SecEd Podcast: Recent Episodes
Pete Henshaw
The SecEd Podcast is dedicated to supporting best practice in the secondary school – with practical advice, discussion and tips for teachers, support staff and school leaders across a range of topics.
This episode offers practical advice to those taking on new leadership roles in the secondary school, with dos and don'ts, useful tips, and lessons learned from our experienced panel.
If you are a teacher taking on a new leadership role in school – whether that be a headteacher, senior leadership or middle leadership post – then this episode is for you.
Three experienced school leaders offer us some golden rules for taking on a leadership role and discuss how we should start out in our new post, including how we should approach the first half-term in post and what missteps we should avoid.
We ask what the biggest misconceptions of leadership are and what surprised our panelists most when they first stepped up.
We discuss how new leaders can establish credibility and ask our panellists what they would do differently if they could go back to their first term as a leader.
We look at how leaders can prioritise and at people management skills, offering tips for managing difficult conversations. We also advise on managing workload and work/life balance as a leader. We touch on the power of mentoring and coaching for leaders and hear about some of the early leadership experiences of our three panelists.
It's a discussion with lots of practical tips and powerful ideas.
This episode offers practical insights for teachers on how best we can support our high-attaining students in the secondary school classroom.
Our panel discusses the language we use when referring to this cohort of students and how we might define what "high-attaining" means.
We then move on to outline a number of classroom strategies for teachers to help them teach and support these learners as well as some common mistakes to avoid.
We discuss how we can create a culture of scholarly ambition in our classrooms and approach the curriculum challenges faced by high-attaining students. We also offer tips for making a success of extension activities.
We ask, too, how we can help learners to become increasingly independent and to stay motivated and engaged – even in the face of challenges and set-backs.
The panel includes an English and a maths specialist but many of the strategies discussed apply across the curriculum.
In this episode we offer practical tips and ideas for how teachers can support the communication skills of students as they make the step-up to the year 7 classroom and key stage 3 study.
An experienced panel – including a speech and language therapist – discuss how we can help those students who struggle with communication needs, including oracy and vocabulary.
We consider the increase in academic rigour that students transitioning into year 7 encounter, including increasingly complex language and vocabulary.
We then outline some adaptive teaching techniques as well as tips for developing oracy and speaking skills, vocabulary and academic language, and literacy and reading skills – with lots of ideas for the year 7 classroom.
We also explore general lesson planning and teaching tips that support SLCN in the secondary classroom with examples of practice from our guests' schools. And we talk briefly about effective interventions to support these learners.
This episode has been supported by our friends at Speech and Language Link. Visit www.speechandlanguage.link
This episode talks everything supply teaching – with practical advice for schools on how to enable your supply teachers to excel as well as a range of tips for supply teachers themselves.
In the first half of our discussion, our expert panel focus on how secondary schools can set their supply teachers up for success, including what must be in place before they arrive at the gate and top tips for how to support them during the placement.
We discuss behaviour management and support, how to share key documents and information effectively, organising lesson plans and resources, and common mistakes we should avoid at all costs.
Then in the second half of the discussion we offer tips and advice for our army of supply teachers who keep our schools running every day.
We look at how to prepare for your placements, key questions to ask the host school, tip tips for your first day and beyond, what to do if things go wrong or if resources or lesson plans are not available, and some common mistakes to avoid.
We round off the podcast with a range of practical tips that can be implemented – by schools and supply teachers – tomorrow.
This episode discusses how teachers can create the perfect classroom environment for their students, offering a range of practical tips and quick wins.
Our expert panel discuss four core aspects – the physical classroom environment, the social environment, the emotional environment, and the learning environment.
Physical environment: We ask what we can do to create a positive physical space in the classroom to support learning, including the use of displays, the layout of furniture, and issues like temperature and natural light.
Social environment: We look at the tenets of positive social classroom environments, including how senior leadership and teachers can work together to create a "this is how we do it here" culture that is consistent across lessons so that children know what they will encounter when they walk in the door. We touch upon behaviour for learning, addressing low-level disruption, common lesson routines to reduce anxiety and maximise focus, and much more.
Emotional environment: This concerns students' emotional response to our classroom environment. What can we do to create a classroom environment that is conducive to challenge but which is unthreatening and a place where pupils become comfortable with hard work, including via the use of rewards and sanctions.
Learning environment: This concerns the way that learning is structured and organised in order to ensure every student values their work and strives to achieve, including the adaptations we make for SEND and other disadvantaged students. We discuss how to motivate students and consider a range of teaching techniques.
This episode offers a range of practical ideas, advice and teaching techniques for engaging students in the work of William Shakespeare – both in the English classroom and across the school.
Produced in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the episode features a panel of experts and educators who discuss how we can make Shakespeare enjoyable for our students.
We talk about Shakespeare's place across the school, in the English and drama classrooms of course, but also in other places such as the assembly hall and extra-curricular work.
We offer a range of teaching tips and ways we can make Shakespeare enjoyable and engaging for students, including how we can help them to penetrate the vocabulary of Shakespeare, how Shakespeare can support oracy education, and ideas for how we can introduce Shakespeare effectively in key stage 3.
Crucially, we also ask what we should avoid doing when teaching Shakespeare and ask how we can show students the relevance of Shakespeare in today's world.
This episode has been produced to mark the launch of RSC's new Shakespeare Curriculum platform, which brings you the next generation of digital resources to support your teaching of Shakespeare. It is free to access for state-maintained schools and SEN schools. More details at the end of the podcast or via: www.shakespearecurriculum.com
This episode dissects the revised Ofsted inspection framework, setting out actions that school leaders can take now to prepare and offering expert insights and tips.
Our panel has extensive experience of Ofsted inspection, and they break down the key changes that schools should be focused on and how best we can respond.
We highlight key aspects of the revised framework, including the implications of the new evaluation areas and grading points. We interrogate the new "secure fit" model of inspection and Ofsted's new "expected standard".
We delve into the inclusion thread that runs throughout the framework and will dominant inspections from now on and we discuss the new focus on school context, asking how school leaders can best communicate this information during inspection.
We offer top tips for the Monday phone call, tips for identifying strengths/weaknesses, touch upon the new role of the "nominee" and the case sampling of pupils.
Finally, we list actions that schools should be taking now to set themselves in good stead for inspection under the new regime.
This episode focuses on belonging and inclusion in the secondary school – namely how can we ensure that every student can take part in school life.
Our panel of experienced school leaders define what “belonging” means in the context of a busy secondary school.
We talk school culture: what does a culture of inclusion and belonging involve, how can we develop this in a natural way, and what approaches are in place at our guests’ schools – especially when it comes to welcoming new students in year 7.
We talk about the role of school staff in fostering belonging and inclusive practice, including in the classroom, and some of the key strategies we can employ.
We talk behaviour and what kind of approaches to behaviour management and expectations can support a culture of belonging – including understanding where our families are coming from.
We also touch on inclusive curriculum design and delivery, including how to audit our curriculum for inclusivity and what curriculum “accessibility” actually means.
And finally talk attendance and family engagement. How we can reduce student absence via a culture of belonging and how can we engage with families to extend this feeling of belonging into our communities.
In this episode we break-down the secrets to effective adaptive teaching approaches in the secondary classroom.
Our experts define what exactly adaptive teaching is and offer insights to help teachers to know when we should adapt our teaching, how we can adapt teaching, and who we should be adapting it for.
We discuss the importance of using adaptive teaching to maintain high expectations in the classroom and in order to ensure that our ambitious curriculum is accessible for all students regardless of background or need.
We consider what adaptations we can plan in advance of our lessons, with some practical examples, as well as some of the types of live adaptations that we might make use of responsively in the moment. We also consider how teaching assistants might best support some of these approaches.
We consider the use of scaffolds, including what these might consist of and how these can be withdrawn once they have served their purpose.
Finally we talk CPD and offer some specific tips for new and early career teachers to help them hit the ground running with adaptive approaches.
This episode offers a range of ideas and advice for identifying and supporting students with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) in the secondary school.
SLCN are the most common need for the more than 1.2 million students who are on SEN Support in England’s schools – and the evidence tells us that there will be many more who are going undiagnosed.
This discussion features four experts who look at identifying SLCN, screening students, and the problems of underdiagnosis and “masking” that prevent students from getting the support they need.
We discuss what the signs of undiagnosed SLCN are in the classroom and the overlaps between these needs and other challenges such as SEMH, poor behaviour, and school absence.
We hear about the approaches being taken in two secondary schools and discuss a range of ideas for practical interventions to help support students with SLCN in and out of the classroom. We also touch upon how we can support teaching staff in this work, including with CPD.
This episode has been produced with support from our friends at Speech and Language Link.
This episode considers how teaching staff can effectively support autistic students in the classroom and across the mainstream secondary school.
Our expert panel offers a range of practical insights and advice to help teachers and support staff, including teaching tips and pastoral care.
We begin our discussion by busting some of the common misconceptions and myths about autism and autistic students before dissecting what makes for an autism-friendly school and classroom environment and strong inclusive practice.
We discuss what schools can do to support and foster friendships and social connections for our autistic students – and how can staff build strong relationships with these young people?
We touch upon Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) but also why we cannot rely on the paperwork and must engage with the young person if we are to meet their needs – taking a strength-based approach.
How can teachers adapt their lessons to include their autistic students without overwhelming them – and what part does technology (including AI) play in making learning accessible for young people?
We also ask what needs to change in the school environment to support proper inclusion autistic young people – including asking each of our experts for the one big change they would make in schools…
Finally, we discuss the common teaching methods that make things harder for autistic students. How can teachers combine routine with the flexibility that these students need.
In this episode, we consider what makes for excellent library provision in the secondary school, including ideas for supporting literacy and curriculum delivery.
We speak with four experienced and expert school library professionals to glean their advice, ideas and tips for excellent library provision.
We discuss the most important elements in effective library provision and why schools should consider employing a qualified librarian as part of their provision.
We consider how school librarians can work effectively with teaching staff to support whole-school teaching and learning and ideas for how librarians can engage with colleagues across the school.
Of course, we focus on literacy and reading and the role libraries and school librarians have to play, including ideas for library-based initiatives, managing library stock, engaging struggling readers, and boosting reading for pleasure.
And it’s not just about books, we also consider the hidden roles of a school librarian, including the pastoral side. And we finish with our ideas corner when we ask each of our guests to offer their ideas for library provision that schools can adapt and adopt.
This podcast discusses teacher training and induction, offering practical advice for trainee and early career teachers (ECTs) and their mentors.
Our expert panel explores the Department for Education’s new Initial Teacher Training and Early Career Framework – due to come into effect in September 2025.
The combined ITT-ECF sets out what trainee and ECTs need to know – and know how to do – at the start of their careers and the panel discuss what is in the new combined framework and how it might work in practice, including how the distinct ITT and ECF elements will work together and key elements such as SEND and inclusive practice.
We also touch upon the eight standards within the framework and invite our guests to pick out some of the elements crucial to meeting these standards.
We discuss the transition from being a trainee teacher to being an ECT, including how trainees can best be supported to progress from trainee to ECT and then to successfully complete their induction and become fully qualified.
We offer advice on a number of specific issues, including how ECTs can manage their priorities and embed themselves into their new schools as well as advice for trainees when applying for their first teaching job, among other “top tips” for new teachers.
Our panel also discusses mentorship – what skills do good ECT mentors need and what support should they be offering to new teachers? What should new teachers expect from their mentors?
To celebrate the 100th edition of the SecEd Podcast this episode counts down our top 10 most popular podcasts of all time. Have you listened to them all?
Launched in early 2020, the SecEd Podcast has been on air for five years and to mark episode 100 podcast co-hosts Pete Henshaw and Matt Bromley reveal our top 10 most listened to episodes – interspersed with clips and highlights from each one.
Without giving the game away, themes include oracy education, senior and middle leadership, quality first teaching, classroom management, Pupil Premium, inclusion and SEN, and much, much more.
Matt and Pete also pick out their own favourite episodes from the last five years.
All these episodes and indeed all of our 100 episodes are available to listen back to via the SecEd website – www.sec-ed.co.uk/podcast – or via your streaming service of choice.
Our thanks to you – the teachers and educators of the UK – for listening. Here’s to the next 100 episodes!
This episode looks at the opportunities and risks presented by the development of artificial intelligence (AI) in education.
We speak to three experts who are working in schools to develop AI in effective and safe ways.
We kick off the discussion by asking our panel to list what they consider to be the three biggest benefits of AI in schools and the three biggest risks/threats.
We then look at whole-school AI strategy and policy. What does a good AI strategy look like and what elements need to be included in a school’s AI policy? What does effective staff training look like? How should education around AI be fed into the curriculum? What kind of “rules” need to be in place? And what does Ofsted have to say about AI?
We also talk AI in the classroom. How might teachers use AI in their lesson-planning and resource-creation? We discuss a number of ideas for using AI to create resources/plan lessons.
Also, what risks should teachers be aware of when using AI? What pitfalls do teachers need to avoid?
We talk about diversity in resource-creation, the pitfalls of prompt engineering, and data protection.
We name drop a few resources that our panel are using with success, and we end the podcast with their biggest “lessons learned” so far and their final reflections.
This episode looks at what it means to be a research-informed school and how we can use research to improve teaching, learning, and student outcomes.
We talk to three experienced and research-engaged educators about what kind of research it is best for schools to use – and how we can know that any particular piece of research is valid and trustworthy.
We then consider how we can balance external research studies and findings with our own evidence collected internally in our schools.
Our panel advise how we can help teachers to engage with academic research, including via in-school CPD as well as further study such as doctorates.
We also discuss how we can use research evidence in decision-making processes and school improvement planning.
This episode offers practical advice and examples for how we can protect the wellbeing of our teaching staff – with ideas for teachers and schools.
The episode has been inspired by the recent publication of Education Support UK’s Teacher Wellbeing Index 2024, which has once again painted a worrying picture about the wellbeing of those who give so much to educate our children and young people in schools.
As such, we hear from Education Support about the findings of this year’s Index research findings and speak to our guests about the wellbeing challenges that teaching staff face.
Our expert panel offers practical ideas, discussing what schools can do to develop healthy working cultures, including promoting good working practices, building positive working relationships, and preventing staff burn-out.
We discuss preventative action including coaching/mentoring, wellbeing audits, and more.
We also consider how teachers can maintain a healthy work/life balance and discuss what individuals can do, including setting boundaries, saying 'no' effectively, safeguarding personal time, and good habits at home.
We touch upon diversity and inclusion too, including the wellbeing challenges faced by staff from minority backgrounds and how schools can ensure they are supporting all colleagues.
In this episode we discuss ideas for how we can build a positive and inspiring whole-school culture which is inclusive of all, drives high standards, and sustainable in the long-term.
We ask what we mean by “school culture” – the way we do things here – and consider how a school culture intersect with its vision, ethos and values, rules, attitudes, and social norms.
We speak with three school leaders about how they have developed the culture in their institutions and offer a range of practical ideas and “lessons learned”. We ask how a school leader can go about creating and establishing the right culture in their school – what questions should we ask ourselves?
We consider how to communicate your school culture and make it consistent and concrete. How can you sustain your school culture over the long-term and how can you handle any challenges to your culture?
We also consider behaviours that can help establish culture – and how we can “nudge” students to adopt these behaviours.
In this episode, we discuss practical actions that secondary school leaders and teachers can take to reduce workload and working hours.
The Department for Education’s Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders research shows that secondary teachers are working almost 50 hours a week on average while secondary leaders work more than 58 hours a week.
This episode features two experienced school leaders who have both undertaken a range of initiatives in their schools to bring workload down for all staff.
We discuss some of the most common workload challenges before hearing about some of their approaches, offering tips and ideas, and identifying a number of areas where schools might be able to reduce workload and working hours.
Specifically, we cover topics including strategies for assessment and marking, timetable and calendar planning, internal communications and meetings, behaviour management, additional duties, and more.
We also touch upon the various forms of flexible working and how some of these can be made to work in the secondary school environment – including touching upon the government’s plans to allow teachers’ PPA time to be taken at home.
This episode looks at how we can best teach and prepare our examination classes in the secondary school, especially our GCSE groups.
A panel of experienced teachers considers what specific challenges come with teaching exam clases and exam course content and discuss how we can best prepare our students for the exam hall experience itself, including how we can build good exam habits alongside teaching course content.
We discuss how teachers can support their students’ wellbeing during their examination years – especially in years 10 and 11 – and how we can build their resilience, thus helping them to manage stress and exam anxiety as the pressure mounts.
We focus specifically on how we can build exam technique, including the dos and don’ts for using past exam papers as learning tools. We look at other teaching techniques too, including modelling good answers.
And how and when should we teach and model these exam techniques to ensure they are embedded while avoiding student burn-out?
Finally to what extent should we be helping students to plan their exam revision? We ask what self-study and revision skills we should be teaching and how? Our experts even suggest a few particular techniques that they like to use, such as mnemonics and revision games.
This episode offers practical advice for the effective use of teaching assistants (TAs) in the secondary school classroom.
Packed full of practical ideas and examples, the episode features three experienced educators, including teachers and TAs.
We ask why we need TAs in the modern secondary classroom and the kinds of skills, training and CPD that our TAs need to have in order to be effective.
From there, we move on to discussing effective deployment and how teachers can work effectively with their TAs to support teaching and learning in the classroom.
We discuss a number of ideas and approaches, including flipping the traditional model of TAs providing one-to-one support. We also discuss what role TAs should have when delivering additional interventions. And, crucially, we discuss what effective communication between teachers and TAs looks like.
We also touch upon the role of TAs in supporting the social and emotional development of our young people.
In this episode we offer practical advice and tips for teaching staff to help you manage behaviour effectively in your classrooms.
Focusing on the secondary school classroom, our experts discuss why school culture is vital to promoting positive behaviour and what this looks like in practice.
We discuss where the line lies between overarching principles of whole-school behaviour and how that manifests itself in different classrooms and different subjects?
We offer concrete, tangible classroom strategies, ideas and tips for your “in the moment” behaviour toolkit. We consider the role and use of rewards and sanctions/consequences, clear expectations, as well as tips for how teachers can remain consistent and encourage students’ intrinsic good behaviour.
We discuss the rule of “what we permit, we promote” and ask what that looks like in practice, we look too at how we can “teach” and model good behaviours.
We chat about how we can “rebuild” relationships after a behaviour incident and talk about working with parents.
This episode considers what schools can do to spot vulnerable students at risk of suspension or exclusion and how we can intervene to pull them back from the brink.
Official figures show the number of suspensions and exclusions is increasing year-on-year, not least due to persistent disruptive behaviour.
Related factors seem to include unmet mental health and SEN needs, poverty, safeguarding issues, trauma, criminal exploitation, social media, and more.
In this episode, we chat to a secondary school headteacher and a virtual headteacher to find out what they are seeing on the ground.
We ask what preventative actions schools can take to keep students in school and what the signs are that we need to be alert to that a student is on a suspension/exclusion trajectory.
We discuss a graduated response to supporting students and the role of the school environment and climate for learning, including how routines and expectations can help and “teaching” behaviour.
We also touch upon potential interventions for students at risk, including pastoral support plans, unmet needs, a change of curriculum, family support workers and more.
We also ask how we can support students who have been suspended to help them reintegrate into school life successfully, including running reintegration meetings.
In this episode we discuss excellent Pupil Premium practice and offer practical tips and ideas for how schools and teachers can support their most disadvantaged pupils.
We explore the causes of disadvantage and why the attainment gap between rich and poor has remained stubbornly large.
We look at the tangible classroom consequences of disadvantage and what that means for teaching and learning. Specifically, we touch upon how we can improve the attendance of disadvantaged students as well as their language and vocabulary levels.
We look at how we can ensure the funding benefits all pupils living in disadvantage – and not just those eligible for free school meals – and we explore the Pupil Premium interventions that tend to work best in most settings.
We look at the common ingredients of an effective Pupil Premium strategy, including breaking down the five steps recommended by the EEF (diagnose pupil need, ensure strong evidence, implement, monitor, evaluate).
We look at the role and responsibilities of the Pupil Premium coordinator in schools and the part that must be played by senior leaders and governors. And we also discuss how to prepare for an inspection of your Pupil Premium practice.
This episode looks at how to be an effective line manager in the secondary school, offering practical advice, examples and strategies for middle and senior leaders who have line management responsibilities.
We chat with two experienced school leaders to discuss the golden rules and key skills required to be an effective line manager.
We look at the different type of line manage roles and identify the biggest challenges for line managers.
We focus specifically on appraisal – a key duty of line managers. We look at effective appraisal practice, supporting CPD, how to prepare for and have difficult conversations, and dos and don’ts for conducting lesson observations.
We also talk about effective quality assurance practice, including how line managers can act on the findings of QA processes.
And we discuss staff wellbeing, morale and workload – what can line managers do to protect staff wellbeing, build morale and to help keep workload under control and in check.
This episode looks at how school leaders can thrive and survive in their role, including wellbeing advice, tips for leading from the front, and advice for those new to leadership roles.
We interview two experienced school leaders to get their insights and practical advice.
We look at the hardest challenges of school leadership for those new to the role and tips to help you start off on the right foot.
We ask how school leaders can be visible in school and available while protecting their workload and work/life balance. We also ask how leaders can model good work/life balance and working practices, including delegation and distributed leadership.
And how can we lead from the front, and set ourselves up to- make good decisions and drive school improvement?
We consider how to have difficult conversations, dealing with conflict and tackling underperformance.
And how can we avoid becoming an isolated leader. How do we show vulnerability and humility as a school leader, how do we model learning from our mistakes and how do we remain resilient?
In this episode, three experienced teachers discuss how to start and end our lessons in the secondary school classroom – focusing on getting the first and last 10 minutes right.
We kick off with some “golden rules” and key ingredients for opening and closing our lessons.
We look at achieving calm lesson starts from a behaviour and classroom management point of view, including setting the right tone for behaviour, meeting and greeting, and dealing with students who are late or those who do not settle well.
We also consider ideas for getting into learning as quickly and smoothly as possible, including tips for starter activities, recapping previous learning, explaining learning objectives, and fostering student engagement and curiosity about the lesson.
When it comes to ending our lessons, we discuss ideas and techniques for bringing learning to a natural close and assessing whether the lesson has landed well with students. Also, how do we give students reflection time? Do we always need a plenary? And what makes for effective end-of-lesson learning routines?
And how can we end our lessons so that transition to the next lesson is calm from a behavioural point of view, including effective end of lesson behaviour routines.
Good questioning is at the heart of great teaching – as such this very practical episode looks at how teachers can plan and ask effective questions that support student participation, learning and progress.
Two experienced teachers discuss the different purposes of questioning in the classroom as well as the things teachers must consider when planning their questions and questioning techniques.
We detail some of the common challenges and how we can overcome them, such as getting the timing of questions right, encouraging student participation, dealing with “I don’t know” responses, improving oracy and the quality of student responses, creating a safe questioning culture in your classroom and more.
We look at the different types of questions, including hinge questions, Socratic questioning, discussions, metacognitive questions and more.
And we consider different techniques, including hot seating, think-pair-share, cold-calling, mini-whiteboards, entry and exit tickets, students asking the questions and more.
This episode of the podcast asks how classroom teachers and teaching staff can best support the learning, progress, and wellbeing of their neurodiverse students.
Our expert panel offer a range of advice, ideas, and tips based on their extensive experience within SEND education.
We define neurodiversity and discuss what makes a learner neurodiverse and the kinds of conditions the term covers while also busting some myths.
We discuss how we can support the wellbeing of these learners in our classroom, including examples of best practice and practical tips.
Likewise, we discuss general teaching tips and approaches to support the progress of neurodiverse learners, touching upon pedagogy, common adjustments, adaptive teaching, and the classroom environment.
We talk advice for supporting specific neurodiverse conditions and we also hear about one school’s Autism Resource Base and how that has been established and works in practice.
We finish with some recommendations for further reading, resources, and support for our work to support this cohort of students.
This episode looks at the role of the classroom teacher and teaching staff when it comes to effective safeguarding practice, offering insights, tips and practical dos and don’ts.
Classroom teachers and teaching staff are on the frontline when it comes to spotting students who are at risk or struggling due to safeguarding issues.
In the episode, three experts consider how we can spot the signs of safeguarding issues, what to do if we’re worried, and how to support and handle disclosures from students – including what to say and what not to say.
We discuss the key safeguarding duties of classroom staff, not least how teachers can engage effectively with the safeguarding documentation, including statutory guidance, and with training requirements.
We consider general rules for ensuring good safeguarding practice in your classroom, how we can challenge our own assumptions, and how we can promote a culture of safeguarding, including via our classroom environment and the curriculum.
Finally, we discuss some of the current safeguarding trends and offer tips and pointers for school staff.
This episode focuses on subject reviews or “deep dives” in the secondary school, asking what they are, how we can conduct them effectively without burdening staff, and what information we can and cannot expect to gather accurately.
Our expert panel asks what a subject review or deep dive is and looks like and why we need to carry them out – ultimately, what is their purpose?
We discuss how we can best conduct reviews/deep dives in order to ensure that we gather reliable and valid information that helps to inform our improvement planning.
And how can we do this while minimising the amount of stress that deep dives can cause to subject leader sand teachers, not least in terms of workload?
We ask what information we can gather with accuracy and confidence through subject review/deep dives, including the kind of questions we might ask. And, crucially, we ask what information we cannot gather with accuracy and confidence and what approaches we should avoid.
We also discuss the vital role of subject and middle leaders and the kind of CPD a school must have in place to support effective subject review processes.
Ofsted has of course placed subject deep dives at the heart of its Education Inspection Framework, and we touch upon how good practice in this area can stand a school in good stead for when inspectors do call.
In this episode, three experienced teachers discuss ideas, tips and advice for fostering student curiosity and motivation in the secondary school classroom.
We ask what curiosity and motivation look like in a classroom and discuss the key elements of the classroom environment and our teaching and pedagogy that can help to create curious and motivated students.
Not least, we ask how we can create a “culture of curiosity” that students buy into in our classrooms, including inclusive practice, building strong relationships with our students as well as the importance of effective classroom routines and teacher role-modelling (and how they can do this).
We discuss how we can motivate students who are struggling in their personal lives and as such arrive in our classrooms not ready for learning.
We focus on pedagogy and curriculum delivery. How can we plan learning so that we engage and retain students’ curiosity? How can we make learning relevant to students’ lives? We offer a range of ideas for using hooks and other devices to boost engagement.
We talk about the kind of tasks we set in lessons, how we can achieve desirable difficulty so that students are challenged but motivated, and the importance of chunking work and achieving a high-but-not-too-high success rate.
We talk about the role of teacher expectations and ideas for how we should respond when students “fail” or struggle with their learning.
And we touch upon metacognition and self-regulation, the importance of teaching students how to manage their own learning, and the role of autonomy and student choice in their learning.
This episode looks at how secondary schools can plan and implement flexible working practices to help boost teacher recruitment and retention.
Our panel of experts include headteachers who have placed flexible working at the heart of their recruitment and retention strategies as well as teachers who work flexibly themselves.
We discuss why schools should consider flexible working, the impact it can have, and the benefits for staff and students.
How can we be strategic about our approach to flexible working? What do we need to consider when designing flexible working roles? How can we ensure it has an impact on issues such as workload and staff wellbeing?
And it’s not all about part-time working – we consider the forms that flexible working can take and the types of flexible working approaches that are possible.
Our experts offer a range of practical tips and examples and discuss how schools and teachers can overcome common blocks or barriers to effective flexible working.
What is “calm leadership” and how can this philosophy help middle and senior leaders in schools to be effective and inspiring in their roles?
In this podcast, we chat to Patrick Cozier, the long-serving headteacher of Highgate Wood School in London, about his philosophy of calm leadership.
In a nine-article SecEd series last year, Patrick described his calm leadership approach, discussing what being a calm leader looks like in practice and the many elements involved, including empathy, listening, honesty, integrity, humility, trust, and so much more.
The series is now being turned into a new book and in this episode of the podcast we chat to Patrick to get practical insights into what calm leadership involves and how we can all aspire to be “calmer” in our leadership approaches in schools.
We discuss the challenges of leadership and how to deal with them in a calm and reasoned way, including the paranoia of leadership, imposter syndrome, when doubt sets in, handling difficult moments, and difficult conversations.
We also talk about how to keep calm in challenging situations, keeping a sense of perspective, staying optimistic, and working with colleagues to make good decisions.
We consider how to lead people effectively, including building trust, empowering colleagues, listening properly, and being kind. And we ask how we can nurture other key elements such as humility, empathy, integrity and more. And we discuss coping with the emotional rollercoaster that is school leadership.
This episode discusses how we can build strong connections and relationships with our students – especially those who are vulnerable – in order that they have the best chance of overcoming barriers and making progress in our classrooms.
Two experienced colleagues discuss why this is important and some key principles to building these relationships.
We ask how we can begin building connections with a new class of students and how we can foster strong relationships even when we might see hundreds of students every week.
We talk about building a culture of trust and respect in our classrooms and the common traits that teachers might display in order to build these connections. We also consider quick wins, including shaking hands, seating plans, corridor conversations, positive calls home, how to remember key details about students, role-modelling, and apologising when necessary.
We discuss strategies for building connections with individual vulnerable students – perhaps those who face the greatest barriers to learning and who are at the greatest risk of disengaging.
And we look at engaging with families and some whole-school strategies that might help teachers to build connections with their students.
In this episode we speak with Rachel W – an abuse survivor who disclosed to staff at school when aged 14 after suffering years of abuse.
Rachel talks powerfully about her story and the lessons schools and school staff can learn from it in order to improve safeguarding practice.
Interviewed by pastoral specialist and teacher Adele Bates, Rachel discusses the impact of the abuse, including on her education and behaviour in school. She talks about her attempts to disclose and how she was finally rescued from her abuser.
She discusses spotting the signs of abuse, the barriers to disclosure, how staff should handle disclosures – how we must respond – and what to do if you suspect a child is being abused or is at risk of harm.
We also talk about the behaviour of children who are living with trauma and what staff should be aware of.
Rachel has been writing about these themes in SecEd (https://bit.ly/seced-disclosure) and wanted to take part in this episode to help support school staff to know what to do in safeguarding situations.
The podcast makes for uncomfortable listening at times but is essential listening for all those working with children in schools.
This episode focuses on how we can teach oracy and speaking skills in the secondary school classroom, with lots of practical tips, ideas, resources and advice.
We discuss what oracy is – including the four strands of oracy skills – why oracy matters, the benefits of good oracy skills, what the national curriculum says about spoken language and student talk, and the impact we have seen on students’ speaking skills since Covid (spoiler: 44% of secondary teachers say the pandemic has hit oracy skills negatively).
We look at how we can teach oracy in the classroom and via the curriculum, including practical ideas and activities for the explicit teaching of oracy. We ask what high expectations for classroom talk look like and hear examples of practice from two secondary schools.
We consider whole-school strategies, including creating a culture where students feel able to speak-up, cross-curriculum planning for oracy, how to ensure consistent approaches, staff CPD, the role of extra-curricular clubs, and much more.
And we ask how we can best assess and monitor our students’ progress in terms of oracy.
This episode of the SecEd Podcast offers best practice and tips for effectively managing Education, Health, and Care Plans (EHCPs) and supporting students with SEND in the mainstream secondary school.
Our expert panel offer advice and tips for teachers, SENCOs, and school leaders across a number of areas.
We discuss the main things that mainstream secondary schools need to bear in mind when a student has an EHCP. What do teachers need to be aware of when reading EHCPs and how should teaching staff and SENCOs work together (and with parents/carers) to ensure SEND students are supported effectively in their lessons and learning?
And how should EHCPs evolve as the student moves through secondary school and into key stage 5 (and beyond)?
We offer advice for SENCOs to help them manage the EHCP within the mainstream secondary school setting.
We also look at how to support families of students should have an EHCP but do not.
The EHCP is a local authority document and so we also discuss the role of the local authority and some of the common problems in the system.
Finally, we discuss the implications of the government’s recently published SEND Improvement Plan, especially plans to digitise the EHCP.
This episode cuts through the jargon and offers simple advice and tips relating to the Teachers’ Pension Scheme and general financial planning for teachers and school leaders – no matter what age or stage of your career you're at.
We chat with two financial experts to discuss the Teachers’ Pension Scheme including the basics of how it works, how it pays out, and what you need to know and prepare for.
We talk retirement – including early retirement, phased retirement, delayed retirement – and what the various options mean for your pension and how your benefits are calculated, as well as a number of crucial details you need to be aware of.
The conversation is relevant to younger teachers too. We discuss what you need to be thinking about now – even if it feels that retirement is a long way off.
We discuss normal pension age versus normal retirement age, the implications for teachers of the McCloud judgement and the change in minimum pension age from 2028.
And we outline three methods for increasing income from the TPS, as well as ill-health pensions, and the impact of taking strike action on your pension.
This episode of the SecEd Podcast has been brought to you in partnership with Wesleyan Financial Services – specialists in providing financial advice tailored to educational professionals within the UK. You can find a range of resources related to our discussion via www.wesleyan.co.uk/supporting-teachers
This episode looks at how we can best develop the literacy skills of our students, offering whole-school, cross-curricular and classroom-specific ideas, interventions and tips.
The podcast defines literacy as the ability to speak, read and write and to understand and use language in order to communicate effectively.
We welcome four guests from four schools who discuss the range of approaches, programmes, and interventions they use to support students’ literacy.
We ask why literacy skills are so important, what form these skills take in practice, and how we can help students to develop these skills.
Our guests discuss the interventions and programmes they use to support literacy catch-up and how they go about identifying students most in need of these interventions.
How can we ensure that all teachers see themselves as teachers of literacy and teach the vocabulary of their subjects? What is the role of phonics in secondary literacy education, especially post-Covid?
We talk vocabulary and disciplinary literacy. How can we teach vocabulary effectively and explicitly? How can we close the vocab gap? How can we embed vital disciplinary literacy? How do we develop speaking and listening skills?
We talk Ofsted too – what inspectors looks for and how we can ensure that our literacy work also meets inspection requirements.
This episode discusses the role of the secondary school form tutor – what the role entails, how teachers can become effective form tutors, key expectations and obligations, ideas for running your form day-to-day, and general dos & don'ts.
Two experienced pastoral leaders offer their insights, including the key obligations of the form tutor and legal duties in terms of safeguarding and attendance.
What is the purpose of a form tutor and how does this change with the age of the students? How can we create an effective form tutor environment?
Our guests offer a number of tips for running your tutor group, including the essential routines or checklists that will “set students up” for a successful day and the basic day-to-day and week-to-week tasks. Which school policies must new form tutors get familiar with and be sure to uphold?
We offer ideas for activities, initiatives, or areas of focus to support students pastorally and academically and to boost morale.
What does the role of the form tutor entail outside of tutor time? How should form tutors liaise with other members of staff in the school. How can tutors build relationships with students and parents, especially in year 7? What can you do when you have a challenging form group?
And the podcast finishes with some dos and don’ts for teachers taking on form tutor groups for the first time.
This episode looks at career progression pathways in the secondary school, advising teachers on the range of options and how to develop specialisms and experience.
Our expert panel beings with key things to consider when planning where you want to take your teaching career. We discuss the different options and why all teachers – including early career teachers – should be thinking about career progression.
How can you hone your plans and develop your skills? How should teachers go about choosing a specialism? What kinds of opportunities should you look for? Who can you approach for advice/mentoring?
Once teachers have their career progression plan in place, where can they find support? We discuss in-school CPD, other opportunities, qualifications and more. How do we go about developing a specialism? How long does it take? Should we change schools to support our career goals? And how can schools ensure they are supporting the development of their teaching staff?
This is the second of two episodes focused on career conversations. The first offered advice, practical tips and inspiration for teachers thinking about taking on leadership roles within schools and those climbing the leadership ladder: https://bit.ly/seced-leadership
These episodes have been produced in partnership with Teaching Vacancies, the free-to-use job listing service from the Department for Education: https://teaching-vacancies.service.gov.uk/
This episode offers advice, practical tips and inspiration for teachers who are thinking about taking on leadership roles within schools and for those already climbing the leadership ladder.
Three experts discuss why teaching staff should aspire to leadership and the different pathways and roles within middle and senior leadership.
What kind of skills are needed for leadership? How can teaching staff – including early career teachers – develop these skills and wider leadership experience? How can they dip their toe in the water and “have a go”? What kind of leadership opportunities can teachers look out for?
We discuss different pathways, specialisms and CPD options, including via the Chartered College, WomenEd, National Professional Qualifications and other routes.
What are the common barriers to leadership aspiration and how can we overcome them? And how can schools make middle and senior leadership attractive and more diverse?
This is one of two episodes focused on career conversations. The second, out on March 22, will focus on wider career pathways and progression within the secondary school.
These episodes have been produced in partnership with Teaching Vacancies, the free-to-use job listing service from the Department for Education. Sign up for job alerts via https://teaching-vacancies.service.gov.uk
This episode looks at how to embed high-impact routines into your classroom and your teaching. We ask which routines or learning habits are the most successful and how can they be established in order to make teaching and learning more efficient and effective.
We ask three key questions of our experts: Why are classroom routines so important? How can we establish classroom routines? What routines do we want to establish – which ones matter the most and will help to ensure that our classroom is an effective learning environment?
What are the most useful habits and routines to introduce to facilitate teaching and learning? We offer some concrete ideas and suggestions.
We discuss how we can decide upon, create, and establish these routines, including a seven-step process for creating and embedding routines.
We talk about how routines can lessen cognitive load in lessons for students, the importance of consistency and efficiency in the routines we create, and what we do when students don’t get the routines right.
This episode considers effective lesson-planning in the secondary school, offering practical tips, advice and ideas for teachers and subject/curriculum leaders.
Our experts discuss the difference between a planned lesson and a lesson plan. We ask what should be included in medium and short-term lesson planning. What are the non-negotiables, including key knowledge, skills, and the big questions? Which end-points should we include? What do we want pupils to think about, know and do? What are your success criteria?
How does lesson-planning link to curriculum sequencing? How do we incorporate our school’s learning values? What is the balance between departmental direction vs individual teacher planning and autonomy? How do we plan lessons that cater for different levels of prior knowledge and tackle gaps in knowledge or misconceptions?
We talk different types of lesson structure and different lesson ingredients, important lesson routines, planning for challenge & differentiation, using teaching assistants and more.
This episode tackles Ofsted school inspections, offering practical insights and tips – large and small – for secondary schools to help you thrive when the inspectors call.
Three experts offer a wealth of advice including some simple tenets of best practice for preparing for and handling Ofsted.
Our advice covers the 90-minute phone call, what needs to be in place pre-inspection, being ‘Ofsted-ready’ without burdening staff, and what data you need to have in place.
We offer tips for hosting the inspection team and managing the two days, including the emotional stress. We discuss protecting staff wellbeing and workload before and during inspection.
We highlight trends from recent inspections, including the issues inspectors are asking schools about. And we discuss what you can do if things are going wrong, including how to challenge inspectors.
Finally, we give you a sneaky hack for how you can predict when your inspection is due...
This episode offers practical advice and ideas for how secondary schools can support and protect the mental health of their students.
NHS data shows that almost one in five students aged 7 to 16 have a probable mental disorder. Our experts discuss the most pressing issues they are seeing and offer advice for how schools can respond.
We discuss creating a mentally healthy school culture, whole-school strategies, the role of the mental health lead, tips for things we can do to make a difference, building resilience after Covid, and staff CPD.
We advise teachers on how to handle interactions with students who are struggling, what to say & do in moments of crisis, what to do if you have concerns, and other tips for conversations with vulnerable young people.
And we discuss specific challenges including anxiety, low mood/ depression, loneliness, as well as the signs of change in pupils that may signal mental health issues.
This episode considers what effective governance looks like in the secondary school and how school leaders and governors can work together successfully and productively. We speak with three school leadership experts about: The distinction between the strategic and the operational and to what extent should governors be operational? How can we support governors who have little or no experience of schools? What makes for an effective chair and vice-chair of governors? What does an effective link governor role look like? How does governance change between individual schools and chains of schools within MATs? Which governance structures work best? What kind of information should school leaders provide to governors when and in which format?
This episode looks at leadership diversity in schools, offering a practical discussion about what diverse leadership looks like, how we can develop diverse leadership culture, and the benefits this can bring.
We discuss how we “practise” diverse leadership – what should be in place to do it well and what are the crucial factors? How can we be vulnerable and admit mistakes – embracing the fear that this work can generate? What should we avoid when trying to achieve diverse leadership?
We tackle the implications for recruitment processes, considering dos and don’ts. How do we create an inclusive culture and avoid tokenism? How can we ensure school priorities are equitable and inclusive? We also consider useful further reading, networks, and resources.
This podcast follows previous episodes on diversity in the classroom and creating a culture of diversity across the school.
In 2016, teacher and school leader Peter Radford finally quit the chalkface after burning-out and breaking down due to untenable workload and wellbeing pressures.
In this episode – the second of two staff wellbeing podcasts – we hear his story and seek advice for other teachers battling poor wellbeing, high workload, and poor work/life balance. Peter talks about his own experience and how others can spot the signs before it is too late.
For schools, we discuss the tenets of creating a mentally healthy working culture, including six basic psychological needs for staff. For teachers, we discuss protecting our wellbeing, including tips for new teachers, how to say no, prioritising personal time, asking for help, managing workload, and defeating the myth of outstanding.
For part one, visit https://bit.ly/seced-wellbeing-staff
In 2016, teacher and school leader Peter Radford finally quit the chalkface after burning-out and breaking down due to untenable workload and wellbeing pressures.
In this episode – the second of two staff wellbeing podcasts – we hear his story and seek advice for other teachers battling poor wellbeing, high workload, and poor work/life balance. Peter talks about his own experience and how others can spot the signs before it is too late.
For schools, we discuss the tenets of creating a mentally healthy working culture, including six basic psychological needs for staff. For teachers, we discuss protecting our wellbeing, including tips for new teachers, how to say no, prioritising personal time, asking for help, managing workload, and defeating the myth of outstanding.
For part one, visit https://bit.ly/seced-wellbeing-staff
Tens of thousands of teachers quit every year due to poor wellbeing and work/life balance. Across two episodes, we look at how schools can support the wellbeing of teaching staff and what teachers can do to protect their wellbeing.
In part one, we discuss how to create a whole-school culture of wellbeing, including mentally-healthy working environments, the pillars of psychological safety, and everyday wellbeing.
We consider how line managers can support colleagues and spot problems, how schools should respond if staff are struggling, and what teachers can do – including how to say no, sleeping properly, and protecting personal time.
One in four children are persistently absent from school and new government guidance means attendance is a priority this term.
In this episode, we discuss why students struggle to attend school, the barriers they face, and effective approaches/strategies to help raise attendance.
We seek tips from children’s commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza and the Education Endowment Foundation, discussing the findings and recommendations from two school attendance research reviews.
We ask what secondary schools can do to support students who struggle to attend, including how to engage with families, with a range of practical ideas for short-term and long-term interventions.
With soaring costs and real-terms school funding cuts, balancing the books has become a huge challenge. This episode offers practical advice for effective school financial planning and management.
We consider the funding situation on the ground and contemplate some worst-case scenarios for the year ahead. We discuss how we can approach the challenges we face, touching upon generating efficiencies, managing cashflow, benchmarking, financial planning metrics, costing development plans, and more.
We consider how business managers can work effectively with the headteacher and governors/trustees – including offering robust challenge – and the process of setting budgets for both MATs and standalone schools.
With soaring costs and real-terms school funding cuts, balancing the books has become a huge challenge. This episode offers practical advice for effective school financial planning and management.
We consider the funding situation on the ground and contemplate some worst-case scenarios for the year ahead. We discuss how we can approach the challenges we face, touching upon generating efficiencies, managing cashflow, benchmarking, financial planning metrics, costing development plans, and more.
We consider how business managers can work effectively with the headteacher and governors/trustees – including offering robust challenge – and the process of setting budgets for both MATs and standalone schools.
In this episode, Alex Quigley offers tips and ideas for the explicit teaching of writing skills in the secondary classroom.
Drawing on his book, Closing the Writing Gap, Alex explains how secondary teachers of all subjects can improve their students’ writing skills – and why this is important.
We discuss general principles, the Simple View of Writing, explicitly teaching and modelling the stages of writing, using talk and rhetoric, disciplinary literacy, teaching grammar, sentence composition, handwriting, and spelling.
Alex offers us some easy exercises/techniques including tips for improving sentence construction, editing-revising-rewriting, checking work back, vocabulary, and more.
In this episode, Alex Quigley offers tips and ideas for the explicit teaching of writing skills in the secondary classroom.
Drawing on his book, Closing the Writing Gap, Alex explains how secondary teachers of all subjects can improve their students’ writing skills – and why this is important.
We discuss general principles, the Simple View of Writing, explicitly teaching and modelling the stages of writing, using talk and rhetoric, disciplinary literacy, teaching grammar, sentence composition, handwriting, and spelling.
Alex offers us some easy exercises/techniques including tips for improving sentence construction, editing-revising-rewriting, checking work back, vocabulary, and more.
Are you ready for the new school year? This podcast offers a checklist for senior leaders in secondary schools to help you prepare for the autumn term and beyond.
Our experts discuss common ‘new year’ tasks for school leaders as well as common problems at this time of year.
We focus on the school improvement cycle and self-evaluation – what should be in place and what lies ahead for the School Improvement Plan?
We talk staffing, including CPD, succession planning, induction of new staff, staffing shortfalls, and communicating priorities.
We talk parental engagement, curriculum-planning, assessment, governance and meeting cycles, and finances.
At least 250,000 children and young people are living with Long Covid including an estimated 4.8% of secondary-age students.
This episode looks at the implications for secondary schools and what we can do to support these students academically and pastorally.
We discuss the many and varied symptoms of Long Covid and the impact they can have on learning, education, and wellbeing.
We offer ideas and interventions – big and small – to address these issues and support pupils suffering from this often-debilitating illness in the classroom and beyond. The advice is relevant to anyone working with young people in schools.
This podcast tackles memory – asking what teachers need to know about how students learn, forget and remember information.
Our experts offer a wealth of tangible teaching strategies as they discuss short-term, working and long-term memory, how they work and interact, and the implications for how we teach.
We discuss how we can direct pupils’ attention, the limitations of short-term memory, and how to help students manage the cognitive load.
We discuss how to present information effectively so that students pay attention to it, how to build knowledge or schema, prior learning, pre-testing, and we ask what we should avoid doing.
This episode looks at supporting pupils as they make the transition from primary to secondary school.
We chat with two secondary schools and two feeder primaries about common transition challenges and solutions.
We look at when transition work should begin, what the process looks like, engaging with parents, identifying pupils who may struggle, and supporting vulnerable pupils.
We discuss tried and tested ideas for transition interventions, activities and taster days.
Other topics include curriculum consistency, academic support, year 7 transition activities, open evenings, year 7 pupil ambassadors working with year 6 pupils, and the impact of Covid on transition.
This episode considers extra-curricular activities and what effective provision looks like in the secondary school. What are the common challenges when delivering extra-curricular provision? What kind of activities work best? How do we schedule these activities – when and where? How do we ensure equitable access and do we 'target' students?
We also discuss how we can staff extra-curricular provision and encourage staff to take-on activities. And how do we encourage student take-up?
How can our provision support a 'broad and balanced' curriculum offer? What role do external partnerships have to play? And should we quality-assure and evaluate our provision?
How can school leaders ensure that teacher appraisal and performance management processes are fair and effective.
Our experts discuss what an effective appraisal and PM policy looks like and what kind of evidence the process should require.
We discuss how to set objectives to enhance mastery and protect teacher autonomy, what happens to those objectives once set, and how they should be monitored and measured.
We explain why we should avoid data-driven objectives and how to manage the process to ensure “no surprises”.
We discuss lesson observations, how to have challenging conversations, and how to protect teacher workload and wellbeing.
All homework should have a clear purpose – but what? This podcast asks what secondary teachers should consider when planning homework.
We discuss the purposes of homework, different types of tasks, and which are most effective.
We agree some golden rules for setting homework, ask how much we should be setting, and what teachers should avoid doing.
We discuss what we should do with the results of homework. Should there always be feedback? What about checks or whole-class feedback? Should homework always be 'marked'? How can we tackle misconceptions? How can we use peer-marking and approaches to keep workload manageable?
This episode considers how teachers can use test-enhanced learning – commonly known as retrieval practice – as well as spaced learning and interleaving techniques to help students remember/recall the information they are taught.
Our experts discuss what these approaches look like in the classroom and the evidence and reasoning behind them.
We consider activities that work best, what to avoid, test difficulty, feedback, addressing misconceptions, how memory works, how to create the gaps for spaced learning, how many times we should 'retrieve', and offer tips for getting started.
The podcast coincides with a SecEd series focused on test-enhanced learning: https://bit.ly/3NxTmy0
This episode looks at how we can help students to prepare for their GCSE and A-level exams, including handling the anxiety and stress that exam season can bring.
Our experts discuss supporting students academically and pastorally, including tackling the impact of Covid on exam preparation.
We look at preparing students so they know what to expect, building techniques to use on the day, spotting the signs that students may be struggling, and revision support, including teaching ideas and revision tips.
We talk sleep, handling the distraction of social media, and how students can destress and regain a sense of control.
This episode looks at how secondary schools can support students living with trauma & adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).
We ask what form trauma/ACEs can take and what impact they can have on young people and their education.
We discuss signs to look-out, the key tenets of effective support, how to build strong relationships and trust, and creating safe spaces.
We discuss behaviour as a form of communication, how to handle incidents/meltdowns, how to be curious about the causes of behaviour, “fight-flight-freeze-fawn”, and why “connection before correction” is crucial.
We discuss the four domains of safety, child-centred planning, attendance and more.
This episode considers how we can work with key stage 4 students, both academically and pastorally, to prepare them for the step-up to post-16 study.
Our experts discuss why this transition point is so vital and the key challenges post-16 students often face.
We consider: How we can help students to handle the increased independence of post-16 study, including study and research skills, time-management, self-organisation, and the increased difficulty of the curriculum? When should this preparatory work begin? What is role of FE/sixth form colleges in supporting schools? What does good careers guidance look like?
After 2021 – the year of experimentation – this episode talks all things #edtech, looking at examples of recent best practice and the elements that are crucial to successful technology-use in schools.
We offer tips to teachers on risk-taking with edtech as well as making a success of hybrid learning.
We also discuss: Confidence-building, edtech trends, CPD/training, good edtech leadership, supporting parent engagement with and via technology, and online assessment.
We ask what edtech developments our panelists are looking forward to seeing in 2022 and what edtech skills and CPD teachers should be prioritising.
You can download associated resources via http://bit.ly/seced-edtechpod
This episode looks at how to be an effective SENCO – considering best practice in the role, key duties, and how we can carry these out to a high standard. Our experts discuss what a SENCO can and should do in order to be effective, and how we can overcome common challenges – including insufficient time for the role and high workload.
We offer advice for someone who is new to the role and we discuss tips for engaging with (supporting & empowering) teaching staff, as well as handling difficult colleagues who expect too much. We also discuss parental engagement.
This episode looks at how middle and senior leaders should approach the first 100 days in any school leadership role with lots of advice and tips for school leaders new in post.
We discuss: How to prepare for a new leadership role and identify early priorities; what a new leader should do and avoid doing in their first week; how we can engage effectively with new colleagues, including ‘difficult’ colleagues; how to build a culture of trust and bring colleagues with us; levels of leadership; what to do when something goes wrong; the traits of effective leadership and leaders & more...
This episode discusses effective parent/carer engagement work for schools, offering advice and ideas.
We discuss a parental engagement timeline (when this work should begin and how it can be sustained), handling conflict with parents, how to engage with “hard-to-reach” parents, community out-reach, and protecting staff workload.
We discuss best practice for your school website and how parental engagement has changed during the pandemic, including the future of parents’ evenings (online and face-to-face).
We discuss the importance of positive communication and how this can be done effectively, including proactive communication plans and online parental coaching.
In this episode, we catch up with Adele Bates, a behaviour specialist, ex-teacher and author of Miss I Don’t Give a Sh*t: Engaging with challenging behaviour in schools.
Our practical discussion looks at how we can deal with and prevent challenging behaviour, what challenging behaviour looks like, when it occurs and handling incidents.
We ask how we can create safety, boundaries and routines, including seating plans, how we can "see the child, not the behaviour", including issues of punishment and shame, how to "check-in" with students, communication of unmet needs, "teaching" self-regulation, and building relationships (the PACE approach).
This episode looks at how digital learning in schools is evolving in the wake of the pandemic and what it will look like in the months to come.
We discuss lessons learnt from Covid, how the pandemic experience has changed practice and use of technology – and where we go next.
We offer ideas for edtech practices that free-up teachers to teach, including pedagogy, homework, assessment, blended learning, flexible working and CPD. We look at what we can do to close the digital divide.
This podcast has been produced with Pearson and comes with a free guide to digital learning: https://bit.ly/seced-DL
Host Adele Bates leads a reflective and practical discussion on diversity and inclusion in the classroom – how we can achieve this and what it looks like.
We touch upon representation, avoiding tokenism, evaluating the resources we use to deliver our curriculum, and ask how we can include all students and ensure everyone feels they belong.
We discuss how we can connect with pupils from diverse backgrounds. Other themes include advocacy & allyship for diverse colleagues, BAME & LGBT+ representation, and the experiences of children in care in our classrooms.
Adele’s previous podcast considered diversity across school culture, curriculum & the workforce: https://bit.ly/3nMQQrj
This episode is published ahead of #AntiBullyingWeek 2021 (November 15-19) and looks at how schools can prevent and respond to bullying behaviours and incidents.
We discuss core principles of anti-bullying work, including school structures, policies & culture, what whole-school approaches look like, effective anti-bullying policies, using student voice, effective school culture, LGBT+ inclusion & more.
We look at the role of education, including making children aware of what bullying behaviours are and supporting them to manage disagreements. We consider how to respond to incidents of bullying, including breaking down barriers to reporting and how to engage with perpetrators of bullying.
This episode offers advice to early career teachers (ECTs) to help you thrive during your first year/s of teaching. The discussion features two ECTs (one first year & one second year) as well as an experienced mentor. We discuss common challenges for new teachers and offer advice for ECTs across key areas including SEND, work/life balance, workload, lesson-planning, differentiation, self-care and wellbeing. We look at coaching and mentoring – what are the essentials to make this support effective and how can ECTs to get the most from their mentors? We end the podcast with recommendations for further reading/support.
Ofsted’s inspection framework requires schools in England to focus on the intent, implementation and impact of their curriculum.
Last year, Matt Bromley, author of School and College Curriculum Design, discussed his six-step process for curriculum intent (https://bit.ly/3cl68fY). Now we invite Matt back to focus on curriculum implementation and impact.
Implementation: Translating curriculum into teaching and long-term learning; acquiring and applying learning; how pupils’ memory works; effective learning environments; the right culture and systems; workload; collaboration; CPD...
Impact: What is assessment? What are we assessing? How can we ensure assessment is effective? Improving marking/feedback and deciding upon your outcomes.
This episode looks at coaching and mentoring as part of effective CPD practice in schools.
Our experts define coaching and mentoring, how one differs from the other, and how coaching and mentoring practices in schools have changed over the years, including different models and how to measure impact.
We discuss the essentials that need to be in place in order to make coaching and mentoring effective, including managing expectations, questioning skills, listening skills, switching between coaching and mentoring, and accountability.
We also discuss the challenges: What doesn't work well and why? What lessons have we learned?
This episode offers practical advice, ideas and reflection for effective school improvement practices and processes.
Four school leaders discuss the core elements and philosophy of effective school improvement, including vision, values & strategic priorities.
We consider how to get everyone on board, communication and change-management, consistency, collaboration, distributed leadership, succession planning, CPD, building trust and social capital, middle leadership, supporting high-quality teaching & learning, the EEF Implementation Cycle, and how to stop chasing outcomes and focus on processes.
We discuss common priorities and areas of focus and ask where our panellists would begin if they were parachuted into a challenging school tomorrow...
This podcast looks at the Everyone's Invited testimonies and Ofsted’s review into sexual harassment, abuse and violence in schools – and the implications for safeguarding practice.
We look at how schools can respond effectively to Ofsted’s recommendations, not least the requirement that we “assume that sexual harassment and online sexual abuse are happening”.
How can we encourage victims to report incidents, change school culture, ensure pupil voice is at the heart of our response, and review RSHE provision? What kind of staff training is required? How do we review school policies and respond to different 'levels' of incident?
This episode looks at student-led eco-work in schools as well as how schools can reduce their carbon emissions. Our panel includes both teachers and students and offers a range of ideas large and small for projects and cost-saving initiatives. The podcast is inspired by the Let’s Go Zero schools campaign.
We look at practical carbon reduction ideas, wider eco-work including single-use plastics and food waste, how student eco-teams can work, using the free En-ROADS simulator resource, and the Youth Climate Action Network.
We consider how schools can save money by prioritising carbon reduction, including energy surveys, reducing energy-use and procurement.
Following our popular podcast on quality first teaching (https://bit.ly/2R5PIT8), this episode looks specifically at effective marking and feedback practice for teachers.
Our experts offer ideas and tips to ensure your marking and feedback is effective.
Themes include: the purposes of teacher assessment, school assessment policies, consistency across the school, using assessment to inform curriculum-planning, target-setting, tracking progress, using assessment data, assessment points, and addressing misconceptions.
We offer tips to reduce workload, including how to “live mark” during lessons, verbal mark schemes, self & peer-assessment, code-marking, hinge questions, exit tickets etc. And tips for effective feedback, including whole-class feedback, feedback sheets etc.
There is much talk about catch-up, lost learning and a Covid generation. Many politicians and commentators have adopted this deficit model to discuss schooling post-pandemic. But have we stopped to ask what our children actually need? Or what school should look like from September for those of us who reject this deficit mindset?
This podcast sets out to do just that. Our guests, who include two headteachers and two students, discuss issues ranging from mental health & wellbeing to curriculum and mentoring. We also consider the Covid innovations we want to hang on to.
This episode considers the impact of poverty on children, families and education – and what schools can do to address these consequences.
We look at the national picture of increasing child poverty (4.3 million children and rising), the causes of poverty, the barriers it creates to education, and the impact of Covid.
We discuss why free school meals is a poor proxy for poverty and how schools can understand the (often hidden) poverty in their families and communities. We focus on a range of practical ideas for supporting pupils/families and consider how we can break the barriers that poverty creates.
In this episode, Matt Bromley interviews colleagues from four secondary schools to find out how we can ensure an effective transition of pupils from year 6 to 7.
The panel shares perennial good practice advice for transition and ensuring a smooth start in September, but also touches on the particulars of transition in 2021 as pupils recover from the impact of Covid-19.
We discuss issues relating to teaching & learning, pedagogy, pastoral and wellbeing issues, administration & management, liaising with feeder primary schools and families, and more. The podcast offers lots of quick, practical and useful ideas.
Host Adele Bates leads a reflective and practical discussion on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in the school, especially within the curriculum, school culture and workforce.
Adele and guests, including #DiverseEd’s Bennie Kara, author of A Little Guide for Teachers: Diversity in Schools, discuss how far we have come and what needs to happen next.
Topics include decolonising/diversifying the curriculum, LGBT, whole-school approaches, workforce training and changing school cultures.
We consider EDI within school policies, recruitment and school values/culture. Where should schools start with this work? How do we get past tokenism and box-ticking?
This episode offers a wealth of practical insights, advice & ideas for effective safeguarding practice in schools. We look at general good practice as well as safeguarding during Covid-19.
Our experts tackle issues including the key principles of effective safeguarding, safer working practice, making effective referrals/working with children’s social care & the 'trends' to be aware of in 2021 (sexual harassment/abuse, self-harm, online abuse, esafety).
We look at safeguarding considerations for September, how safeguarding practice has evolved during Covid-19, what changes are here to stay, the issues we are on the look-out for & what our response should be.
In this episode, three guests – who have more than 34 years’ teaching experience between them – dissect what exactly Quality First Teaching looks like in the classroom, offering practical ideas, guidance, tips and reflection.
We tackle issues such as teacher CPD, subject knowledge, and research-led teaching. We look at the environment for learning, some key principles of effective pedagogy, stretch, challenge and high expectations as well as explanations and modelling.
We also tackle questioning techniques, how to tackle misconceptions, practice and revision, as well as feedback and assessment.
This episode focuses on issues of SEND, inclusion and diversity in the school environment in the context of the Covid pandemic, our students returning following national lockdown, and how we might build back better.
Host Adele Bates leads a wide-ranging discussion which offers practical reflections, empathy and advice across areas including students’ lockdown experiences, issues around the current transition back into school, supporting students who struggled or disappeared during lockdown, anxiety, advice for parents, advice for SENCOs, and more.
The discussion also touches upon issues of diversity and equity, building back better after Covid, and supporting the school workforce.
This episode looks at how we can effectively teach and support students who use English as an additional language (EAL) in the classroom.
With advice from three experienced teaching experts, we consider who our EAL students are, the five bands of language proficiency, the tenets of good classroom practice, learning materials, translanguaging, high expectations, assessing learners’ progress, effective resources, and more.
We also look at family/parental engagement, how to support students when they first arrive in your school, whole-school approaches and supporting EAL students during Covid-19.
This episode looks at the plight of our vulnerable learners as schools re-open once again to all students after the third Covid-19 national lockdown. We consider barriers to learning and wellbeing that vulnerable learners face and what our priorities must be coming out of Lockdown 3.0.
We discuss: what we have learnt about effective remote education, teaching & lessons, the cancelled Summer 2021 exams, student progression, working with families, SEND, questions to ask ahead of full school re-opening & more. We also talk wellbeing & mental health, including attendance, anxiety, county lines, safeguarding issues, pastoral care and more.
This episode looks at the skills, traits and approaches that effective middle leaders need to employ in the secondary school environment and offers practical advice, tips and reflections from three practising middle leaders.
We discuss how to work with and lead your teaching colleagues, how to manage tricky colleagues, how to work with those who are more experienced than you, and how we can best support struggling colleagues.
We also look at communication, maintaining professional boundaries, workload and team morale, career progression, CPD, developing your team, and developing a culture of mutual trust – among other areas.
In this episode, we consider what effective teaching for SEN students looks like in the mainstream school classroom.
The discussion considers the principles of good teaching for SEN students, common barriers to success, and the implications for pedagogy. We touch upon the use of teaching assistants, models of intervention, and how we should work with families.
Other themes include the SEND in Mainstream Schools Guidance, implementing the graduated approach (Assess, Plan, Do, Review), and adaptive teaching (dispelling the myths of differentiation). And we consider Cognitive Load Theory, masking, sensory overload, and making the curriculum and resources accessible.
In this episode, we interview former headteacher and author Jackie Beere and former teacher and school leader Kevin Piper about metacognition and self-regulation. The panel define their terms and discuss ways to help students develop metacognitive skills in order to support their wellbeing, their learning and progress. They debate whether metacognition can be taught as a transferable skill or if it is domain-specific, and discuss the importance of a teacher modelling different learning strategies. The podcast offers a number of teaching ideas and strategies.
This episode looks at Covid-19. We discuss how schools have coped during the autumn term. Their biggest successes and the biggest challenges. What lessons have we learned? What good practice advice can we give? We also touch upon how we are planning for the spring and summer terms 2021.
We are joined by three headteachers from schools in Tier 2 and 3 areas and Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders.
Topics: Leadership, remote education, staff wellbeing & fatigue, workload, government guidance, school budgets, risk assessment, catch-up funding, exam preparation, parental engagement, mental health & more.
This episode looks at the impact the Pupil Premium has had over the last 10 years on closing the attainment gap. The panel discuss the causes of academic disadvantage and explore some solutions for schools, including tackling the vocabulary gap, improving quality first teaching, and putting in place targeted interventions and support.
It features Debi Bailey, CEO of Newcastle East mixed MAT, Charlotte Bowyer, Pupil Premium Coordinator and Assistant Headteacher at King Ecgbert School in Sheffield, and Marc Rowland, Deputy Director of the National Education Trust & author of A Practical Guide to the Pupil Premium.
This episode offers practical advice, guidance and tips for schools delivering the relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) curriculum, which has been a statutory requirement since September.
Our experts, including from the Sex Education Forum, discuss how things are going so far, specific challenges schools have faced in delivering effective RSHE, the impact of Covid-19, the role of RSHE in supporting students post-lockdown, the right to withdrawal, delivering LGBT+ elements & more.
We offer advice for schools delaying delivery until the summer and we also feature a case study of one school’s approaches.
Matt Bromley talks to headteacher Phil Denton, head of English Chloe Testa, and education trainer Peter Radford about teacher workload. They discuss the impact burn-out can have on teachers' wellbeing, as well as the consequences of low teacher retention and explore possible solutions. They discuss the importance of school culture, explaining that often it’s the nature of the work teachers are asked to do that causes anxiety. They argue that teachers should be afforded autonomy when it comes to planning and assessment. They discuss the impact Covid-19 has had on workload and what schools might learn about flexible working.
This episode of the SecEd Podcast offers a practical discussion about behaviour management across the school and in the classroom, with advice from three school leaders.
Themes: Effective whole-school approaches; sanctions & consequences; behaviour as communication; King Ecgbert School’s Consistent Behaviour Model Policy; exclusion; internal exclusion; parental engagement; low-level behaviour; classroom management & teaching tips; reasonable adjustments; behaviour & Covid-19.
Featuring Paul Haigh, headteacher of King Ecgbert School in Sheffield; Sarah Birch, regional standards leader at the River Tees MAT in the North East; Steve Baker, executive headteacher, Kilgarth and Gilbrook Schools in Birkenhead and author of A School Without Sanctions
This episode of the SecEd Podcast focuses on how schools can best support both SEN students and looked after children as we continue our recovery from the coronavirus lockdown.
We discuss what barriers to education and wellbeing these children are facing so far this term and offer practical suggestions for how schools and teachers can support them.
Topics include interventions, whole-school approaches, parental engagement, curriculum design and examination preparation.
Featuring Paddy Smith, Head of Student Welfare at Bede Academy in Northumberland; Garry Freeman, an experienced SENCO and National SEND System Leader; Clare Brokenshire, Head of Faculty with Academy 21.
This episode is the final of four Back to School podcasts offering advice to schools this autumn term and beyond. In this episode, we consider the technological legacy of Covid-19, effective remote education, and the role of edtech in supporting teaching and learning.
With Bukky Yusuf, Al Kingsley & Paul Haigh, we discuss lockdown (what worked, what didn’t), the digital divide, remote teaching pedagogy, safeguarding, parental engagement, CPD, lesson-planning, flipped learning & more.
These podcasts complement SecEd’s recent series of 12-page Back to School Guides, which can be downloaded for free at https://bit.ly/SecEd-Back2School
This episode is the third in a four-part Back to School Series offering advice to schools as the autumn term begins. This time, we consider what teaching & learning should look like in schools after the Covid-19 lockdown, this term and beyond.
With Dr Niki Kaiser & Dr Robin Bevan, topics include teaching & learning approaches & interventions, effective pedagogy, assessment, curriculum, exam preparation, remote learning & more.
These podcasts complement SecEd’s recent series of 12-page Back to School Guides, which can be downloaded for free at https://bit.ly/SecEd-Back2School
In this episode of The SecEd Podcast – produced in partnership with Pearson – we explore the role schools can play in teaching the digital and employability skills that students will need in the future.
We discuss the importance of teaching key skills and developing core knowledge and understanding as part of a broad and balanced curriculum, as well as through the discrete IT qualifications.
We also take a look at the new Pearson Edexcel GCSE (9-1) Computer Science, why it has been introduced, and what students studying computer science will be able to use the qualification for in the future.
Featuring Dr Andrew Middleton, director of computer science at Holmes Chapel Comprehensive School in Cheshire; Floriane Latulipe, director of digital strategy at Felsted School in Essex; Tim Brady, subject advisor for computer science and IT at Pearson Edexcel.
This episode is the second in a four-part Back to School series offering advice to schools as the autumn term begins. In this episode, we consider how schools can support the good mental health and wellbeing of their teachers who are returning after the Covid-19 lockdown. We also offer tips to school staff themselves on keeping mentally healthy.
Topics include bereavement, talking about mental health, spotting the signs, NQTs, anxiety, tips to help, whole-school advice & more.
The podcast complements SecEd’s recent series of 12-page Back to School Guides, which can be downloaded for free at https://bit.ly/SecEd-Back2School
The first podcast in the series focused on Student Wellbeing and is available here.
This episode is the first in a four-part Back to School series offering advice to schools as the autumn term begins.
In this episode we consider how to support the good wellbeing and mental health of students returning to school after the Covid-19 lockdown.
Experts including Dr Pooky Knightsmith consider some of the issues that school staff can expect to see in the coming weeks. We also offer advice on spotting the signs of any wellbeing problems and what we might be able to do to support students.
The podcast complements SecEd’s recent series of 12-page Back to School Guides, which can be downloaded for free at https://bit.ly/SecEd-Back2School
One in 10 secondary teachers leave the profession every year. In this SecEd Podcast, we look at the latest research into the school workforce and we discuss practical strategies to support teacher retention and recruitment in secondary schools.
On retention, we tackle issues including workload, flexible and part-time working, supporting early career teachers, CPD & autonomy, and pay & conditions. We also consider the state of teacher recruitment and what schools can do to attract the best candidates.
Guests include Phil Denton, headteacher at St Bede's Catholic High School in Ormskirk; Chris Parkinson, executive headteacher of Bosworth Academy in Leicester; Jack Worth, the school workforce lead and an expert on the teacher labour market at the National Foundation for Educational Research.
In this episode, we look at what makes an effective digital strategy in schools. What does a digital strategy look like? Why is it important? What purpose does it serve? Who creates it? What form does it take?
Lots of practical advice and reflections with themes including whole-school technology strategy, deployment, procurement, budgets and planning, issues relating to teaching and pedagogy, the challenges when deploying technology, edtech evidence, blended learning, the impact of Covid-19, and more.
Featuring Al Kingsley, chair of the Hampton Academies Trust & MD of edtech company NetSupport; Paul Haigh, head of King Ecgbert School, a DfE Demonstrator Hub school in Sheffield; Alex Smith, deputy head at King’s School in Gloucester, whose Master’s in Education focused on adopting digital learning.
In this SecEd Podcast we speak to three experts about how we can support vulnerable students post-lockdown as they return to our schools. Our focus includes looked after children, previously looked after children, those with mental health challenges, disadvantaged pupils, and those with SEND.
The podcast offers a range of practical advice, with themes including the challenges at-risk students may present with, spotting the signs, potential interventions and pastoral support, safeguarding implications and more.
In conversation with SecEd editor Pete Henshaw are Darren Martindale, service manager, vulnerable learners & virtual school head at City of Wolverhampton Council, Phil Denton, headteacher at St Bede's Catholic High School in Ormskirk; and Stephen Phipps, associate dean with Academy 21, a national provider of online alternative provision.
The podcast has been produced in partnership with Academy 21.
Many educators see a role for both skills and knowledge in the curriculum – but the national debate continues to pitch one against the other. In this podcast, Pete Henshaw chats with Jez Bennett and Chris Holmwood from the 5 Dimensions Trust in Milton Keynes about how schools can embrace both skills and knowledge education and what this might look like.
We look at what Ofsted has to say on the matter, how we can promote skills within a system of terminal examinations, and hear about the innovative ASK (Academic Skills and Knowledge) framework in place at Shenley Brook End School, where Chris is headteacher.
In this SecEd Podcast, Matt Bromley interviews assistant headteacher, Zoe Evans, about her work on embedding literacy, numeracy and digital competency skills across the curriculum at her school in Colwyn Bay, North Wales.
Zoes takes us through the process she followed including the creation of a ’skills team’ and the identification of the common skills that students need to use in most subject disciplines.
Zoe also talks about establishing a common language for learning across her school, and of the importance of consistency in the key words and definitions teachers use, in order to aid transfer of knowledge across subject fields.
Zoe explains how her school is now sharing its approach to skills development across Wales in partnership with the Welsh government.
In this SecEd Podcast, produced in partnership with Access 1st, producers of the SEN-HUB CPD service, we discuss practical ideas and approaches to support teachers to be confident and effective in their practice.
We consider what a confident teacher looks like, themes of CPD and wider school support, school culture and collegiate working, school leadership, staff wellbeing and mental health among other issues.
Pete Henshaw, editor of SecEd, gets ideas and tips from Mark Grimmett, a lead practitioner and teacher of mathematics at Guildford County School, David Higginbottom, an assistant headteacher at the Gosport and Fareham Multi-Academy Trust, and Penny Georgiou, director of Access 1st
With thanks to Access 1st for their support. The Access 1st SEN-HUB CPD service for teachers launches in June at www.senhub.co
In this SecEd Podcast, Matt Bromley interviews former headteacher, David Birch, about his work as part of the Forgotten Third Commission, which looked into how to improve the prospects of students who do not achieve at least a Grade 4 pass in GCSE English and maths.
The fact that this represents about a third of 16-year-olds year-in, year-out is not an accident but the product of the system of comparable outcomes whereby the spread of GCSE grades is pegged to what cohorts of similar ability achieved in the past.
The Commission points out that young people who fall below this bar pay a high price and its report focused specifically on how we can do better for these students in respect of English, though many of its observations could also be applied to maths.
David talks to Matt about each of the Commission’s findings and brings us up to date with the group’s work, including the recent creation of a Passport in English.
The discussion also touches upon Pupil Premium practice, including the problems of an intervention-heavy approach ahead of a focus on the quality of teaching and learning and cultural capital and aspiration.
This SecEd Podcast offers a range of practical, research-based advice on what an effective CPD programme in schools might look like and how we can evaluate our CPD to ensure it is effective and has impact for our students.
We also consider support staff, subject-specific CPD vs pedagogy-led CPD, and teacher autonomy when it comes to leading their own CPD.
SecEd editor Pete Henshaw speaks with Maria Cunningham, head of education at the Teacher Development Trust, a national charity supporting evidence-led CPD practice in school, and Ben Solly, principal of Uppingham Community College in Rutland and a member of SecEd’s editorial board.
For further information on The SecEd Podcast, visit www.sec-ed.co.uk/knowledge-bank/podcasts/
In this two-part SecEd Podcast, we speak with expert Matt Bromley, a former teacher and school leader, SecEd editorial board member, and author, about curriculum design.
Based on his new book, School and College Curriculum Design, Matt takes us through his six steps for effective and coherent curriculum design, focusing on Ofsted's new inspection requirements as well as general best practice principles.
These six steps are to: Agree the vision, Set the destination, Assess the starting points, Identify the way-points, Define excellence, and Diminish disadvantage.
The first podcast in this series covered steps one to three. This podcast is part 2 and focuses on steps four to six.
In conversation with SecEd editor Pete Henshaw, Matt offers a range of practical advice and reflection, as well as some key questions to help schools evaluate their own curriculum design work.
This podcast is published in conjunction with Matt Bromley's recent SecEd Best Practice Focus on Curriculum Design.
In this two-part SecEd Podcast, we speak with expert Matt Bromley, a former teacher and school leader, SecEd editorial board member, and author, about curriculum design.
Based on his new book, School and College Curriculum Design, Matt takes us through his six steps for effective and coherent curriculum design, focusing on Ofsted's new inspection requirements as well as general best practice principles.
In conversation with SecEd editor Pete Henshaw, Matt offers a range of practical advice and reflection, as well as some key questions to help schools evaluate their own curriculum design work.