Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode
of Teach the Repeat. My name is Dylan and my name is
Hayden. How you doing, Hayden?
I'm all right. You want to have a little.
I'm all right. I don't know.
I feel like the mic. No, no, don't.
You're going to take the mic. This is a safe space.
Is it? Unless it's about the clothes
you wear. Sorry, hang on.
Every single time. It's funny because this is my
house and every single time I'm wearing something you seem to
wear the same so. Yeah, it's weird.
Maybe you're inspired by me, But anyway.
It makes me think I need to change what I'm wearing.
Oh, I look quite similar to that guy.
Normally we start off with a nice cheerful hello, how you
doing everyone? And then we talk about how
everyone should be, you know, rating the podcast because we've
got a lot of brand new listeners.
So they should maybe give us a five star review, be really
helpful, share the podcast, etcetera.
But you wanted to cut through all.
That yeah, I don't think we should do that today.
OK, now sure it's not. Shouldn't ask the viewers to do
all that lovely stuff for. Us.
No. I think we asked them a lot to
rate US on Spotify and iTunes. ITunes.
We can tell who's the one who doesn't be asking.
This guy, he doesn't use Apple old iTunes music and whatever
they call it, they say you. Grab your iPods guys and scroll
through to the Teach Sleep Repeat podcast.
And rate it. But we won't ask them.
We won't ask. Not today, anyway.
I know. Look, we're coming up to Episode
100. We are.
And I think that's maybe playing on my mind because I can't
fathom the fact that we've done 97 of these before this one.
Yeah. Where has that time gone?
Well, that's how time works. I think you'd take them.
Just time chugs on, doesn't it? A wider point actually.
Constant rate. Our children are also ageing at
a constant rate. Yeah, I know.
And I just, I just, it's kind of so quick.
Well, do you know something very, very roughly aligned with
the start of this podcast? Maybe it made us more virile and
ready to go because our babies were conceived around that time
as well. Yeah, yeah.
It just so happens that though, if you look back to when we
start the podcast in early 2023, both of our babies were born in
late 2023. So you can track back basically
the entire journey through pregnancy and through birth and
through our children growing up. It's like almost like a market
of how old this and that's. What?
I mean, but that's but that's gone so quick.
Yeah, it's gone so quick and it just worries me.
No, people always say like older people be like, oh, you just
wait. As you get older, the time it
just goes quicker. And like you said, I'm normally
sarcastic. I'm like, oh it doesn't know
time does It just goes the same. But I think it perceives to go
quicker genuinely, because if you're 40 a year to you is a
40th of your life. If you're 10 a year to you is
1/10 of your life and you don't even remember the first two or
three years. So it's much more proportional
wise a big chunk of your life. So I, I think there is
definitely truth in it. And I think when you have
children who grow so incredibly quickly and and develop so
quickly and change so quickly from like 3 months for our
children is unbelievable that change that goes.
So much happens. If you rewind 3 months and and
then look at now our babies are walking, our babies are talking
way more. Rory reacts to things.
He says yes and. No, Yeah, mines running, yeah.
Is running yours knows other times tables?
Yeah, quicker than Sophie be at the times tables up to 100
already. It's insane.
Quicker than old Sophie. Sophie the robot?
Yeah, but I don't know, I'm just feeling weird about it.
I was laying in bed last night just thinking, am I just, is it?
Am I just going to be 50 like that?
And our kids are just adults and they'll be like, oh, that's
gone, honestly. Yeah.
But that's horrible, isn't it? Makes me.
We need to know the most of it, genuinely.
I don't know. People are listening probably
now, if you don't have kids, you're probably thinking, well,
I've got all this to come or I'm choosing to not do that, or I
can't do that for whatever reason.
I think people go through this thought process either way.
Yeah. You know, you get older and you
think you just blink and you're you're 40.
You know, I'm, I'm 31. You're 32.
You look 40 already. So I mean that must play on your
mind. Baby, I've looked 40 since I was
23. It's gone so.
Quick listen, Hun. I was like you, aged 50 years.
Literally, there's one perk of being of being bald, which is
that you kind of look the same for a long time.
Yeah, to be fair, when you're 50, I've got you.
You look well, you look well, you look you were 23.
You look exactly the bloody same.
Yeah, I'll ignore that. Oh.
Back to a serious point, genuinely I do.
I do know what you mean. It is time does just seem to
move quickly. Does seem that way.
So on that note, yes, how's your week been?
That's gone really quick. Other than my monthly
existential existential crisis that I have, you know, every now
and then, I've been pretty good. So I mean, we obviously went to
BET last week. We spoke about that in our last
episode and when we visited the White Rose stand we were given,
we were given some tiny the turtle plushy. 10 years, weren't
we? They were fantastic.
So you've had one in your class? Yep, I've had one in one in my
class. I left it.
Where have you put yours? Yeah.
Hilariously, now you put an Instagram picture.
Yeah, that's my room. Of of your tiny, the turtle on
your board. I obviously I did the exact same
thing. Did you?
Obviously it was also leaning on my board because it fit nicely.
The legs kind of went over it nicely.
It was there, but I've got they're fascinated by it.
I've got year six. I thought they'd be like, oh,
well done, Mrs Stevens. That's stupid.
Chuck it in a bin. Yeah, but they were like, damn.
Straight up. I'm thinking, can we take turns
maybe. And who looks after each day?
I was like, Jesus Christ, you're that you're that into this tiny.
That's brilliant. They absolutely love.
It it shows how much we use White Rose, doesn't it?
Yeah, I know. Kids in year 6 are like it's a
celebrity. I've seen tiny every week for my
whole school life. What are you?
What are your fours like? I bet.
They loved it. They absolutely loved it.
It was so nice because do you know what kids in general jump
on any opportunity for something that's a bit different and fun?
Yeah, I find that in general, and I think, and sometimes we
get caught in that trap of just like very strictly ready to do,
doing your work to do that, which I think is great for a lot
of reasons. But every now and then, jeez,
have a bit of fun. And this was that moment to do
it. And we had Tiny and I'd put him
on the board before anyone had come in, right.
So I didn't say anything either. And they were coming in.
And it's amazing how perceptive children are when it's not their
own work and doing. Things wrong in their own work.
Because within nought .5 seconds the first child who walked in
went you've got tiny. And I was like, yeah, can you
tell me the date today? No, Underneath tiny.
Yeah. Wouldn't be able to see that
date. What's the date today?
It's the it's underneath the turtle.
You've been shouting about 5 minutes.
It's just there. You're.
The one you spotted immediately. Exactly.
But they loved it. I said on Instagram, one of the
children put their hand up and we were, we kind of gone over
the whole, we've got a tiny, how do you get in, blah, blah.
There's only two in the whole school, minor Mr Stevens
classroom. It's very, very special.
Oh, going to put him here so we can watch because he needs to
learn, doesn't he, Tiny? Anyone who uses White Rose knows
that tiny's wrong 99% of the time.
Yeah. So really good for growth
mindset, really good for the children being able to say no,
it's because of and they're doing reasoning without
thinking. But anyway, we had the whole
chat about it. We kind of sat about down, done
some of our times table work, ready to start a lesson and a
child just put the hand up and I went, yeah, Anyway, can I just
say one thing to Tiny please? To Tiny, yeah.
To Tiny, to him, plushie on the board.
And I was like, yeah, of course, go on.
And he turned to Tiny and he went, Tiny, you have to stop
getting things wrong. And he was being genuine, like
we're going to help, you gotta stop me and we're going to help
you today. Okay?
So it was a really nice hook. My kids loved it, but Tiny
stayed there all day. So we have maths in the morning
and maths classes are slightly different to English and
afternoon classes, but every single child who saw him for the
first time was buzzing and I was so funny.
It's nice though. Yeah, such a simple thing.
I really didn't think it'd have that reaction.
One of the one of my kids I swear went home that night came
in the next day and said bought 1 because you can buy them on
the White Rose website. They literally asked me in
school can we get can we get them?
Can you buy them? I was like, you can.
They're quite expensive though. They're like 15 lbs.
If you want to buy them, we got them for free because obviously.
We're huge influence influencers.
I think the term is Ed. You talk flinters.
Ed, you talk flinters. And by the way, I mean, Dylan
and I just kind of ride off of it.
But he went and bought 1. He was like, it arrives on
Monday. I was like, OK, well, bring in
your tiny. We have a tiny party.
Honestly, I love it. Absolutely love it.
That's so. Sweet.
Oh, that's nice. Well, I glad we had a parallel
experience and both did the exact same thing.
We might even know. Of course we did.
Yeah, like these clothes we're wearing.
It's not a surprise, really, at this point, surely is.
It I just need to have the accidental dread and then what's
what's? That had children at the same
time as well. Yeah.
Inspired by this podcast. Yeah.
Because we talked all the time and we decided we both want
children at the same time. Yeah.
I don't know why, but there we are.
Both our children being Bivar as well.
Everyone asks is that on purpose?
No. Yes.
Not on purpose, we just think the same.
But how's your week been anyway? Other than tiny, yeah.
Yeah, good. I suppose I just want to talk a
little bit about it's not, it's not an existential thing, but
it's just the thing that really plays in my mind as a teacher in
education because you think about why you get into teaching,
right? And it's remember your why and
it's patronising when it makes. You.
I'm sat there thinking it's the money baby.
Or not, but but genuinely, the reason you want to want to be a
teacher is because you want to help the children that that is
the bottom line. You want to be able to do your
job in a way which helps the next generation to understand
things that are important and and help them out and be that
safe space for them. So I think this has been
something on my mind honestly since day one.
It wasn't something that I was AECT and I wasn't sure a newly
qualified teacher what this meant from the start.
It felt wrong and it was this obsession that we have as
teachers about data. OK, so we can talk about that
whole conversation about whether data is important or not and why
it is and why it isn't. Sometimes let's just park that
for a second, but I'm talking very specifically now.
We create bars and levels to get to for our children to be able
to say that this child is expected in maths, this child is
expected in English and we say that's their age expectation.
That's what we should be driving children towards.
We are obsessed with it to the detriment of so many kids in our
class. Because what ends up happening,
and you know, correct me if I'm wrong here, if your school does
something different, but most schools are like this.
And I can see why you're in a people progress meeting and
you've got, let's say 32 children in your class.
And immediately what happens is you are forced to focus down and
magnify on the children around this line that you've invented
yourself to be age expected. OK, so let's say in maths it's
that they've got to do this specific standardised test and
achieve this specific mark for you to be able to call this
child expected. In maths, you've already
narrowed down what maths becomes.
Then maths becomes some judging children on what they get in
this test at the end. So you get rid of everything
else to do in maths in terms of the problem solving, the the
investigations, getting things wrong, being resilient, none of
that matters anymore. They've got to get here in a
test that's already narrowed down, which then you look at
your class and you can honestly narrow it down to like 6 kids
who are on the cusp of this line.
And those six children then become your forced focus to get
over that line. And what happens is the children
who are past that line or have moved past that line in a year,
suddenly they're like, cool, right?
They're there, forget about them, they're there now, that's
fine. They've made this two points of
progress past the line, so that's OK, that's good.
Those kids who are just below the line, are they your focus?
Those kids who are way back behind this imaginary line we
put for age expected, they're never going to get there.
So just plod along with them I suppose, see where they get, but
put your focus on these kids who are closer to this line and
those kids way past the line who are pushing on to making greater
depth for getting full marks in their maths.
Cool, just let them crack on with that.
That's great. They don't need as much support
and you become hyper focused as a teacher or forced to be anyway
on 20% of your kids. Yeah.
And I absolutely hate it because why on earth should a 10% move
for those kids be worth more than a 3040% move for your kids
who are even lower or a 1020% move for your kids who are
higher simply because of this line that we've made-up?
Yeah. Yeah.
It winds me up. It's not that progress isn't
more important than the progress of everyone else.
And I think in general, I think that I'm just fed up with
constantly being given a brand new list of children who are
just on the cusp of something that we've invented.
And we've said it's important because of XY reason.
Just getting past that line, it's like, do you know what?
Do you know what I'm actually going to do?
And I've done this for years and years now.
I'm going to ignore that list and I'm just going to teach well
and help every child who needs help.
And if it comes to an intervention after a lesson, if
there's a group of kids who don't understand why I did that
lesson, I'm going to keep them in the assembly time to do
betters to work for that lesson. I'm not going to go to my list
and be like, I've got to make up something because this list of
children need some extra help. So I'm just going to ignore you
guys who don't get it today. I'm going to get this list of
five children and give them this thing because I need to get them
past this imaginary line. Please.
I don't care. It is a detriment to my
teaching. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's tricky.
I think I'm so I'm so into the year 6 world that like hearing
you say this is like is like a memory for me.
It's like unlocking a memory. I feel like I've not lost my
way, but I feel so indoctrinated into that game that it's kind of
refreshing to hear this because I remember.
I remember thinking all of it. I remember thinking, this is
mad. Why am I not just helping the
lowest ability children at all times of any extra stuff I've
got? Why am I ever putting if I've
only got a small amount of resources to use?
Why am I not only helping the kids who don't get it the most?
The kids who can't add, maybe because that's vitally
important, but also you're not helping the kids who are just
OK. I think that's the thing that
gets forgotten all the time. People have this conversation.
I'll say what you say. I yeah, I agree I should be
helping the lowest children. And my point is, yeah, you
should. But do you know what you should
also not do? Ignore every single child in
your class because just because they can do some maths now,
right, it doesn't necessarily mean that their progress is less
important. I, I, I completely understand
before someone gets annoyed at me and says, well, if you can't
add, you've got to be able to add.
Or if you can't read, you've got to be able to read.
I'm like, yeah, but I'm not even doing that because I've got to
get to this age expected line. With these other mildly kids.
How many kids in Key Stage 2 actually can't read?
Do you know what I mean? Like most kids can read.
There are some children who can't.
They need explicit intervention ASAP.
But most kids who aren't at age expected level, they can read.
Do you know what I mean? They can decode words, they're
just not at the level at the. Bar that we've set.
Exactly not at that bar that we've set is important for age.
I agree. I agree what you're you're
saying in terms of the lowest, but I just my my point is
everyone. I think 80% of kids can honestly
get missed in a school because when you're so data-driven by
lines that we have literally invented.
Ourselves, Especially when the lines are so arbitrary.
Like you're going back to your point about test data, right?
And it normally is, isn't it? Let's be honest, it's normally
they need to achieve X amount of marks in a series of tests.
And for year six it's normally the SAT which is standardised,
but even in the other year groups it becomes whatever you
pick as your end of year test. Of course, which is even worse,
But even with year 6 alone, right?
One of my biggest pet peeves is the fact that when you put up
just a mark threshold on a test, it does mean that there are now
infinite ways for someone to get there.
And it doesn't really, it doesn't really value like what
being a good mathematician is, for example.
Sure, right. I could, you could have, you
could get a honestly, it's going to sound horrible.
You could get a terrible mathematician through the SAS.
Yeah, because you know what, you could look at it.
You look at the analysis again. Sophie does all the analysis
every year, doesn't she? And there's loads of great
insights. You can see.
I think she does it through learning my questions and other
websites. It's really good stuff.
But but you can look at that and be like, oh, so you can pass
these tests just knowing fractions, decimals and
percentages and arithmetic. OK, cool, eight in the
curriculum, then not going to teach that.
And it's like, OK, so they would get through and they would be
expected. But are they a good
mathematician? Absolutely not by any other
metric. No, they're not.
They don't even know what Alder is.
How can you say they're age expected because they passed
this test? OK, well, we've got very
different ideas then of what we think a good mathematician is
that by the time you're 11, don't we?
If if you think that passing that test is it.
And I think actually just knowing a bit more about the
measurement and geometry and and and shape and time, algebra and
time, I think they need to know a bit of all of that actually to
be considered even at a base level of good at maths.
Yeah. But those percentage point
there, that is what it becomes and it winds me up slightly
because I can see the trap happening.
That's why it winds me up even more.
I can see why people go down this route and I completely
understand it. But for me, it's especially in
those years other than year 6. I get why when it comes to the
SAT, it's your, it's your headline data in your league
tables for your score. I completely understand it.
I'm not digging out any leadership team who who think
that's important. I get it.
But it's just frustrating and a bit mind numbing when it happens
in year 3 and it happens in year 4 and it's an end of year
assessment test that you've chosen.
You could have chosen from 57 different tests that you've done
and the line could have been slightly different all the time
and it becomes annoyingly lower down in the school.
Like you say, you look at it and you go, OK, let's stick with
maths. For example, you could get a
mathematician who you've drilled to be really good at arithmetic,
and arithmetic's really important, Don't get me wrong.
I focus on arithmetic of my children because I know it's
what they need to be able to do every single time.
Yeah. And we do some reasoning.
Problem solving. We reasoning all the time.
We do problem solving, I'd say less frequently than other
children might, simply because we're spending so much time
getting better at the. Absolutely.
Exactly. Yeah.
But I can get children free to expected.
Yeah. Four level by getting them to be
36 out of 40 or more and then just doing the reasoning a
problem solving paper and kind of getting like 5 out of 30.
Getting a few of the easy ones. A few of the easy ones might
where they got to match up some place value.
At no point have they got any of the, you know, complicated 2 two
step word problems, right? None of the measuring stuff,
right. The fraction stuff, they're
honestly working like 2030% of the problem solving bits.
It's hard. Anything that combines it or
looks at shape, for example, I just have a go see what you get.
But at the end, they will say expected, Yeah.
And, you know, and you'll get a pound back.
Exactly. And then someone who's expected,
right at the top end of expected, who got so many more
of those questions right, is still just expected, who knows a
lot more about a wider range of areas in math, who is a much
better mathematician. But do you know what?
The child who's just below expected and the child who's
just above expected, they should be getting the same intervention
and help because what's currently happening is the child
who's just above expected and the child who's at the top of
expected are seen as expected. Both put in the same category.
No, you don't need any extra help.
They are so much more different than the ones either side of
this arbitrary line that we've made-up.
And that's the trap We fall in this teachers all the time.
And this is a very long window of me saying way of me saying
that this is how data drives bad practise.
It's so funny you mentioned this as your kind of like your weekly
recap because one of my questions later in that sort of
main bulk is related to that. So we'll come back to that.
You, when I say it, you'll be like, Oh yeah, is very linked to
something when I asked you about simplicity, about losing our way
as teachers and the purpose of things.
So do stick around for that conversation because it should
be a good one. And you've actually panned the
podcast episode for the first time and I think nearly 100.
So that's not a. 100 yet because we're in on the episode 98.
Yeah. OK, shut up.
Right, I want to be riled up by you.
No to you. I want you to.
Yeah, that's. Good, because I've got that
ready. You've got a little riled up for
me ready. It's a section that's becoming a
bit more frequent. It's funny, yeah.
You seem to really revel in it. And unbelievably, like I said,
it's making you prepare stuff for the podcast.
It is. And I and I just.
I'm desperate for you to embarrass yourself.
OK. You know, I'm desperate for you
to say. I'm desperate to get so
passionate that you embarrass yourself.
And we all go, ha, ha. Look at you.
Yeah. And you want me to get
cancelled, so yeah. And you get.
Cancelled new presenter in probably Sophie the Robot and
we'll crack on. I don't know he'll be planning
it. Then and we start making, we'll
make this podcast good. Yeah, OK, we'll run our socials.
Whatever right here? What's the context here?
Just online for me. Just online.
I just, I just see things online all the time and I'm like, oh,
that's interesting. Interesting question there.
It's always anonymous, so I don't know who these people are.
Someone said they've got year group meetings during PPA.
Just wait because I know you're already, I can already see you
deceiving. Year group meetings during PPA
at my school were regularly directed to do certain tasks.
In that time. I've never been too bothered
because I felt like if we didn't do it then we'd only have to do
it after school anyway. That does come into touch.
Which is a fairpoint or during lunch or something like that.
However, it occurred to me today that this does mean that the
meetings don't show up as directed time on our calendar,
right? It's hidden.
Recently, we've been also directed to do tasks in the
morning of our PPA. So I don't always have time to
do what I actually planned to do in the spare time in my PPA
after this meeting. And it's beginning to annoy me.
I don't know what I should do. What should I do?
Well, I'm going to call you out immediately on something you did
last week, which was when you mentioned the four day week
thing, you said there's a school who's gone to four days a week
and teachers get the 5th day off.
And I was like, it's not off because they've got to do work.
They get the fifth way to the fifth day to do work.
They've got to do. So when we're talking about PPAI
think so many of these problems stem from the idea that it's
off, the idea that it's a, it's a favour we had.
We had a message, a comment this week about how someone said I
did something about how PPA should be flexible, should be
able to take it from home, blah blah, blah.
Someone commented really annoyed saying, oh, and teachers never
bloody think about who's covering their PPA, do they?
They always just desperately obsessed with wanting their PPA
and whoever is covering it, who's thinking about the
children and their safety and the HLTA who have to cover it.
And I was like, yeah, that's not our problem.
I'm sorry, in the, I'm sure you've got some very, you know,
adequate grievances that are fine.
Yeah. It's not our problem though.
And if you're scrambling to cover for PPA every week, that's
an SLT problem. And your school problem to.
Be honest, yours exactly that because 99% of schools from what
I've heard have a bit of a system in place, at least PPA
and it is sacred. Anyway, this, this person is the
PPA is being used incorrectly. Do you know what I mean?
This person has to go to their union and say something because
PPA is not time off. PPA is not a favour.
PPA is not something where you can go, well, it's OK actually
I've got PPA that day, so I'm sure they won't mind doing a
meeting. Oh, I'll just look in a parent
meeting that day because there's PPA, there's some free time.
They've got time. It's not free time.
Let me make this extremely clear.
The amount of work teachers have to do outside of the classroom
just to be able to deliver their work in of the classroom in the
first place, it is much more than the time they're allocated
for that planning, preparation and assessment in their PPA
time. So anything you put into PPA
that takes time away from your teachers being able to do that
is adding time onto the teachers free time where they'll have to
complete that work. If you have 4 hours of work a
week to do outside of the classroom and you get 2 hours of
PPA, you get 2 hours you've got to do outside of the classroom.
Completely normal. Often more.
If you put an hour meeting in that PPA, guess what?
That four hours of work still has to get done.
So that is an extra hour now that I've got to do at the
weekend. It's not acceptable, It's not
fine. PPA is sacred, and the only
thing we should be working towards as a whole staff is not
gaslighting teachers into thinking they're the problem
because they want their PPA protected.
It's actually working together with teachers to try and make
whatever extra work they've got to do outside of the classroom
actually fit into that time we're given to do the job.
So stop putting the onus on teachers from wanting their PPA
time to be sacred and to have at least 10%.
At least 10%, by the way, not, not any less, because an
afternoon is often not even 10% because the morning's so much
longer. But we should be working
together to make it work. Stop gaslighting teachers.
Stop making them feel bad. It's not time off.
It's time they literally need to be able to deliver the bulk of
their own job. That's really important.
Wow. Well, thank you, Shakespeare.
That was a monologue and 1/2 that wasn't it.
Crikey. Really good.
Yeah, very interesting. I totally agree.
But what would you say to the one point in there which I
thought was very like, I can see where teachers would think,
which was about the meetings being other times.
So the meeting in PPA he was like or she I don't know, his
person was. If I don't do it now, I only
have to do it another time anyway.
Yeah. If you what do you think about
that If you've got a group meeting, not a star.
Yeah. If you've got to meet with your
group, whatever reason, it does make sense to do it in PPA.
Yeah, right. But that has to be a decision
that you will make. OK.
I remember I worked in a school once where it was from the top
down, you have to have AU group meeting every week and in one
hour and 1 hour and it was after school and that was on top of
your hour week of training. That is completely wrong.
That is not something that I think is acceptable because
you're putting the onus on and you've got to do an hour
meeting, OK. What it should be is just you're
working with your year group team as a teacher who's doing
their planning, preparation and assessment.
If you and your team decide that it's beneficial to get together
to help with that planning because then it's more
efficient. We're all on the same page.
Maybe you're sharing planning so you end up doing less anyway.
There should be no time on it. We often, we often meet with our
year group in PPA for honestly 10 minutes or less at the start
of every PPA. It's almost like a let's get our
heads together. We don't often get time to sit
in the same room because we're so busy teaching.
Let's get our heads together. Any notices we need to know
about and if I don't know about it, it will have much of A
detrimental impact later. I'm, I'm completely like, I want
those meetings. I want to use my PPA for that
because it helps me when it becomes just simply, well, SLT
have given us an agenda that we've got to get through because
we're a year group meeting and we have to do it in our PPA.
That's when it becomes wrong. And if at any point, right, I
could go to my head of year and I could say I'm so sorry.
I'm. I'm completely swamped.
I've been asked to do this. I'm just going to crack on with
this. Could you please just e-mail me
these points? Yeah.
Do you know what my year group leader would say?
Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, of.
Course, because yeah, it's not directed.
Yeah, exactly. It's not.
I agree. I I think it's been an
interesting thought experiment, having worked in a school, but
also did an hour set, very set hour rigid.
You have to do AE group meeting and now and now working in a
school where that's the E group meetings are not, they're not
even talked about. They're just some people do and
some people don't like it doesn't even matter.
They're just not a thing. Right.
I'd like to do a thought experiment with people maybe
that do have that set time. Maybe it's an hour, maybe it's
half an hour, but whatever. A set time a week where it's
like a you have to have a year group meeting.
How much of that year group meeting could be scrapped?
How much of that you group meeting could honestly just turn
into a passing conversation in the corridor?
How much that you group meeting could just be an e-mail from
your head of year? And I I because my personal
feeling is having gone from a school that did it to a school
that didn't do it. I don't feel like I've lost
anything. Every single thing we did in
those you group meetings. I now just do just in the
morning walking past. Oh, we've done this thing for
today. Oh yeah, Thanks for reminding me
that spend 5 minutes in the morning then go.
It's adding to my little list. That's fine.
I've done that now three days later in at lunchtime.
Or did you did you see that or I put it through?
I got I emailed it to you. Oh yeah, check it out later.
I'll do it this afternoon. You just it just turns into like
part of the job. Not it doesn't need to be and me
are wasting an hour of my PPA or wasting an hour after school.
I just I just I reckon I can't imagine there's many of you out
there if you are doing it an hour year group meeting that
that disagree of that and think no, no, we definitely that hour
is essential that I sit there exclusively doing that for an
hour. I doubt it.
No, I completely agree. And I think I think it has to
come from the teacher. Is it useful for the teachers?
If the answer's yes, then call. And if it becomes scatty like
you're saying, yeah, in terms of I can imagine that can become
quite a scatty situation where things are forgotten.
Yeah, sure. Use e-mail.
Yeah. Honestly, just do a bullet point
e-mail or have like have some kind of notice board, genuinely,
in your year group, have some notice board.
Maybe it's in your year group leaders classroom.
Yeah, whatever it might be. Or in your shared area, if
you've got one, just just have a way of just writing things down
where you don't all have to be in the same room for half an
hour. You know, it can just be like
I've updated the board or sent an e-mail or we've got this to
do I think in this ways around. Yeah.
And then if something is essential, guess what?
In PPA, you just do what you did.
You just spend 3 minutes talking to your team.
Yeah, if you need to. Which as teachers, we're not.
We're not against that. Doesn't matter, we're not
against that. Yeah, anyway, so there we go.
I thought that was an interesting one.
But yeah, I think protect your PPA time, fight for it.
My advice would be if they have any, if they have something to
say about that, of you saying, oh, actually it's undirected
time, then you're in a toxic school.
So at that point, don't care about it.
Just do what you need to do at that point.
If they're toxic, then don't care about their feelings
because they don't care about yours.
So just fight the fight. That's the way to.
There we are. Anyway, you've got you've been
saying to me all week about some stories.
Yeah. On Instagram.
Yeah. Have you got them?
Well, basically since we've had the big boom in numbers in the
last few weeks, so has the amount of messages that we've
been getting right. And I think these two messages
perfectly summarised something we said last week, which was how
schools are so different. So I'm going to read them out.
There's 2 here. Here's the first one, showing
how schools can be amazing. OK.
All right. So just listening to this week's
podcast, I really want to share what my school are doing.
Last year my school implemented a whole day of PPA from home and
have continued it this academic year.
On that day children do Forest school PE and art.
Really great for the kids. I think they have invested money
in an art studio with an art specialist teacher.
What our head teacher told us this at the time.
Use this day off to ensure your well-being is taken care of as
long as you get the work done because you're professionals and
I trust you, do what you like. If you want to work late 33
evenings a week and have the day off, then just do that.
If you want to take your kids to Chessington for the day and then
work on Sunday, do that. If you want to use it to ensure
you do not work at the weekends, do that as well.
As well as this, we get subject release time twice a term
separate to these PPA days. I'm not going to say it's been
complete magic and it's just completely fixed education, but
my goodness, it's been refreshing to work in a school
where you're actually treated like professionals and trusted
to do your job. We need more, We need more.
If you work in a school like this, please write in more
because I tell you what, it gives me hope.
I I sometimes feel like there's no hope.
And hearing that makes me feel, I feel giddy.
I feel so good because, oh, my God, there's a head teacher out
there that's doing the thing that I said I would do if I was
a head teacher. Yeah.
Someone doing that. Yeah, absolutely.
It's so exciting. And and do you know what?
Someone summed it up, I can't remember where I saw this the
other day, and it was saying that teachers are not selfish
creatures. The more you give to teachers,
the more they will give you back.
Yeah. If you invest like this in your
teaching staff, your children will get more out of it and it
will be a better school in general.
Yeah. That's one thing to add to this.
Incredible. Because afterwards, you know,
I've got, let's say, a bee in my bonnet, but about Academy
trusts. And I thought, you know what?
This. To be fair, this sounds like
something an Academy trust could do because they've got the big
budget, maybe everyone goes on about how its economies of
scale, etcetera. She messaged after to say she's
also working for a local authority school.
It's not. That isn't.
That is not a SO. It's not a trust.
It's not something, sadly. Well, I've seen what we can do.
Yeah, we can do it wherever, wherever, around.
It doesn't have to be part of a trust where the CEO is taking
20% of the. Budget you'd expect the caveat
to be, and we get all this because they don't pay any of
the staff correctly. So we've got this budget to have
this art studio. But that is another thing
though, in the, you know, in, in, in the dream world, we'd all
have the budget to have an art studio and a forest school and
specialist teachers to come and do that.
Most local authority schools don't have it.
I don't know why, I don't know what, I don't know how budgeting
works, but I. Reckon it can happen?
For a lot. But it is a reality for
somewhere, so it must. It must be a way to make that
happen. Yeah, so it, it really is
incredible. Sorry, I'm just trying to make
sure I can breathe because my, are you right?
My nose currently has what feels like a valve at the top because
I can't breathe properly. So anyone listening, I'm so
sorry if I sound like a, a machine malfunctioning.
And so we've got that, that I, I read that and I was like, do you
know what? I've got hope.
What an amazing thing for education system.
Then I went to TikTok and had another message from someone
very, very much. By the way, I appreciate you
sending this message. I appreciate all messages, but
when they're a bit more, you know, this is a bad thing that
happened to me. I do appreciate someone putting
their heart on the sleeve like that.
So thank you. Obviously going to remain
anonymous. I was a student in what I
thought was a fantastic school and I even went to this primary
school and knew how good it was. I was successful in a job
interview and unfortunately due to a number of factors I was
left as an ECT as leader of supply.
So sorting out all supply as well as being given a subject
responsibility of maths, something at the time that he
thought was an amazing privilege and you can frame it away for a
new teacher like wow you're in charge of maths.
However you know obviously by the end he knew what was
happening. He was also seen as the young 1,
so any IT problems came straight to him and as a result was also
given IT coordinator. Oh my God.
So a brand new teacher given maths lead huge job, ICT lead
just because they can unplug AHDMI cable and also then leader
of supply and helping his other EC TS as well.
OK huge responsibilities. So at 21 years of old he was
head of maths, head of computing, head of PE and unit
leader for two other EC TS as well as being one himself.
In his first year he had a verbal altercation with a parent
when the mother of the child in question said effing pointless
and useless why the F are you a teacher?
Which then led to her coming into the playground and out of
nowhere, slapping slash, punching a closed fist kind of
slap in the face. No.
I don't want to put future teachers off because it is fun
in so many ways, and when it's fun it's amazing.
But something has to change, doesn't it?
I I can't fathom that. There's so much to unpack.
Firstly, is he the only teacher at this school?
And doing every job I know I know, apart from never 2 EC
teachers. Isn't Yeah, yeah, of course.
Oh my God, that's insane. Like.
But I wonder people quit. Do you not see the the two the
two like problems there? Like in terms of how amazing
schools are, the first school, unbelievable the way that that
school treated their new staff like, don't you think?
I think personally when you're in ECT because it's a two year
thing now, those two years should be spent either shadowing
someone to learn what they're doing in a maybe in a role they
want to be master lead one day, call shadow the actual master
lead. Then just shadow them and
learning to teach. Get better at teaching.
They were obviously desperate for filling these roles for
whatever reason. But why?
I mean, say something. Yeah, that's I mean, it's almost
ironic, isn't it? Because clearly it's the fact
that they did that to that ACT probably shows why they didn't
have an athlete in the 1st place because people don't clearly
don't want to work to place like that.
And if you know, you know, what with the parent thing is
rubbish, but it's kind of like that's a little bit more out of
your control in terms of you can't, you can't change the
catchment that you're in, if you know what I mean.
You can, you can help to uplift the the area, but like the
catchment, what I'm trying to say here is it's so vastly
different where you end up working, what kind of catchment
you're in and what kind of parents you might be serving.
Yeah, but I think you get parents like that wherever, just
unhinged parents who are. So yeah, of course you get.
I remember working quite an affluent area and I had parents
who were on at me more than ever constantly saying why you doing
this, my child? Why you doing that for my child?
My child should get this. My child should get that and I
get my parents defend their children and treat teachers like
rubbish. But to close.
School. No no to close fist someone hit
like like this, but the school should then be absolutely on it
immediately on your side banning that person, getting the
authorities involved. I'm hoping they did that.
Yeah, well, apparently at the time that he's this guy was
saying how he just wasn't in a position where he felt confident
to him. No, that's disgusting.
Then that is disgusting. Like because you didn't mention
that. I just assumed in that part the
best happened. I'm assuming that parent was
banned from the school. Yeah, but maybe not, maybe not
that. I mean that would be that would
be honestly discussed. That's that point.
I'm like, okay, get police involved.
That's mental. That's not even like a school
thing anymore. That is a you've been assaulted
by by another person. That is ridiculous.
Yeah, I feel sorry for that person.
Go work in the other school that we had in the 1st.
Story, but doesn't that just show in general?
I know there's more to that story, but the the point of
being the difference in schools, yeah, absolutely.
From one school to another, you've got 74 different pieces
of workload to do on top of just learning how to be a teacher.
And then the other one, you've got a head teacher going.
Do you want to go to Chessington on Friday?
Paid the same mad broken, broken job.
Absolutely crazy, by the way. I just thought I'd show you
that. I thought it was very
interesting. Shall we get into the main bar
for this episode? You have been doing a lot of
thinking about simplicity and how it seems to be missing from
my education system. So funny enough, earlier on in
the podcast, I said, oh, didn't you've mentioned something that
I'm going to ask you later? And my first question in this
whole idea of simplicity and have teachers lost their way,
right? Which is the kind of overarching
question I've got here is about people quitting, which we know
is terrible right now. Retention is awful.
Are people leaving this job because we've lost our purpose?
And earlier on you mentioned about the whole set, the test
testing thing and setting imaginary bars.
Do you think that is either a a big reason or the biggest reason
that teachers just don't want to do this job anymore?
I think it's a big reason. I don't know if it's the
biggest. I think when when a teacher.
Quits it's for it's for a big reason and that big reason is
usually a combination of stuff. So I, I very rarely see a
teacher who's quit because of one thing.
I see a teacher who goes I didn't want to quit but XYZ and
all of these things added up and and just culminated to me
leaving. I think this is a big part of
it. I think this, this idea of just
doing stuff because it's the stuff we're told we have to do
by ourselves, like the amount of stuff that is like, well, the
policy says that we need to be doing this.
I was like, so yeah, who wrote the policy?
We did. Why don't you change policy
then? Because every single person in
this room knows that what you're asking me to do is completely
pointless. But we all justify it by saying,
well, it's just what we've got to do because we decided we've
got to do it. Mad What?
Can we all just wake up? For a second?
I felt like in a school that happened so much, we can change
what we've got to do then because we're in control of it,
we don't need to do it anymore. That's circular thinking, isn't
it? Like completely insular circular
thinking. We have to, because we made this
rule. Who made the rule?
We did, and I've heard you say it in Derby.
Can we change the rule then? Yeah.
You want to change the bar? Can we change the policy?
I'm so fed up because I'm doing all this and no one else isn't.
Do you use what you're doing? Like, do you use that sheet
you're fitting in every time you do something?
No, but we've got to. Who said?
We've got to the English lead. Who's the English lead?
Someone down there who also. Doesn't me it's.
Like what? Oh, mad.
So this so that Fort train that you kind of explored earlier is
kind of the inspiration I had for this episode, which is about
about losing our purpose and teachers wanting to quit this
job. Is it because of that
simplicity? Is it because we've become too
complex? We've made too many imaginary
bars? There's just so much going on.
And we also speaking to so we're mentioning Sophie a lot in this
episode. Sophie, just like clearly we're
your biggest fan. Virtual podcast host.
Yeah, and Spirit, she is Rai, because of course she's a robot.
And she mentioned this article from 2017 that we'd never read.
Quite surprised because apparently it was huge.
And it was called The Extraordinary Case of Mr
Yamazaki by Solomon Kingsnorf. Great name, fantastic pseudonym
apparently unfortunately. But if there is someone out
there called Solomon Kingsnorf, get in touch because that is the
best name I've ever heard, honestly.
It really is you. Minded me.
Called Solomon King. What's your name?
Solomon. Solomon.
Solomon Solomon Kingsnorf. I've listened to that guy.
Yeah, absolutely that guy. Onto the actual article though,
so we will link this down below. Do actually give it a proper
read because it was genuinely like fascinating we were in or
reading this whole thing. But we're just going to go over
some of the key points from it. And the whole point of this
article is to highlight, highlight how simple things
could be and I guess ironically, spotlight how complex we've made
it, how overcomplicated the job of teaching and just education,
teaching and learning has become.
So let's go over some of the key points and.
By the way, if you're listening, stick to the end.
There is an unbelievable twist at the end.
It's like it blew my mind at the end honestly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do stick around.
So in this school, which is a through school, so it's not a
Junior School year, it's reception all the way to year 6,
right? Primary school in the first
year, they have stripped back the curriculum to just two
objectives. So in reception, Dylan, what do
these children focus on? It's it's it's incredible.
I read this learning the alphabet by citing handwriting
and counting to 20 and back. That's it.
It's, it's not even an idea that a child can leave reception, not
be able to do these two things, because in the current system,
like you said, of things sitting on top of each other all the
time, these two things, actually this head teacher has decided
that's what I want my children to do at the end of reception.
And apart from that, they do loads of informal learning, no
formal learning. Apart from that, it's all play.
And it's not even learning through play.
You know, it's not going clipboard out.
And they're at this station because there's five stations
set up and I've got to make sure you're pretending to be a vet.
I'm going to take off that you're talking.
No, no, just play, Just play. And that is it.
And stories. Yeah, stories are the big one.
Yeah, and the vocab is built through stories.
The UK average for reception child is 1500 to 1600 words.
This can significantly increase children's vocab to 3.8 to
4.2000. You can more than double it just
from having play and stories at the centre of everything,
alongside counting 20 back and then in the alphabet.
So once they've done that in reception, they move to year one
in this school and in year 1 it's seen as the most vital
year. Every single bit of resource is
put into year one because the idea is that later on in the
school, if these foundations are solid, you can add stuff quickly
because they've already got those foundations in place.
So why? Why is what year one important
in this case? I mean a year one.
I mean, I've always thought this anyway, So reading this, I was
like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, because I think the lower
down is more important for those foundations.
Just quick segue because like how many times in upper school
have you encountered a child who is significantly behind in their
ability to read and do basic numeracy right?
And you and you look back, if you look back at that journey,
you think, well, I'm sure we did everything we could though to
get them there. And you go, oh, no, they spent
this much time learning about the Mayans.
They did this much time learning about there's other things.
I'm not saying these subjects are bad, but there's a point
where I'm like, should they just have focused on these extremely
essential foundations? Or more more importantly, in
maths, should they have not gone on to 17 other things before?
They can do that? Because I still think learning
about different cultures is so important.
And in this school they're still learning about the Mayans.
It's just in story time, in the afternoon.
They're still doing history, it's just in story time.
It's built into narratives which the human mind is wired to take
in. It's not wired to take in six
individual lessons about Mayans. We're talking about how the
community has changed over time, just with these young kids.
These children in this school, according to this, this article,
can recite you this unbelievable historical story about how a
whole culture was founded because they did it for a story.
Great. And then in maths, you know
what? They're not gonna learn what a
fraction is until Year 5 because there's no point.
Can they do these things? Don't over saturate it, still do
maths, still do history, still do geography, but at the level
what's important for. Them get rid of those imaginary
bars you can learn fractions in in a fraction of the time when
you are 10 years old compared to trying to learn it when you're
6. And you still don't really know
your multiplication. Yeah.
It's like, just leave it. Do they need to know it?
Seriously, if you really think about it, most of the
curriculum, how much do we, how much they need to know at eight?
Yeah. Does it matter if they learn at
10? Yeah.
Like what are they do? Are they going to get a job at
8? Are they?
Or they're going to get that 8 year old job now.
They don't know it now though, so just as long as they're
before they're 16. Honestly just let them learn it
at some point. Maybe let their brain develop,
then teach them this thing. It'll be twice.
It's so much easier. It's mad what we do about.
So in year 1, one of us 3 learning objectives because it's
three now or be careful a. Lot of weight is 3 and year, so
reading and writing every phonemographing.
OK, brilliant. Simple, right?
Counting to 110 and back. Yep.
And finally mastering all number bonds to 20.
That includes not just like knowing numbers to 20, it
includes number ones to 19. Yes, number ones to 18/17/16 all
the way down. So knowing what 9 + 6 is.
Yeah, exactly. Straight away all of your 1
digit number bond facts. Yeah, off by heart, that's it.
So no extended writing or unnecessary subjects at this
point it is just mastering the basics and again using
storytelling, using stories to to enrich their idea of the
world. Exactly.
That's fine at this point. Exactly that doesn't have to be
a formal you've got to history book.
We're writing down a fill in the blanks in this sentence because
the sentence your teacher just told you no, let the mixed
school let them have stories. Do you know at this point I was
reading through and then we we used through the rest of the
article told through the rest of the school has interviews with
head teacher himself. Yeah, yeah.
And I was just I was so inspired.
I was so inspired. And this guy's basically coming
and completely challenged all this traditional UK primary
education. Yeah.
This model of just like, well, we've got to be sure we're
always assessing children all of the time.
More, more, more. We've got to write this down on
this piece of paper. And if they can't do this and
obviously they're not age expected and we need to make
sure they can do that. And it's at the detriment of
every everything else. Strip it back.
Unbelievable. Outcomes were better.
I was ready to be completely converted.
And then you messaged me. And we found out what did I
message you, Dylan? What did I message you?
This is a fictional I'm. Like no.
But the the point of the fictional piece of work was to
have this impact, and it was to make this point that we're going
to talk about now. Simplicity is lost.
And actually it was about overload.
If I was to summarise the issue or one of the biggest issues,
there's several with with teaching and education right
now, it is overload. It is always, always, always.
What more can our kids do? We need to make the day at
school longer because we can't fit everything in.
I promise you, if we make the day at school longer, we'll fit
it and we'll have more stuff to fit in.
Simplicity. Strip it back.
Less is more. Yeah.
So you've come up with some points.
Yeah, so this, the whole thing just inspired me.
It made me think of some questions and I thought I was
going to ask you at the time and I thought, no, I'm going to be
clever and save it for the podcast and ask what your
opinions are. So my first question to you,
because of this over complication which you've just
highlighted, do you think education has actually got worse
for children? No.
I think education is way better than if you look at the 70s and
80s. And I think it's really, really,
really easy to forget that. I think education, a child's
education right now in school is so much better than it was
because we were so driven by the fact that standards were so bad
back then. And when people say, yeah, we
used to just sit and behave in class, yeah, because you had to,
because someone would throw a board rubber at you.
They'd throw a board rubber at your head if you didn't.
OK, We don't have that anymore. In general, yes.
However, I think we've gone way too far down the route of test
data, getting people through certain things and covering as
much as we possibly can to cram it in.
Because back then there was no national curriculum and kids
just did artsy farty thing, enjoyed it, by the way.
Kids just did little artsy farty things all day.
And now it's like, no, we need to make sure kids are getting
all of this and they are definitely getting a better deal
for that, but it's gone too far. So in terms of is it worse over
time? Probably not worse, but it, it
could be so much better. And and we're at the point now
the Nexus, I think, where it is becoming worse because we're so
obsessed with more, more, more, more, more, more, more.
Yeah. So I think it's easy for someone
to sit here and be like, it's worse than ever.
It's not. It's just not Yeah, but it.
But it could be so, so much better.
You're kind of thinking on a bit of a macro level there as well.
You're thinking like overall. Yeah, overall it's way better.
So let's granularize it. Granularize another word.
I made that a little bit right? Maybe you need to do some more
English sources, girls. Yeah, clearly my education was
not good enough. I should be in today's
education, actually. Thank you.
I'd have learned and that three years old, but if we think about
just some. I was trying to think about this
question. I've been asked at loads of
times and I'll always say what you say.
I'm like, no, at the end, you know, I moan about things, but
education for kids is better. But then I do think that am I
falling into the trap as well, though, of being like, yeah, I
think it's better by the metric standards, the standards that we
have set. Because when I think about stuff
that maybe used to be valued more, that isn't valued anymore,
stuff like mental math skills, it just isn't valued anymore.
Aura C skills. I saw that come up on Teacher
Tap this week and I was like, Oh yeah, Aura C.
It was asking, does your school do this?
I was like, no, I don't have anyone that does Aura C
anywhere. And just other life skills in
general. Do you feel like that they're
just like, have they got worse? And if they've got worse, is it
because we don't think they matter anymore or I don't know.
It made me like my mind shift. Do you know what stuff normally
gets worse because there's less time to do it, but very rarely
the stuff get worse just because.
So when we're thinking about like oracy skills and mental
strategies, 100% they've got worse than when we were at
school. Mental strategies for us, we
looked at SAT's papers from like 2002 thousand and four that area
when we were taking. And a lot of them are way more
reliant on mental strategies. And I think mental strategies
have got way worse in maths, oracy skills have got way worse
in English because we've been cramming in with, well, who
needs obviously skills anymore? Because you need to tell me what
a determiner is. What's a determiner?
So. So yeah, I completely understand
what you mean. There are certain things that
are getting worse. Absolutely.
And it is because of the lack of time put towards doing them
because it's way more complicated than ever.
And we're trying to cram more in and we are prioritising the
wrong things. Yeah.
Like, honest to God, for a child in a primary school, how much
more important is it that they know their number bond within 20
than it is that they can identify an adverb in a
sentence? It Do you know what identifying
an adverb in a sentence is almost completely point.
It's probably. It's OK.
It's completely pointless. OK, I'm just thinking about it.
Can I say it's completely pointless?
Yeah, I can. Because you know what?
Do you know how many kids, if they're doing really good or AC
skills, would be saying adverbs and putting it in their work
anyway that it doesn't matter if they can't?
I was a teacher. I had to teach myself what
adverbs were at the start. Does that not say something
like, I could write whole essays and I went for a whole history
degree. I wrote a dissertation on
African history, went to grammar school.
I went to grammar school. I was absolutely fine no matter
what the situation you got. Oh, but to be highly educated,
you must be able to tell me where the determiners are.
Intend. No, no, you don't.
You, you have to do that because we have to tick boxes to get
through tests and things like that.
Yeah. Yeah.
And that's the that's the harsh value.
And those metrics go up, which is why I feel like you can.
It's easy to justify. Yeah, education is getting
better, look, because they know what determiners are now.
And my overall point here is like, yeah, but do these things
really matter? What do we actually think is a
good education? Because I'm starting to like
doubt myself and start and starting to think.
I actually think education is maybe getting a little bit
worse. It's just that the metrics we've
put in place, they go up, but I don't value them very much
really. When I really think about it, I
might actually don't kids, if kids are worse at speaking and
doing mental maths. Education's got worse in my
opinion. I don't know.
I think there's, I think there's, I think there's space
for that. I think a really good point.
Yeah, yeah, at second point from again inspired by this article
and again inspired by you as well really talking about it
earlier. Oh, thank you.
Well not really because I pre planned it, but I pretend for
your sake teaching. Is it less enjoyable than ever
before? So what in terms of the lack of
simplicity? Yeah, because because our jobs,
I'm sort of moving away from the kids a little bit now, just
thinking about the complexity of teaching.
Yeah, right. Like you said, there's so much
stuff we mentioned last week about being overwhelmed with a
million different options on how to do things.
Does do you think that makes teaching less enjoyable, or is
it the other stuff we've mentioned?
It's, it's part of it for sure. All you need to do is talk to a
teacher who's been in the job for more than 20 years and they
will all say the same thing. Teaching is not what it used to
be. And there's a reason for that.
It's because they used to come in right.
And, and we can think back to when we were in school
ourselves. I feel like there was way more
time when I was in Year 5, year 6, where we do like project
work. We do like a whole project on
Romans. And it was the best thing I've
ever done ever. And I'd spend an afternoon doing
a front cover of a Roman soldier.
Yeah, yes. And then, and then I spend the
next afternoon doing an acrostic poem.
Right. And I spend the afternoon after
just looking for a Roman textbook and copying like a the,
the, the, the weaponry down and doing like an inventory.
God, yeah. Do you know what I mean?
Like, do you know what is that or, but we didn't write down how
the the democracy of the time was changing because the
comparisons between people beforehand, when you're 9, you
couldn't care less. And it doesn't mean education is
better now. It just means that I'm less
involved. I'm less infused.
And from a teacher's point of view, I see children lessons
used than ever. And I'm relying on children who
are infused by learning full stop to carry the class more
than ever. There's always going to be
children who it doesn't matter what you do.
I do like that story I said earlier when we did a lesson on
longitude and latitude, the most boring lesson I've ever done in
my life. And there were one or two kids
in there who were like, this is so interesting, isn't this fun?
And I was relying on them to carry the whole class of 32
kids. And we've on my own doing 2
hours of latitude. And you've just got to look at
yourself in that moment and go, what am I doing?
Like what am I doing? We could be doing so much more
fun, really cool stuff with the children right now.
And that's why I feel like what it used to be.
And I think the reason why is because we're being told from
the top down, you need to make sure you've got all the progress
and all the things all of the time.
You need to be able to write it down.
You need to be able to assess them all the time.
What's your teacher assessment for this children in this?
One thing about longitude and latitude, because when it comes
to Year 5, the teachers going to be looking back at the sheet and
seeing where they were in that, and they're going to be
informing that no, they're not. Yeah.
Do some teaching. It will stick for some kids.
It won't stick for others. Do it again next year when you
do geography again. It'll stick for more.
By the time they're 16, do you know what they might know?
What longitude latch it is. Some of them might not, and
they'll be fine. Yeah.
Because they'll never use it because they're not interested
in it. They they won't.
They're not going to go and get a job in that field.
It's fine. Yeah.
Whatever, it should just be about creativity and enjoyment
because yes, English, being able to read and maths being able to
add and tell the time and stuff like that.
They're the core things that have no negotiating around them.
The rest of maths and English and the whole of everything else
should be about enrichment, enjoyment.
Inspiring I have I have such fond memories you talking about
primary school then I have such fond memories of primary school
and every single one of those memories is is through doing
enriching tasks it's through doing practical things it's
through looking at stuff and making booklets like you said,
and I am really worried and I've been worried about this for
years and it genuinely makes me feel strange because I because I
because I feel like I'm contributing to it.
I like implicitly I have to is that I just think kids are so
much less happy. That's that there's just like
compared to even just when we were kids, which, you know, you
go back even more generations. Maybe it's different, I don't
know, Maybe we had the peak time, which I think there's a
good argument for by the way, like 90s and early 2000s.
I mean, there's a good argument for that being like peak
enjoyment for kids at school. But I am genuinely really
concerned that kids are so unhappy now on average compared
to 20 years ago at school. And we are just doubling down on
that. And like we are half the
problem. I think half the problem is
outside of school. I think it's social media and
all those sorts of things. There's massive influences that
are just ruining our brain and rotting our brains.
Do you know what I mean? And we don't know about them
yet. It's not been long enough.
We'll look back in 100 years and be like, oh.
Can't believe kids had that. The old brain rot generation,
like look at them all now in their 70s, like completely.
You know, I think we might look back, but there's another part
which is specifically our fault. If we have control.
As educators, not mean, you know, not on like, a granular
level, but as education where it's just, it's too complex and
we value the wrong thing. Yeah, like that first question I
asked you. We've lost sight of oracy skills
and life skills and having fun and enjoying school.
It's not about enjoying school. It's about meeting standards.
That's it. I had so many people message,
message like comment on stuff recently because I spoke about
how we don't value stuff like English and maths and so many
people took that as what do you mean you don't value being able
to read? Oh, well, when there's a job
asking for a GCSE in PE, maybe then that'll get some.
And it's like, are you that dumb that you can't see through
exactly what I'm saying? Do I need to explain it to you
completely What I obviously mean by that?
Do you think as a teacher that I don't think being able to read
is the most important thing in the world?
Can you just for a second think honestly just you maybe you
needed more English. Maybe that was the.
Problem because you don't refer anything.
But the the point was just because I value the fact that
kids should be able to read and write and stuff, I'm not saying
that that's not important or I'm not saying that being able to
run a lap is just as important as being able to read.
What I'm saying is that we still have to value these other
things. We still have to value the love
for learning. And when it comes to PE, I'm not
saying a GCSEPE, I'm a primary school teacher saying I want my
kids to be active and that time should not be taken away and I
will die by that hill. I think most people agree with
that. It's so funny.
I love it when you get vexed by if.
You honestly like because you know what?
Again, 98% of our comments are unbelievable and it's so kind
and it's really lovely and it's nice to read, but that's 2%.
You stick with me because I don't mind people disagreeing
with me, but when they just jump on something and just completely
take out a context, I'm like, what's wrong with you?
Yeah, you just want an argument. Yeah, I don't mind people
disagree me unless they're wrong, basically, which some
people just are anyway. Anyway, simplicity.
That's a really good point. I've got one another thing
because again, you talked earlier about that article and
saying how we could just, we could just not teach kids
certain things to their older. It doesn't actually matter as
long as they learn it at some point before they leave.
Does it matter if they learn it at a smaller level in year 4 And
then you've either, can we just teach to them in year 6 and
you're 8. So do you think that we could
remove subjects from particular year groups?
Like do you think we need to teach every single subject in
the curriculum every year? Because that's what currently
happens. OK, do you mean formally teacher
in a stand alone lesson in a string of lessons because that's
just a unit of work or do you mean for example, I would argue
in this the made-up system of there's no subject of history in
year 1, right? But there's so much reading
around, you know, the the life for Roman or that.
So there's history happening right there is DT happening
because the children are building something?
There's art happening all the time.
Do do you mean can we get rid of formalised ways of doing stuff
or do you mean kids shouldn't do any art at all?
Let's turn it into two-part question because they're kind of
different. My first one wasn't that when I
think has a good question, we should answer that in a second.
But my first one is literally like within the constraints of
how we do it right now. Let's say we still have
formalised lessons. We do history, we do geography,
we do art, we do DDT, whatever. Do do you, how essential do you
think it is that those subjects are taught every year if we're
sticking to this current system? I, I, I would absolutely keep
them every year. I would because I think if we're
sticking to this system, I think dropping them feeds into that
narrative of English and maths, English and maths, English,
maths. Right now when we drop off a
history for a term, we're talking about year 6 leading up
to Sats. We would both sit here and go.
That is disgusting how we would drop off stuff for English and
maths and do extra stuff in the afternoon.
I would be really reluctant for a whole year, in Year 4, let's
say, to not do any geography or not do any art.
I think the way we do it can change.
I'd be really reluctant to drop something off.
Completely. Even if so, you kind of assumed
that I was saying replace it with maths and English.
Even if we replace it just by doing a bigger mastery, more
enriching approach on another subject.
So art gets six weeks. Do you know what I'd do?
I'd turn it into, I'd go back to that idea.
A lot of schools still do this of topic.
Yeah, I'd go back to the idea of let's have a topic that runs
through and we really enrich from Romans.
But you can do a bit of geography, you can talk about
their use of rivers and things like that.
You can do a bit of DT. You can do some art.
If you have a topic, it becomes more natural to feed them in.
And we don't need to obsess over how much time we're spending on
everything because the topic is Romans.
And obviously history will probably be the biggest bulk of
that. But then the next time you do a
topic, it might be on, like you said, rivers and the bulk is on
geography. But then you can still feed
everything in. So I think topic work helps with
that. No, that's, that makes sense.
I, I agree topic. It's kind of what you that was
kind of your first point, wasn't it, about less formalised, more
just integrated industry. I I, I find it mad that we don't
all do that. I think it's so obvious that
topics are better. Yeah, and and, but most schools,
I'd say, I think. They're move, a lot of moves,
doesn't it, over time, Yeah, there was that big move to topic
work. Yeah.
And there's that basically when the Ofsted framework came and it
was like each individual subject might be deep dived.
Yeah, I think there was a big move back then to like, Christ,
if history gets deep dived. And I'm doing a topic on
fairgrounds because it's ADT topic, let's just say, which is
more about building something and seeing how mechanics work
and it's about science. How on earth can I get a history
deep dive in there? So I think it was very much then
went, okay, let's take history out, have history subject
leaders again and let's really focus on the and the skills part
of history that became way more like focused on and I think that
moved a lot of schools away from topic.
You're totally right. I literally remember people
panicking saying Oh no, often have now said our school's not
very good because we do topics and we and we couldn't
confidently the children couldn't confidently say I'm
learning about geography today. Yeah, exactly.
And I was like cool, that's brilliant.
Yeah, who cares, Who cares? OK, tell at the end of the year,
by the way, that stuff there was good geography.
There you go done. No one care, honestly.
And also that was an adverb just.
Just went into a secondary school.
Yeah, I have geography teacher. That's weird.
I remember being like, oh, I've never done geography as a thing.
That's cool. I went to geography and they
were talking about I've done loads of this.
Yeah, it didn't make a difference.
No, of course it didn't. Of course it didn't make a
difference. We're happy doing it with
science. Yeah.
Don't learn chemistry at primary school, do we?
Biology. Then you've got to know if it's
a physics lesson or not. No, you don't.
Honestly, No you don't. You're 8.
Do you know? We can say it right, but it's
just not the most important thing in the world.
Do you think there's any parts of the curriculum that we could
actually just cut? Yeah, we said this loads.
I think there's loads. I think there's so much.
And I would start in maths and English, I'd start there because
you look at the, the amount that's written in the curriculum
for maths and English. It's like reams and reams and
reams compared to 2 pages of history, like history, job fee,
DT, music, art. It's already quite open to
interpretation and you just need to do a certain amount of thing
like we, we, I, I'd go to English and I'd cull so much
spag spending punctuation and grammar.
Go to maths and I would simplify it so much.
I would honestly get rid of so much lower down in the school.
I I, I really would because as soon as you see it as a four
year journey in key stage 2 or a three-year journey in key stage
1 or A7 year journey in primary school, as soon as you start
looking at it that way, it makes so much more sense to have it
top heavy. Yeah.
Because do you know what if you just smash the fundamentals even
up to year 4, genuinely, if all of your kids are really good at
the fundamentals in year 4, year 5:00 and 6:00, you really can
introduce stuff and learn it within a day.
Yeah, yeah. What what now takes two weeks.
Would you like. Oh, I've got to go back over the
stuff because year 4 didn't do this properly because year 4
were going back over the stuff previously and they were trying
to introduce new stuff all the time.
If you really smash the fundamentals lower down and it's
I can see why leaders don't like it because it leaves only two
years to get in there. So oh God, what if they don't
get it? But it's not riskier because if
you absolutely smash the fundamentals, there's no way
they won't understand the next. Exactly.
But it's it's a game, isn't it? And people don't want to take
that risk. What if they didn't understand
the fundamentals? Now they're not going either.
OK, Well, they don't mean they won't.
You know what? They weren't going to get either
anyway if they didn't get the fundamentals after you put four
years of just doing the fundamentals.
I tell you what, if you were doing both at the same time,
they wouldn't, they wouldn't know either of them still now
anyway, so it doesn't matter. Like you're it's the wrong way
of thinking. Yeah, and I know it.
You know what? I know it's true because COVID,
COVID happened and you know what Kids missed tonnes of education
and I taught some of those kids in year 6, two years later after
they missed so much stuff. And you know what?
A tonne of those objectives where they would have had two
years of oh, we have a little bit in here, a little bit in
year 4, a little bit in Year 5. They hadn't seen it to year six.
And guess what? They learned it.
Honestly, it felt like just as quick because they're like, oh,
our brains are bigger now. I just get this.
Yeah, yeah. It barely took me any more time
with some of those things to teach.
I'm not saying or we can just stop sending kids to year 4 and
five, but. COVID had I think a much bigger
impact on the social side and the relationships between school
and home, etcetera. Huge impact there.
Obviously had a big impact on academic side, obviously.
But as teachers, that's what we're quite good at and I think
there were ways that we could bring children up and through
and there was lots of money putting extra stuff there.
I think that was more solvable than the social side.
Yeah, but I found it super interesting that there was
almost like a straight after COVID being a year 6 teacher
specifically, right? I was like, Oh, this didn't make
too much of an impact because it's like, oh, because the older
kids that already kind of got their foundations in place, it
wasn't actually so hard to then teach them stuff on top of that,
even if they'd missed a bit three years later as a year 6
teacher, it was when I started being like, Oh my God, like the,
the amount of gaps I'm seeing now and the lack of mental,
mental math skills and Orsi in general because they're just
not. They missed school in like your
reception in year 1. They actually missed the
foundations being taught in the 1st place.
That's when you saw it like really impact.
And it's like, Oh, doesn't that just reinforce the idea that we
should really, really, really just hammer those foundations
and not overcomplicate everything when they're five?
It doesn't make any sense, but doesn't matter because that
proves it's obviously I didn't mean this is next doesn't mean
anything. We don't, we don't, we don't
look at hard evidence. And this is government.
Yeah, I think you know the idea less is more is really
important. And if we think about, there's
some people who sit here and go, well, you know, because of this
complexity, stuff's improved. And it's almost, almost like
what I said earlier, it's like, Oh yeah, OK, education is better
than the 70s. If you looked at data from the
70s to now, you could justify anything, right?
You could say just because education is better and, and
like numbers are better, you could say, well, everything's
better. And isn't this fantastic for our
children? And there's probably, there's
probably some things that are benefited from being more
complex in terms of, I think, you know, the, the standard of
subject knowledge as a teacher getting higher, in my opinion,
of what you should know. I, I think that is an overall
good thing for our children. I think having that high
standard. And you know what teachers need
to know more. I'm not saying they used to know
less at all, but you have to know more now because the
curriculum is more dense. You teach yourself stuff as you
go through. There's more maths to know,
there's more English to know. OK, like I said, we taught
ourselves what adverbs are essentially.
But do you know what, as a teacher, I think we should know
what adverts are. I think we should be able to
with the children, even if we do drop the bar slightly and say
let's just focus on these fundamentals because they're so
important. There are always going to be
children who we need to push on right and do more with.
And I think as the teacher, we absolutely need to have a
higher, much higher level of knowledge and be almost a master
of stuff to be able to allow the children to move 123 steps.
Forward. There's more I think.
That's good. Yeah, yeah.
I think I'm a good example of that.
I'm sorry to reference, I'm in the year 6 of the 50th.
Time are you in Year 6 Is it music?
Is it? Oh yeah, jamming out the
photocopy every morning because I've got 74 tests to write.
I've got it's test week every other week actually.
But like, that's a really that just made me think because I
teach kids now where do you know what with GPS, grammar,
punctuation, spelling, Yes, I think it's over the top.
I agree with everything you said.
But there are some kids in my class where because they are of
that just that higher ability, I can teach them all those really
complex terminologies. And then when it comes to their
writing, it's so easy to say to them, I can use that language to
them because as a teacher, I'd be, I might be able to unpick
writing. I don't care if the kids know.
But for some kids, I can say, look, when you put your front of
the verbal there and you didn't use it as a verbal phrase later,
it made a weird flow to this sentence.
And they get that I'm like that sick.
But I don't think every kid needs to know that.
I just don't think they do. And I'd say that's probably the
only thing I think has improved is as a teacher myself, there's
way more I need to know. And I think you're a better
teacher the more you know. You cannot know everything.
I'm not saying you should do everything.
I teach myself about Egyptians every time I do Egyptians.
That's completely normal. You can't do everything but the
base level stuff of maths and English in particular.
I think you being the expert is absolutely a good thing and you
build that up over time. Yeah, sure.
So those complexity isn't inherently bad is what you're
saying. It's just that we've kind of
overkilled it in this. There was a lot of room for
simplicity that we've lost. And I think for the kids,
complexity is bad. I think for the children, simple
goals where we're not reaching those simple goals, let's not
add goals to it. Yeah, let's be really simple
with them and smash them. And let's not forget the whole
point of this, which Dylan has reinforced a lot for this
episode, is we make the bars. Everything is made-up.
Don't forget that. We've set all of these
boundaries. We decide what we even value.
And all these metrics have gone up.
It's like, yeah, because we don't look at the other ones
anymore. We don't even measure mental
mass anymore. So.
So apparently that doesn't matter anymore.
But to who? That's that's the point I want
to make of this. You know, I think we've lost our
way a little bit with education and the real purpose of it.
It's driving me away from the profession a little bit that is
making me disengaged from it because I don't think my purpose
of teaching aligns with the system of education.
How often have you finished the day of teaching and genuinely
thought that less than half of that was really, really having
an impact that's measurable and good on the children?
And how much have you thought I could have done without that?
You know, I wish I did. I wish I read that class book
for longer because the kids are so engaged.
They're getting more out of reading this story than doing an
extra 2 tasks in the drug free lesson which was genuinely
pointless. Do you know what?
More than half of the time and I think that's where I've been
pushed over. If it was, maybe if it was less
than half the time, maybe I'd still be a bit more optimistic.
It's gone over that boundary for me.
More than half of my week. I would finish a day, three days
a week. I will finish and think I could
have called. Is it?
Three days a week, The whole week.
Yeah, true, true. If I worked five days, two of my
two of my three days a week, I definitely, definitely exposed.
Yeah, big time. I definitely finished the week
think the day thinking I didn't need to do half that stuff.
It was boring, pointless. The kids weren't inspired.
It was relentless. It's all complex now.
They think they're rubbish at these things because we did 72
things at once. And you know, what's sad very
quickly is when it's in maths and English, you think that
that's when it's sad because there's so much maths and
English that has such an impact. And you finished, you finish
doing English sometimes and you just think, why did I just spend
40 minutes looking at Test style questions that start with which
word? It shows you this.
I could have done such a better, more inspiring lesson about word
meaning and understanding what words mean without having to do
it in this test our way. Which, by the way, I only have
to do because we all decided that's how we measure child's
ability to read. It's insane.
And there it comes back to that point, doesn't it?
I think we've I think we've hammered that point home in this
episode. I hope you enjoyed it,
everybody. Now, Dylan, well done, by the
way. Oh, yeah, for making it through
this episode. We've only had to do hang on,
let me just count. Sorry, guys, you have to wait
for this. No, to sorry, 12345678910 only
12 edits. So if you've noticed a lot of
cutting around in this episode, unlike normal where we're pretty
uncut, it is because Dylan is imploding in his in his head.
When I talk, OK, maybe it's happening now.
As soon as I feel fine, when I'm listening to you, I'm like, I'm
ready to make my point. I start talking and my nose just
goes close. Yeah, close that off.
Can't breathe anymore. So I appreciate it.
I think most people are ill right now.
Listen, you've done well. You've done well.
I've done well because you're the one editing.
Yeah, I am. And normally you've had a
meltdown by now, so well done, you've made it all the way over.
How about 5 meltdowns? Hopefully you cut them out.
I'll tell you what, I'm going to make a super edit.
Look forward to episode 100. Right, so we're we're looking at
this now and we're going to let you behind the curtains to see
how much this was actually affecting.
We have recorded for one hour 20.
So whatever you're on now, that's how much Hayden had to
cut out because of me not being able to.
Breathe Dylan's snotting right and and with that, I'll leave
you thinking of Dylan's not see you next see you next time
episode 99 so. Close.
Sweet night. Night ice cream for the whole
thing? No.
OK.