Monthly newsletter - June

Sensible stuff, no quick fixes

Dear colleague

Here are some links that I hope you find helpful:

Nearly four years ago I started Myatt & Co to support ongoing professional learning. It's been so interesting and such fun to work with over 350 colleagues sharing their ideas with us. I am particularly grateful to Steve Willshaw, Rachel Higginson, Jill Berry, Bennie Kara, John Tomsett and Andrew Morrish for leading brilliant conversations.

I've just created this short quiz to see if it’s worth joining over 19K educators tapping in to the 500 plus films and resources on the platform!

Course updates for the Huh Academy

The courses are online, self-paced and designed to support curriculum development, leadership and personal development.

I’m delighted to say they are now open for bookings

Curriculum Leaders: for leaders wanting to refine their curriculum work, with John Tomsett and me. More info here.

Leading the Diverse Curriculum: a very popular course from Hannah Wilson and Bennie Kara for schools wanting to truly diversify the curriculum. More info here.

Building Teams: Lekha Sharma and Sam Crome share the research plus plenty of practical strategies for building great teams. More info here.

Finding My Voice: A light touch, high impact personal development and oracy approach for the whole school. It’s been developed by Rachel Higginson, Emmanuel Awoyelu, Christian Foley and me. More info here.

Being Your Best, Doing Your Best: Created by Dr Emma Kell practical, research-based coaching tools and approaches to promote coaching cultures in schools and promote and enhance self-efficacy, success and job-satisfaction. More info here.

Leadership Lobby: Andrew Morrish and I have curated the most interesting and impactful research to support leadership development. With a combination of recordings from educational leadership researchers and practitioners, together with insights from experience and practical resources to support leadership development. More info here.

Great news that the fifth and final book in the Huh Curriculum series is out in the world! John Tomsett and I have spoken to brilliant leaders about the curriculum for young people in alternative provision. It’s just three years since we started work on the first Huh: Curriculum Conversations between subject and senior leaders. We thought it would be the only one. It’s been a joy to find that schools wanted more, and so Primary Huh, Primary Huh 2 and SEND Huh followed.

Alternative Provision Huh is available to order here.

I’ll be joining Lyfta on Thursday 11th July in London for a day focused on making schools and trusts places where students and teachers want to be and if you’d like to join us, tickets are here.

The Religious Education Council of England and Wales have published a National Content Standard for RE in England (NCS).

The NCS provides clarification about excellence of approach to religious education and exemplifies how schools and academies can fulfil current legal requirements effectively.

The RE Council is currently collecting recommendations from school providers and academy trusts, who recognise the NCS as a benchmark for high-quality RE and want to use it to raise the standard of RE across all schools. More information here.

NATRE Primary Religious Education Survey

Primary colleagues are invited to complete NATRE’s bi-annual survey. The information is used for lobbying and advocacy on behalf of teachers as well as an insight into needs and developments.

I recently visited St Michael’s primary school in Aldbourne in Wiltshire, where Jude Arkwright and colleagues have trialled the ‘Faster Read’ programme with impact on reading outcomes for all their pupils. They also run continuous provision through KS1 and I truly impressed with the high demands and self-directed work which met the needs of all the pupils. Autumn dates and booking here.

The Teachers' Collection is getting some lovely reviews for example from Sophie Dent, of Fairburn Primary School:

I recently did a reading webinar on how we can improve pupils’ comprehension through using high quality texts across the curriculum and you can watch it here.

I’m really impressed with Adam Boxer’s insights on homework and retrieval practice: he’s running Retrieving Better: Embedding Retrieval In Your School a one-year continued professional development course to provide secondary school leaders with the knowledge and skills they need to implement a school- or department-wide long-term memory strategy. More info here.

Finally, one part of my daily routine is to complete the quick questions on Teacher Tapp. Hard to believe that something so quick can provide so many terrific insights! If you’re not using it yet, you can sign up here.

If you think there’s someone who would appreciate this update, you can forward the link here.

Until next time

Mary