School Improvement Update

Sensible stuff, no quick fixes

Dear colleague

Here are some links that I hope you find helpful:

Embedding oracy properly, no quick fixes!

Finding My Voice is 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 on the programme here.

Rachel and I are doing a webinar on Monday 4 November at 4pm where we’ll be talking about culture, curriculum and the classroom. This session will explore the notion that powerful approaches to education do not focus on one isolated component but consciously build an interconnected, living system, and you can sign up here.

Embedding reading across the primary curriculum

When I’m speaking about an ambitious curriculum for all our pupils, I refer to the impact of the Faster Read research and how we can use these insights to develop reading across the curriculum. I’ll be doing a webinar on Thursday 7th November 4pm about how to use books to power up the primary curriculum, and you can sign up here.

The curriculum: look how far we’ve come!

There has been a marked shift in discussion of and appreciation for the curriculum across all parts of the sector in the last few years. There can be a tendency to forget just how far the sector has come.

I explore some of the gains made in this short recording on Myatt & Co because I think it will encourage us all to continue to reflect on and refine the curriculum we provide for young people. (£/free trial)

To mark the publication of Evelyn Forde MBE’s new book ’Herstory: A Leadership Manifesto’ we’ve made the conversation Evelyn had with Steve Willshaw free to access until Friday 15th November. Evelyn shares her journey to becoming a school headteacher and what needs to be done to make the profession more inclusive. It’s a great conversation and you can watch it here.

A collection of ‘Rooted in Reading’ blogs from Steve Willshaw is well worth checking out if you want to develop reading for pleasure in your school.

Cat Priggs has a new course ‘Starting as a senior leader’ and a great new blog which is worth checking out: ‘We need to talk about…’ how new senior leaders should approach line management of subjects, link here.

Like Cat, I also have a blog on Substack: Curriculum 101 goes out every Saturday. It’s a chance share some thoughts on the curriculum and pedagogy, funnily enough! I’m pretty proud of the fact that I’ve written 98 posts shared with 11,000 readers and if helpful, there’s more info here.

Huh Academy courses

The courses are online, self-paced and designed to support curriculum development, leadership and personal development. We’ve just had the first round of check-ins for the Curriculum Leaders: some great discussions on how to help colleagues bring a great curriculum to life. 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.

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.

Curriculum and Assessment Symposium: I’m looking forward to Merrick-Ed Assessment’s inaugural Curriculum and Assessment Symposium on Tuesday 26th November, at Amazon Corporate Offices, London. It is a fee-free event, tickets are limited, and you can sign up here.

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. My current streak is almost 1,000 - sad I know, but it’s that good!

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

Until next time

Mary