly. A teacher might model how to prepare the resources needed for a task, show pupils what useful listening looks like or demonstrate what to do when they become stuck. Pupils then need opportunities to practise these behaviours, accompanied by clear feedback and consistent reinforcement.
Teaching pupils to participate successfully is more than securing compliance. The aim is to build the habits through which children become increasingly able to direct and sustain their own learning. A pupil who can recognise confusion, return to an example, attempt another strategy or ask a precise question is developing the independence needed for more demanding academic work.
Leaders can support this by establishing a shared language for learning behaviours across the school. Staff development should connect classroom routines with attention, memory and successful practice, helping teachers understand why each routine exists. Classroom visits can then examine whether pupils know how to participate, rather than simply recording whether the room appears calm.
This is particularly important for pupils who have experienced repeated difficulty or failure. Avoidance, disruption and apparent lack of motivation can develop when a child no longer expects to succeed. Carefully sequenced teaching, appropriate support and frequent experiences of genuine progress can begin to change that expectation. Pupils are more likely to invest effort when they can see that effort is leading somewhere.
Diagnose and remove barriers to attendance
The strongest curriculum has limited value to a pupil who is frequently absent. Research continues to show a close relationship between attendance and attainment, including after prior attainment and pupil characteristics are taken into account. Absence and lower attainment can share underlying causes, but the consequence remains the same: pupils cannot benefit consistently from a carefully sequenced curriculum when they repeatedly miss parts of it.
In my experience, attendance improved most effectively when we moved beyond the headline percentage and became curious about the story beneath it. We looked for patterns, identified the pupils whose attendance was beginning to deteriorate and asked what was making it harder for each child to be in school. Sometimes a family needed a clearer understanding of the cumulative effect of occasional absence. At other times, the barrier sat within the pupil’s experience of school: a difficult transition, an unmet need, a damaged relationship or the feeling that every day brought another experience of failure.
Schools need accurate and timely information so that they can respond before absence becomes entrenched. Leaders should examine attendance by pupil, group, day and, where appropriate, lesson. A pattern clustered around Mondays may require a different response from absence connected with a particular subject, transition or social difficulty. Speaking with the pupil and family is essential because the numerical pattern can indicate where to look, but it cannot explain the cause on its own.
Good attendance practice combines high expectations with intelligent problem-solving. Families need to understand that attendance is essential and that absence will be noticed and followed up. Schools also need the professional capacity to distinguish between unwillingness, practical difficulty and a child who is struggling to access the environment being offered. The same letter or escalation process will not resolve every cause.
Some of the most effective work is deceptively ordinary. A trusted adult checks in with a pupil each morning. A leader speaks directly with a family before a pattern becomes established. Additional needs are identified and addressed. A club, team or position of responsibility gives a child something specific to return for. Targeted actions should have a named person responsible for them, a timescale and a way of judging whether they are working. This does not replace a clear attendance policy, but it makes the policy part of a responsive system rather than a sequence of administrative actions.
Build belonging through pupils’ everyday experience of school
Belonging is sometimes discussed in language that feels detached from academic standards. Its most useful meaning in schools is much more practical. A pupil who feels known, respected and secure may be more willing to attend, contribute an uncertain answer, accept correction and persist when the work becomes difficult. Relationships support academic learning when they increase a pupil’s capacity and willingness to participate in it.
Research generally finds associations between school belonging and academic, behavioural and psychological outcomes, although much of the evidence is correlational. A pupil may achieve more readily because they feel connected to school, while academic success may also strengthen their sense that they belong there. Leaders should consequently avoid treating belonging as a stand-alone initiative. It is built through the cumulative experience of school.
The practical work begins with ensuring that every pupil is known well by at least one adult. Schools can use pastoral structures, check-ins and pupil discussions to identify children who feel overlooked or disconnected. Staff should know which pupils are experiencing repeated failure, conflict or isolation and agree how relationships and provision will be strengthened.
Academic success is an important part of belonging. Pupils are unlikely to feel fully included in school life if lessons repeatedly confirm that the curriculum is accessible to everyone except them. Clear explanations, appropriate scaffolding and carefully sequenced practice allow more pupils to participate successfully without reducing expectations. Fair and predictable behaviour systems also contribute because children need to know that the school will treat them consistently.
Clubs, teams, performances and positions of responsibility can offer further ways to participate and contribute. Leaders should monitor who takes part rather than measuring provision only by the number of activities available. If the same confident pupils occupy every role, perform in every production and represent every team, the wider programme may be reinforcing existing patterns of participation. Practical, financial and social barriers should be identified so that more children can find a meaningful place within school life.
Protect purposeful breadth around the academic core
Research into physical activity and arts participation reports modest positive average effects on academic attainment. These findings are encouraging, but the studies vary considerably in quality and design. They do not support simple claims that playing sport improves mathematics, learning an instrument raises reading scores or spending time outdoors directly accelerates academic progress. Any effect is likely to depend on the nature of the provision, the pupils involved and the mechanism through which the experience influences learning.
Sport, art, music, drama and outdoor learning do not need implausible academic claims to justify their place in a good education. Each contains knowledge and disciplines worth teaching. Physical education can develop movement, coordination, teamwork and the foundations of an active life. Music requires attention, practice and responsiveness to others. Visual art introduces pupils to materials, techniques and cultural traditions. Outdoor learning can develop knowledge of the natural world while giving pupils direct experiences that later enrich reading, writing and classroom discussion.
After a winter spent largely indoors during the COVID restrictions, I introduced Forest School at a school serving a community with high levels of deprivation. Our children needed to reconnect with one another, with their teachers and with the experience of being at school. Many also needed help to regulate their behaviour before they could attend successfully to more formal learning. The time outdoors proved transformational in those respects. It allowed children to move, explore, talk and rebuild relationships, and the greater readiness for learning that followed meant the time was well spent.
Pupil surveys showed how much the children enjoyed the provision, but their responses also helped us understand why it was valuable. One boy, who brought a particularly adventurous spirit to both the woodland and the classroom, told us that Forest School helped him concentrate during mathematics. He also felt that it had strengthened his relationship with his teacher because her willingness to vary the timetable and respond to the children’s interests showed him that she cared about them. His explanation does not prove that Forest School improved his mathematics, but it offers a credible account of how trust, regulation and engagement can affect a child’s capacity to attend to academic learning.
The same pupil spoke enthusiastically about what he had learnt from observing a family of foxes. That knowledge matters in its own right, but it also demonstrates how apparently informal experiences contribute to the background knowledge children bring to the classroom. A child who has watched foxes, noticed their behaviour and developed the language to describe them has more to draw upon when reading a story, interpreting a non-fiction text or writing a description. Experiences do not remove the need to teach vocabulary and knowledge explicitly, but they can give that teaching something substantial to connect with.
At another school, I introduced specialist art teaching because I wanted pupils to receive a more ambitious and knowledgeable art education than we had previously been able to provide. I would not claim that this caused our academic outcomes to improve because we did not have evidence that could support such a conclusion. Pupil voice did, however, show greater enjoyment and motivation, while feedback from parents indicated that the provision had strengthened their children’s experience of school. The teaching also produced worthwhile outcomes within art itself: pupils developed knowledge, worked with greater technical skill and took pride in what they created.
Leaders should apply the same discipline to wider provision that they bring to academic improvement. Every substantial programme should have a clear purpose, suitable expertise, sufficient time and an agreed way of examining its quality. If a breakfast sports club is intended to support the attendance of a defined group, leaders should monitor whether attendance improves. If a music programme is intended to build musical knowledge and sustained participation, those are the outcomes that should be evaluated. If outdoor learning is intended to deepen curriculum knowledge or support pupils’ regulation, leaders should examine whether those effects become visible.
This approach protects schools from removing valuable provision because it has not produced an academic outcome it was never designed to deliver. It also prevents enjoyable but weakly implemented activities from continuing indefinitely on the assumption that they must be doing some good. Not every educational benefit has to be converted into a literacy or mathematics gain before we are permitted to value it, but every programme should still be purposeful, accessible and well implemented.
Bring the conditions together
The strongest schools I have known do not treat academic instruction and the wider conditions for learning as competing priorities. They establish an ambitious, carefully sequenced curriculum and ensure that teachers have the knowledge and methods required to teach it well. Around that core, they protect pupils’ attention, teach successful participation, respond intelligently to absence, build dependable relationships and create purposeful opportunities for pupils to move, perform, create, compete and contribute.
This coherence is especially important for pupils experiencing disadvantage. Families with greater financial and cultural resources can often replace opportunities that disappear from school. Other pupils cannot. Narrowing the timetable may preserve more minutes for English and mathematics while removing experiences through which children gain cultural knowledge, physical competence, friendship, recognition and connection with their school.
Precision about causation remains essential. Strong behaviour systems protect attention; they do not teach fractions. Attendance gives pupils access to the curriculum; it does not guarantee that the curriculum will be taught well. Art, sport and outdoor learning may strengthen enjoyment, participation, knowledge and belonging; they are not substitutes for excellent academic instruction. Each part of school life makes a different contribution, and the leadership work lies in making those contributions coherent.
The Sydney Bush School study is small, and it does not provide a blueprint for academic improvement. It does, however, remind us to look beyond the simple calculation of how many minutes pupils spend in academic lessons. Schools seeking stronger outcomes should protect attention, make effective use of instructional time, teach pupils how to participate, remove barriers to attendance, build belonging through everyday practice and preserve wider opportunities with a clear educational purpose. Together, these conditions make it more likely that excellent teaching will reach every pupil.
References
ABC News (2026), How playing in a park helped these primary school students thrive.
Department for Education (2025), The link between attendance and attainment.
Education Endowment Foundation (2019), Improving Behaviour in Schools.
Education Endowment Foundation (2024), Supporting School Attendance.
Education Endowment Foundation, Arts Participation.
Education Endowment Foundation, Extending School Time.
Education Endowment Foundation, Physical Activity.
Štremfel, U. et al. (2024), Addressing the Sense of School Belonging Among All Students? A Systematic Literature Review.