Monthly update - April

April 24, 2025

Sensible stuff, no quick fixes

Dear colleague

Here are some links that I hope you find helpful:

There’s been a great deal of commentary about Adolescence: Steve Willshaw and Matt Pinkett had some conversations about toxic masculinity, helpful for framing conversations about this in schools. You can watch for free here.

New webinars on Myatt & Co

High challenge, low threat in the classroom: if we want all pupils to attempt demanding content, it’s helpful to think about how we create an atmosphere where difficult work is relished rather than resisted!

We can sometimes make things too easy for our pupils and students in the mistaken belief that they won’t be able to cope with demanding work.

In fact they can!

Pupils themselves say that they enjoy challenging work, as long as they feel supported. So, let’s raise the bar!

I’ll be going through the elements of creating high challenge and low threat in our classrooms, with examples for primary and secondary.

Tuesday 6th May 4-5pm, live and recorded.

KS3 The Ambitious Years: a new project developing curriculum resources. Underpinned by the findings from the ‘Faster Read’ I make the case that it’s possible to increase challenge and inclusion.

Assessment at KS3: challenges and opportunities.

There are new webinars to show how it’s possible to provide all our pupils with gorgeous, accessible content in geography, history and RE.

You can access the webinars with an annual single or group subscription to Myatt & Co.

Finding My Voice: A whole school approach to oracy and personal development

If you are looking for light touch, high impact ways of developing oracy and personal development in your contexts, you’ll find these ‘Bites’ on Finding my Voice helpful.

For example, What makes me shine? This lovely provocation for pupils from Christian Foley is one of the prompts to support personal development in primary. And a neat provocation from Manny Awoyelu on the power of an idea.

And if you’d like to explore the programme, there’s a 14 day free trial, to Finding My Voice and you can sign up here.

The Leadership Lobby on Myatt & Co

We’re looking to provide as much value as possible to support ongoing professional learning. In addition to the Huh Curriculum Leaders, we’re now releasing The Leadership Lobby as part of the Myatt & Co resources.

In Leading Hopefully Andrew Morrish and I outline what's involved in building humane communities. We discuss how success built up over time: the relevance of Rosabeth Moss Kanter's '6 Keys'. We go on to consider how we can lead ourselves and support others.

Leading Authentically is now available and we’ll be releasing a new session each week.

Great education blogs and books to check out:

I’m looking forward to speaking at The Northern Education Show on Thursday 26th June in Bolton, free to attend and you can sign up here.

I’ll also be going to the E-ACT IDEAS Assessment & Data Leaders Conference Tuesday 1st July 2025 - 10:00–16:00

It’s worth checking out the Primary Languages Network for resources and support for teaching high quality language lessons in primary.

I did a podcast for Inside your Ed with Dale Bassett on the interim report for the Curriculum and Assessment Review. You can listen here and there’ll be more to come once the report is published.

The ‘Just read’ research from the University of Sussex found that simply reading challenging, complex novels aloud and at a fast pace in each lesson, repositioned ‘poorer’ readers as ‘good’ readers, giving them a more engaged, uninterrupted reading experience over a sustained period.

While this trial was with Year 8 pupils, similar improvement in reading outcomes have been found in primary.

Once we know the impact reading aloud can have, we can’t ‘unknow’ it! In this recording I talk about how we’ve taken these insights and applied them to the curriculum in the foundation subjects in primary. If you’d like to know more about The Teachers’ Collection, here’s a link to a free trial for two colleagues in your setting.

I’ve had several conversations recently about the tricky business of assessment! In primary there have been lots of questions about how to make judgements about how pupils are getting on in the foundation subjects. So, I’ve run a series of assessment webinars which are now available on The Teachers’ Collection.

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

Until next time

Mary