Bedrock Talks from Bedrock Learning
Welcome to Bedrock Talks, a podcast from the team at Bedrock Learning that delves deep into the heart of literacy in education. Hosted by the insightful and experienced educator Andy Sammons, this podcast stands as a beacon for anyone passionate about enhancing literacy skills and understanding its pivotal role in education.
Each episode is a journey into the world of literacy education. Andy brings together a diverse array of voices from across the education sector, from seasoned teachers to renowned academics, policy makers to literacy advocates. All of our guests share a common goal: to explore and expand the horizons of literacy education.
We go beyond surface-level conversations. Our discussions are in-depth, nuanced, and filled with insights that only years of experience and expertise can bring. We tackle a wide range of topics, from innovative teaching methods to the latest research in literacy, the impact of technology on reading and writing, to strategies for engaging diverse learners. Our aim is to provide a platform where the complexities of literacy are unpacked and understood in a way that is both accessible and enlightening.
Join Andy and his guests as they illuminate the multifaceted world of literacy. Subscribe to Bedrock Talks and be part of a community that believes in the transformative power of literacy. Together, let's shape a more literate, informed, and connected world.
Bedrock Talks from Bedrock Learning
14. Navigating the Heart and Soul of School Improvement with Paul Ainsworth
In this episode, we explore the evolving landscape of education with Paul Ainsworth, Education Director at Infinity Academies Trust and author of "No Silver Bullets 2.0: The Heart and Soul of School Improvement." Paul shares insights from his extensive career, which spans from teaching math to leading secondary school improvements. We discuss his approach to leadership, emphasizing both inspiration and strategic planning in school development.
Our conversation also covers the dynamics of collaboration and curriculum customization within multi-academy trusts. We examine the balance between personalized education methods and the implementation of robust operational systems. The discussion highlights how collaborative efforts among schools can streamline educational practices while maintaining a sense of collective responsibility and investment in student success.
Additionally, we address the crucial role of vocabulary development in narrowing educational gaps and the intersection of literacy and numeracy. Drawing from personal experiences as a former head of mathematics, we explore strategies that integrate math and English instruction, fostering interdisciplinary benefits. The episode concludes with reflections on Paul's book and its influence on educators, advocating for strong leadership and effective systems to support school improvement.
Tune in for a deep dive into the strategies and philosophies that drive successful educational outcomes.
For more insights from Paul:
- Follow him on X, @pkainsworth
- Read his books:
hello everyone. Thank you for listening and tuning into the education podcast. Literacy works with bedrock learning. I'm andy sammons, the head of teaching and learning at bedrock learning. Um, we're getting real momentum now. We've had a number of downloads, listens, people reaching out and saying we love it and you know, can we, can I come on, come on as well. So thank you for all the support. It's great. Um, we've got a fantastic guest. Another fantastic guest.
Speaker 1:I can't believe the caliber of people we're getting on. It's Paul Ainsworth, who's the Education Director at Infinity Academies Trust. I mean, I thought publishing one book as I said before to Paul just off air, I was happy with one book and I thought that was quite an achievement, but he is an author of 10 books, including the book that's just been released a couple of weeks ago no Silver Bullets 2.0, the Heart and Soul of School Improvement and I thought, in terms of everything that we align with and in terms of everything that Bedrock really stands for and represents, this was such a natural synergy, it was such a natural partnership and someone to get on and hear his views. So thank you so much for coming on, paul, and sparing the time in in your role. I can't even begin to fathom how busy you must be. So thank you for joining us oh, it's a real pleasure, andy.
Speaker 2:I'm kind of sat in a primary school this morning and you can probably just hear the little noise at the lunch time, and which kind of keeping it real, isn't it kind of looking outside, sun shining, um six and seven year olds are out playing and shouting and having a lovely time out there on the last day of term and you know as the education director saying that.
Speaker 1:It's lovely that you're saying that because that's what your you know your focus is and I was just saying again before we started recording, I've just been to my little boys school performance and I always love going to the school and watching that stuff. I feel so energized by it. It's just the innocence, how much they're trying. It's so wonderful and the teachers just rooting for them. Primary schools are incredible places. As a secondary-based teacher, I just love primaries. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to hearing all about you and your role, and that's where I'd like to start really. So can you give us a bit of a sense about your kind of career today and your role right now? I think people would be really interested to hear you know from someone who's very senior in a group of primary schools about where you were and where you are.
Speaker 2:So I feel a little bit of a fraud in some ways. Andy, on a literacy podcast, because I'm a secondary school maths teacher, that's where I started off.
Speaker 1:That's the point, it's great.
Speaker 2:27 years ago I began my NQT year in a tough secondary modern GCSE pass rate 12%, one, two, 12%, working in a selective environment. So I kind of went into that school and it was in a in a really rural location, still a lot of people working in the fields. You know literally working in fields, manual jobs and guarantee almost a guaranteed job when you left school. That was what you went and did. So I went into this, you know um school as an NQT, wanting to change the world as we all do, and I was really frustrated because, people didn't like maths.
Speaker 2:People went to maths and said it was I can't do this, can't do this. And I'd go to the English teachers. And my two best friends in the school one was an NQT English teacher and one was an NQT plus one English teacher and they had children smiling in their lessons. They had children wanting to go to their lessons. I was thinking this isn't fair. You know, I want to be one of those teachers. I want people to come to my lesson.
Speaker 2:So I got this idea that I wanted to do a joint project with some of my colleagues. So this was, you know, a bit of literacy for me. At that time. We did a project called bigfoot and the idea was I got this massive picture of a foot and did the kind of oh, one of my friends is an explorer in peru and he sent me back this photograph and I had all the english classes, all the maths classes, and we're taking this bigfoot and trying to work out how big the creature was, what its dimensions, how fast could it move. And then in English they were doing creative writing.
Speaker 1:So they were kind of.
Speaker 2:You know what did that look like? Now these are children that thought school was a struggle and I was always going to fail. And for that moment in those maths lessons I had children really engaged because they were forming the links between somewhere they felt more confident. So that's always really then interested me, because a lot of maths teachers it was I teach maths, that's what I do, I teach maths and I was really interested in, well, how do subjects seem to link? If I do something really well in literacy, how can I learn from that in maths? So that was where my career started. That was my first leadership moment, I suppose.
Speaker 2:And then I worked up, you know, you know different roles, and eventually become the head of a secondary school, after being a head of maths and a deputy head and and those kind of things. And then nine, nine years ago. Nine years ago I joined one of the big multi-academy trusts. I joined one of the big multi-academy trusts to be an advisor of secondary school teachers, which I felt a little bit embarrassed about, to be honest. You know to be in that position of you know advising secondary school head teachers. But it was a situation of lots of sponsored academies, so people didn't have much experience. They'd been doing the job for three months, four months, so I had more experience than than, and it's a really interesting role, really kind of fascinating.
Speaker 2:Trying to move schools forward quickly in challenging circumstances is really interesting. If you then put an ethical slant on it, because I believe that school improvement needs to be sustainable, I believe you work with people, I believe you take people with you. I'm kind of really committed to that. It then becomes even. You know, it's even more interesting because my view of school improvement is that you take the staff at the beginning of the process and you have the same group of staff at the end of the process, but the school's transformed. That's what you're trying to do and not everybody sees it like that, unfortunately. That that's what you're trying to do and not everybody sees it like that, unfortunately. So worked in this big multi-academy trust kind of did a lot of work in some really challenging secondary schools and you know all areas of the curriculum behavior, safeguarding, attendance, raising outcomes, quality, teaching, learning. Always coming back to leadership, how do you improve leadership?
Speaker 2:And then then was asked to go and work in primary schools. Never, you know, I haven't been in a primary school. Since I've been a primary child, my children were kind of only just at that age and kind of working with primary schools was just unbelievable. I found the openness of primary school leaders was something really special. Colleagues in secondary schools are really open to each other's but leaders sometimes find it a little bit difficult with colleagues in different schools. There is a there was maybe less so now, but there was quite an element of competition, whereas I found primary school colleagues were fantastic at saying I've tried this, this has worked, do you want to try it? Or I tried this and it was just hopeless. I wouldn't do it again, and that just real openness.
Speaker 2:Um, and so went from secondary school head teacher, multi-academy trust primary and secondary moved to two more multi-academy trusts where the imbalance went very few secondary schools, lots of primary schools. And now I'm in the amazing position of working with infinity academies trust in lincolnshire, which is a map only of primary schools. We've got 10 primary schools spread all over the county and yeah, I suppose that's what I do, and then in between that I try and find some time to write some books, write some books and, if I'm really lucky, get the opportunity to come on podcasts and talk to people like you, um, about kind of things that I've learned along the way.
Speaker 1:I think I mean it's a nice segue into Infinity Academies Trust because there's, you know, you were talking about the range of schools and we were before, weren't we, before we started recording, and could you give the listeners a sense of you know, the types of school that you look after and the range of experiences that you have within that? I think that would be a really interesting because there'll be lots of teachers listening who, who will come from certain contexts, who'll want to hear about the different, different ones. I think so it'd be good to hear about that.
Speaker 2:That's okay so we've got a real mixture of primary schools. The mat started in about 2013 with, with two schools, and then kind of was on pause for a while. And and then, when I joined with Gavin Boover's CEO in 2019, is when it started to expand and went to five schools and then seven schools, eight schools, nine schools, now 10 schools and some more hopefully on the way. Real mixture of context. So we've got a sponsored academy in the heart of boston and, for those who who don't know boston, boston's an east coast port town in lincolnshire um road links are not great, um, no higher education nearby really, um, and, and you know, quite high deprivation and the school that we've got, our sponsored academy, is right in that most deprived um part of town, but it's an, it's an amazing school, it is an absolute oasis.
Speaker 2:You walk into that school. The children say. Children do tell you they feel scared when they leave the school. But when you're in that school and there's a, the vision of the school is, let your light shine. Um, it's a C of E school, amazing head teacher, and you go in there and it's just boss and trying to create something really different.
Speaker 2:So and that to me is really interesting that you've got a school in a tough part of town. You've got a high proportion of children that are new to the country, lots of languages being spoken, high proportion of send. You've got a group of leaders that are doing something magical and and and so we've got that school in in infinity ed academies trust. We've got bigger schools. We've got two form entry schools in in kind of maybe slightly more affluent areas. We've got other schools in equally deprived areas and we've got some really really lovely small village primary schools. You know, 50, 60 children, and that creates a whole other range of of challenges for school leaders and multi-academy trusts of how do you serve a tiny little primary school with 55 pupils, in which I was in yesterday, and then how do you also serve the school with 420 children in, how do you kind of work around that? What are your processes and systems?
Speaker 1:And that's what I really wanted to kind of start to tease apart, really was how do you knit that together and how do you, what are the mechanisms that you used to kind of share the best practice and all that type of thing? You know, how do you build an ecosystem from that?
Speaker 2:So we've taken an approach that we don't really believe in standardisation of curriculum tools. So we've been really brave and said we're not going to say in all our schools they will do the same phonics scheme. We're not going to say they're going to do all the same math schemes. It means that colleagues like me have to work harder because we then have to know a range of schemes and then try and give bespoke advice to school leaders about how they can use those more effectively. It would be much easier for me if I just went in and it was phonics scheme a, math scheme b, reading scheme, c, writing approach. That would be dead easy. But we've not taken that approach. We said no, we'll allow as long as they pick high quality tools, and there's lots of those around. You choose your tool. But what we work really hard on is how that's implemented, how it's planned.
Speaker 2:What's the CPD like for teachers and school leaders? How do you use your data really forensically to kind of narrow those gaps? You know, what are the things that a child is really struggling with, how do we address that? And to do that we do have a consistent data package, a data system. So that's where we've got our consistency, all those things that you don't see. You know your management information system, your data processes, your safeguarding processes, your finances processes, all those are consistent. All those are the same across all 10 schools. But what we do when we're working in on the actual curriculum, the quality of education, we take a bespoke approach and try and get, get colleagues to learn from each other. What we have found over time is that we have reduced the number of tools because teachers, head teachers, have chosen themselves. I like the look of that one. Actually those, those schools are doing well with that. I will join them and then I can share ideas. We've not said that that's been by evolution.
Speaker 1:That's a really interesting approach to take I was at an event last night and a head teacher from a school near me in leeds um, we were talking about, you know, implementation and he said one of the strongest ways he found to do it was to sort of bounce it down. Let it come back upward, come back up, so you kind of you, you say what you think and then the middle leaders get their kind of, their teeth into it and then the teachers get their teeth into it and it goes back to the middle leaders and then back to senior leadership and then back to the head. And the idea is that everyone has had, you know, everyone's had a say in it. Everyone's got skin in the game, if you like. And what I liked from that colleague was that he seemed everything he talked about last night was that it was all about being in service of his staff, so they could be in service of the pupils. And what I get from you there is that you know it's not kind of a free-for-all, it's a case of no, no, as long as it's quality. You are empowered to make a difference in the young people's lives in your communities.
Speaker 1:And I did want to ask you about the things that where there is standardization, but I think you've already answered the question around the kind of the back-end systems where, where you need operationally to have consistency, that's really interesting. And and what? The other thing I wanted to just sort of pick apart there was when you said you're using less tools. Now you know there's a. Is that because of collaboration? Is that because heads are coming together and saying this has been brilliant for us because and they're sharing those expertise?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we can. We run us. Another thing that we don't believe in is the kind of mock stead that one day of review. We feel quite uncomfortable with that. What we do is we have a series of peer audits. So all our schools will get a phonics audit, delivered by two other phonics leads. All our schools will get a reading audit, delivered by two other reading leads maths, writing. So what that means is those colleagues actually get to see the tools from the other schools and they get together in a network meeting to then discuss. Now they've then gone back to head teachers and said that looks really good. You know, I think that would. And that's how that number of tools has reduced.
Speaker 2:Because people have seen, you know, and the obvious thing is around phonics. You know all the catch-up packages some of our schools bought into phonics schemes that didn't have all those catch-up for those catch-up processes, and then they saw what some of the other schools had and thought I need that. I need that process for my children that are in key stage two, that are still struggling. I need that rapid catch-up process. I want those really carefully planned interventions for my year one children. So that's how those number of tools have reduced.
Speaker 2:We've not said at any point thou shalt, that's not been the way we've done that. We're just genuinely interested in headteachers making good choices. We will have conversations. If a headteacher says I'm thinking about doing that and if I've seen that done really badly, then I will say a bit nervous about that. This is what happened when I saw it done in other school. Can you now convince me? And you know, and sometimes it can, sometimes it can't, and you know we choose to pause at that point, but we, you know we don't get into that line of you must.
Speaker 2:Yeah I think it's a different way of leading yeah, and it's.
Speaker 1:It's not necessarily leading by consensus as such, it's about an openness and a two-way dialogue and another thread of the discussion we had last night and I think it's really difficult, um, as a leader in the school, because there has to be an element of bravery about what you do and not be scared to be in it for the long game. You know, not always look for those short fixes that are going to give me impact in six weeks, but think about, well, how, how are we going? Because the hard yards are. You look six months to 12 months ahead and you think, well, what does that look like on a daily and a weekly basis so we can create the conditions for the impact implementation to work? I mean, um, my role as head of teaching learning at bedrock is we work with lots of schools all day, every day, and essentially bedrock is the same package for everyone. It's the same suite of tools for everyone.
Speaker 1:But one of the things we often have to unpick is implementation and how bespoke and different it is in every different school, and sometimes that's about us having to be brave enough to say it won't work like that. In our experience. The best way to focus on is here, here and here you measure it by doing this and you can reward and praise doing it these ways and I think schools are getting better at it. But it's where colleagues like yourself have empowered and have had the conversations and had that kind of the level of challenge that's needed in order to kind of have, you know, the professional dialogue. And that's what I get a sense of on the on the infinity academy trust website and just listening to you, it's really clear that there's lots of two-way dialogue and that's great and then that kind of idea you know, the no silver bullets that I talk about is all around that yeah I've seen people use one tool and had amazing results of it.
Speaker 2:I've seen somebody else use the same tool and it just not not work. And it's not about the tool. It's how you work with the colleagues. It's the cpd you give. It's how you work with leaders. It's how you monitor and then have those conversations. It's the time of implementation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, there's some schools that I've worked with and it's frustrating, isn't it? You think you're doing something. It's reasonably simple, but it takes time to stick. Now some people change tact, get frustrated, get cross with people, but if you just said no, it's playing the long game. You know, people are people and it's not always easy to change practice. So it's all around.
Speaker 2:But are we getting a little bit better today than we were yesterday? You know what's the little difference? Is this week a little bit better than last week? And sometimes through you know personal things that are going on in people's lives, you do slide back a little bit I than last week, and sometimes through you know personal things that are going on in people's lives, you do slide back a little bit. I talk a lot with my colleagues of the systems we put in place, the chalk stones that stop us falling backwards. You imagine that log rolling back down a hill. You know when you're really trying to push it up and it takes a lot of strength and you're getting tired. What do you put a little chalk stone in so that it can't slip back, can't you? Well, that's what I think systems are in schools. They're the chalk stones that, when the days are dark, it's raining, it's cold, we're tired, the school doesn't slide backwards because we've got some systems as chalk stones.
Speaker 1:It's really interesting and love that, that mentality about whatever that looks like be a little bit better than they were and it were last week. My little boy often compares himself well, I can't do that, because so-and-so can do that. And I said, I said to him I'll be honest with you, but I couldn't give a stuff what someone else can do. Can you do this a little bit better now than you could last week? Well, that's all you need to know. Then at the moment. Just put one foot in front of the other and know that, whatever happens, we're, you know, we're here for you and we'll do whatever you need to help you at home and whatever.
Speaker 1:And I think that's what it's, that psychological safety, isn't it? It's that sense of there's no that you know, throwing anyone under the bus is off the table. No one comes to work to do a bad job. Let's create an environment where everyone can do well, and you know that's why I said before I love going to primary schools, because I think perhaps in some ways I mean, you will know better than me Perhaps in some ways, because you know we'll talk about this in a moment it's easier to create that environment because they're often smaller, so you can create those environments in some ways, because the teachers have one group of pupils and it's less hectic, less movement between lessons.
Speaker 1:But I don't know how else you'd explain that, and I make no apologies for using this word the magic that happens when you walk into a primary school. It's just incredible. The warmth, the generosity of human spirit. It's just incredible. I felt I was welling up this morning watching his performance and he wasn't even in it that much, but the, it was just incredible. You know, um, primaries are incredible places, aren't they?
Speaker 2:You know? It's the David and Goliath story, isn't it? You know? I don't know if you've read the Malcolm Gladwell book, where he reads the test.
Speaker 2:There's also a book called David and Goliath where he takes that story apart. And that's the thing, isn't it? If you're working in a small institution, you have so much power. You've got so much power to work together. Yes, and I talk a lot about when I'm doing school improvement you can improve a small school really quickly. But also a small school can decline very quickly. If I'm what.
Speaker 2:For example, three years ago I wasn't a school in our trust I would work. I was given some support. I had a local authority to a small village school. There were three teachers in the school, two were ects and one was an ect2 and a head teacher. So you can imagine the teachers had gone, they'd taken the curriculum with them, in effect, yeah, and that school had gone, fallen down a cliff. Yeah. But you could improve it quickly as well by kind of talking to people and saying, okay, what about this, what about this, how about this tool? Could we use this? Can we set up our classrooms in that way? Can we agree some consistency, so you can make that rapid improvement very quickly.
Speaker 2:And the beauty of any small school is everybody knows everybody. That's where that warmth comes from when you walk into the school, isn't it? A teacher will know every child and probably can recognise most of the parents. Think of our experience of secondary school, even a small secondary school. Secondary school I led 600 pupils. I struggled to know the name of every child. You know it's really hard to get that warmth in the same way, isn't it? You know, and you can't possibly know, all the parents. I recognize quite a lot of them and and that's always that really interesting thing about primary and secondary, how do you build up that really personal knowledge of the children? How do you chop those slide in under the cracks and kind of disappearing into the shadows and those kind of things.
Speaker 1:And you mentioned before because I wanted to really kind of. You said you'd listened to a couple of the other podcasts and, by the way, I'd really recommend you listen to the Peter Twining one. He's a fascinating guy. He wrote the book From EdTech to PedTech and what you said there particularly about, sometimes when you are implementing technology, edtech solutions across the school, whether you like it or not, every teacher will bring their own set of experiences, pedagogical, political beliefs to it, and how they implement can be completely different from what you intended. So you need to be really careful about how teachers are implementing ed tech and actually any kind of initiative, I suppose. But you mentioned before that you'd prepared some anecdotes and some ideas about what you wanted to share here, which I think you've got some really valuable insights that people would love to hear about.
Speaker 1:So, when it comes to kind of your, your vision for literacy and and those things and, by the way, I take issue with you saying that you're you're a fraud as a math teacher, because I, I you know we often have this battle with, with the subjects and actually math is probably more tier two tier, three words per square inch than any other subject, you know, um, and I think math teachers don't give themselves enough credit for the sheer volume and density of complexity they have to deal with every day for their pupils, and it often goes unnoticed. I think that. But what's your vision for how vision? But what's your vision for how literacy should be implemented, maybe at a curriculum and classroom level? What are your views there about what, what makes, what does, what good looks like?
Speaker 2:I do think there's a lot in the planning. So if I go back to when I first became, you know, head of maths, um, really interesting scenario, secondary school. Um, I think, my maths results. The year I became head of maths I came in at east to a. 38 percent of children achieved the grade C, so you know, grade 11 for them In English it was 65. They were exactly the same children.
Speaker 2:So, how does you know? And it wasn't a no gender split, roughly 50-50. So there's not a gender issue there. So why did that happen? So it's really interesting what the English department did. They were a real team. They all worked together really closely. They had a very clear and consistent curriculum. So the children knew what was being taught on a weekly, monthly basis. They used high-quality resources and they talked a lot about what they were doing and what was impacting with classrooms.
Speaker 2:So I took that unashamedly, took that model, took it into my department of six. Right, let's let's have really clear curriculum planning, let's get high quality resources, let's talk a lot about what we're doing and let's assess children and see where they're up to and try and fill gaps. And that we rapidly improved. Within within 18 months our results were on a par with english and they were the two highest performing departments in the school. That wasn't there's nothing rocket science there. So I take the same approach into you know, all the way through my career in whatever I've done really careful planning, high, high-quality resources, people talking to each other about how they're delivering them. So if I'm in my primary role, you know if I'm thinking about writing, what's your really clear process for writing. How does that, broken down on a day-by-day basis? How's it presented on your learning wall so that children are really clear on where they're up to in the process? And the same with reading. So what is your process? How long do you spend on different genres? How do you do each individual lesson? How can you get the planning simple but powerful?
Speaker 2:I think those are really important, and the thing that I've been really intrigued with over the last year has been that use of vocabulary. We've spent a lot of time as a trust how do you teach vocabulary? And I was talking to a really skilled English teacher yesterday, a secondary school English teacher, about the teaching of vocabulary and I said how do you teach vocabulary? And she went through this fantastic stepped approach, you know, of teaching the word, getting the pronunciation of the word correct, looking at synonyms, looking at different ways it can be used, then getting the children to try and find their own ways. It's a brilliant explanation. And she said to me well, how do you do it? I said, well, we focus on just doing three words. Just do three words in a lesson and let's have some pre-teaching of last lesson and let's do some retrieval in the next lesson. You know I'm keeping it really simple.
Speaker 2:And her response to me was you couldn't do that approach that I've suggested if you do more than three words. You couldn't, you just wouldn't have time to. So I just attacked it from you. You know I need to keep it really simple. I need a approach. She'd given me a really great pedagogical explanation but actually they were perfectly in tune with each other because she couldn't do one without the other and and that teaching of vocabulary has been really important in our, in our schools especially, you know, high proportion of eal children, high proportion of SEND children, high proportion of PP children, that that lack of cultural capital um, we have a system as part of our platform called Bedrock Mapper, where you've got I think it's probably upwards of 38,000 words tier three words, but they go from key stage one up to key stage five and my initial understanding of the platform was that it was for GCSE stretch and challenge.
Speaker 1:You know tier three words. But I've spent a lot of time this year saying to schools can you share some of your reading age data with me? You know, in line with data protection policies and that type of thing, can you share your reading age data with me? And I'll triangulate that against bedrock engagement and MAPA engagement. I first started to look at some of these triangulation date pieces and I thought why is it that the EAL pupils are the ones that, from the highest to the lowest usage of MAPA, are having the biggest disparity in their outcomes and their reading ages? The EAL pupils with the, and I thought that's a fluke. When it was the first one I thought that's just a, that's a, that's a. You know the exception that proves the rule almost. But I kept getting shared data from schools with high EAL proportion pupils and it time and time again.
Speaker 1:Subject specific vocabulary that's carefully chosen and sequenced. I mean mapper is a is a really useful way of doing it, just the, the level of engagement triangulated clearly with being much closer, if not beyond your reading age, from your chronological age, and there's a real emergent piece. There isn't there about planning vocabulary really carefully. And as an English teacher you know, not a maths teacher I always say to teachers now plan when you're teaching a text to have 10, call them wrecking balls, 10 wrecking balls of not vocabulary concepts. So Christmas, carol, transformation, redemption, misanthropy, malfusion, those real high quality words. Because actually, yeah, it's nice for the pupils to know them, but when they use them in their talk, when they use them in their essays, it just unlocks a whole different level of interpretation and allegory. That's a nice word, isn't it? But actually you can use it in an essay in Dickens' allegorical novella. All of a sudden that's a whole different level of understanding and I refuse to believe that that isn't the case across every different subject of what you just discussed there.
Speaker 2:And in primary schools. That's why it's so important that we get the earlier words, that children can understand them, because how on earth can you go to secondary and be studying a Christmas carol in maybe year eight or year nine, be using those words that you've talked about, if you've not got that whole range of cultural capital before it, if you've not got all those building blocks of words? And and that is something that I've really seen over the last probably last year 18 months is that teaching of vocabulary is so key to so many aspects you know, even in primary school, just being able to understand the key states to sats maths paper.
Speaker 2:You can't do the maths if you've not got the vocabulary. You can't access history or geography without the vocabulary, and we forget that if we come from you kind of nice, middle-class environments and all the vocabulary that we're exposed to you. Think of the number of books that you've got in your house, Andy, the number of books you'll read with your child. And we equally know that there's other families that do not have a book in their house. You know, all our schools give children Christmas presents of books every year that might be the only book that child receives in the year that they take home and is in their bedroom. They've got a book. So over the course of primary school career they're going to build up their own little library, Otherwise they'd have no books. How do you learn vocabulary otherwise? You just don't, do you.
Speaker 1:It's funny because, yeah, it's interesting that I I mean the other day it was funny I put a lot, put a lock on the kids ipads so he, when they wake up they can't use their ipads until they've. You know they're ready and they're. You know they're stuck, they're sorted. In the morning and I heard this rumble in his room next door. This is a disgrace. And then five minutes later, this is imprisonment and I thought, wow, where have you got that word from? And it's, you know, we don't. We probably could and should read more to him.
Speaker 1:But it's not just reading, it's also exposure to the level of vocabulary that that's in different households as well. And I think you're right. And, and schools, uh, there's a really fantastic uh line, um, that you know, that we've, we've. We often refer to because you know, in from I think it's an isabel beck book about vocabulary. You can't leave it to chance.
Speaker 1:And brilliant vocabulary instruction vocabulary should be taught, not caught, and I think that's a really nice way of putting it. And you know we have a tier two platform that kind of places pupils on a tier two trajectory and they are taught tier two vocabulary in context through really rich cultural fiction and nonfiction. So you've got they read about Galileo, the Hatton Garden, heist, you know Greek myths, all that stuff, and then the teachers get these kind of real time insights back about tier two words they can use in their lessons, and I think it's really important that, I think with all the different schools that you're talking about, vocabulary isn't the silver bullet, but it's a great leveler, isn't it? It's one of the things that is a tool to to be a great leveler, I think it's that that equality and equity, isn't it?
Speaker 2:you know you're thinking of the children stood on the boxes, you know. You know some children need a bigger box to stand up to look over the fence vocabulary of those boxes, aren't they? And actually to take the fence away. We need to make sure children have got that really rich vocabulary and it doesn't happen by accident.
Speaker 2:You've got to teach the vocabulary and I think that that's a really interesting approach to planning that's taking place in primary schools and secondary schools, in that let's highlight that vocabulary so we can actually teach it, and I think we'll start to see our pupil premium children, our eal children, making ever, ever faster progress because they're going to have those gaps closed in a planned way that maybe haven't been done previously, not for want of trying, but again, and it's like keeping it simple, isn't it? We can all focus on teaching some vocabulary. We can all do that. Whether you're teaching maths, dt, whatever, you're teaching in secondary school or you're teaching in primary school, that's a quick win. What three words am I going to teach today? How can I'm going to retrieve the ones that I taught yesterday? Simple, really simple school improvement.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and, and that's I mean. That's why I would. I think it's a. I'm going to do a.
Speaker 1:We do a little thing on on linkedin called bedrock reads and I'm I've got your book lined up to do a bedrock reads on it and we I often read it, I read books and I'll share the key ideas and key takeaways from it. Um, and I think that I'm going to queue that up on my bedrock reads in the next couple of weeks because I think it sounds like a really fantastic book, and what I love about it is that you don't dismiss the use of systems and you don't dismiss the use of consistency, but what you put at the heart of your school improvement ideas is around you know, empowering leaders to help the teachers, to support the teachers, to support young people in their classrooms, and I think if that's not a hopeful message, then I don't know what is. So that's, it's a lovely, it's a lovely way to be and and thank you for that and thank you for coming on our our show today. It's been a been a real thrill. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:It's been. You've been so generous with your time. I really appreciate it thanks, andy.
Speaker 2:Absolute pleasure and I hope the listeners gain something from the conversation.
Speaker 1:Thanks, andy I guarantee they will.
