Bedrock Talks from Bedrock Learning

33. Getting implementation right: Upstream, downstream and root causes with Mark Miller

• Bedrock Learning • Season 2 • Episode 26

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How do schools successfully implement change that actually sticks? Mark Miller, Director of Bradford Research School, joins us to break down the recent updates to the Education Endowment Foundation's implementation guidance - revealing why the social dimensions of change might be the most critical factor for success.

The conversation dives deep into why schools often rush past the crucial "explore" phase of implementation, jumping to solutions before properly understanding problems. Mark shares practical strategies for "shrinking" nebulous issues like literacy into manageable components using frameworks such as the Reading House and the Simple View of Writing.

We explore the distinction between upstream causes and downstream symptoms in education - illustrated through the powerful metaphor of people falling into a river. Do we rescue them downstream or prevent them from falling in upstream? The answer, of course, is both - but knowing where to focus limited resources requires careful analysis.

Perhaps most valuable is Mark's insight into the three key implementation behaviours: engage, reflect, and unite. These social processes determine whether change efforts succeed or fail in educational settings. When schools unite around core values, engage diverse stakeholders, and reflect continuously on progress, implementation becomes not just a technical process but a powerful catalyst for school improvement.

Whether you're tackling literacy challenges, behaviour systems, or curriculum redesign, this conversation offers practical wisdom for making change that genuinely transforms student outcomes. What problem are you really trying to solve, and are you taking the time to explore it properly?

Mark has led Bradford Research School since its inception in 2018. He has worked for Dixons Academies Trust for over a decade, having spent many years at Dixons Kings Academy, teaching English and leading teacher development. Before that, he was a lead practitioner in English, working in Leeds.

Mark works with teachers and school leaders regionally and nationally to implement evidence-informed approaches that can improve outcomes for all children and young people, but particularly those from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. You can hear more from Mark via @markmillerteach and Bradford Research School via @BradResearchSch. 

Speaker 1:

hi everyone, thank you for continuing to download, subscribe, um and, like the bedrock talks podcast, I'm andy sammons. I lead teaching and learning here at bedrock um. Again, um, we're trying to have a bit more of a direct sense of kind of having um a very clear line of guests that we've got on and at the moment we're focusing a little bit more on implementation and obviously, funnily enough, um, I was on linkedin the other day and I saw, and I'd seen, that mark, my, my friend, mark Miller, who's our guest today, has published, is publishing a series of blogs on the new EF guidance around implementation. So I thought I'll lean on that connection and get get one of one of the best thinkers around about implementation to kind of think, give us his insights on on the latest guidance. So thank you for coming on, mark.

Speaker 1:

It's really good to have you back on the last pod that. I don't know if you realise this, but the last pod that you did had one of, if not our, highest download rate in terms of. I often get little drip feeds through my email. Mark Miller's podcast has been downloaded again. So thank you for coming back on. I know this will be a popular one again.

Speaker 2:

Oh, you did nice, thank you, I think uh, yeah, it's nice to say I'm a great thinker, love all that. I guess, right from the offset, I'll probably name check the proper real thinkers behind this guidance report, just so we uh give them credit. So, uh, jonathan sharples, johnny and and uh, jamila bohalaf are the writers of this uh iteration of the guidance report. So I think, whilst I'll add some stuff to them, I think a lot of the key themes from this come from their, their great work already. So I'll do that shout out at the start I've known.

Speaker 1:

I've known you, mark, for the best part of 10 years and you are a good, you are a great thinker on this type of thing. So I'm going to blow your trumpet. If no one else will, so if you, if you certainly won't. So, yeah, you really are, and it's great. It's great to get your, your thoughts on this, um. So, just before we start, give us a just remind for listeners. You might not have heard the first pod, um, if not, go back and download it now. Go and go and listen to it right now. Um, for people who didn't perhaps didn't you know, um, didn't hear the first one, just give just remind us what's your role with Dixons and with the EEF as well, just so we, you know people can really understand where you're coming from here.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I'm director of Bradford Research School, one of a number of research schools across the country funded by the EEF, and you know we have that role in kind of bridging that gap between research evidence and classroom practice. We kind of do that in a number of different ways, mainly through kind of big partnership work and supporting individual schools, groups of schools, and also I work for Dixon's Academies, so I do all sorts for them really often with the research school hat on, but I'll also support with MPQs, ects, itts. I've done lots of work across our trust on Joy at the moment. So we've got a conference tomorrow which will be exciting, so yeah, so I'm quite privileged to have these roles. Really interesting, lots of fun stuff and making an impact that way.

Speaker 1:

I feel really privileged because obviously I was leading in English in a school for a long time and I now do this job where I get to speak to lots of schools about their implementations and I also speak at, you know, the Bedrock White Paper Conference the other day, launched the other day. I feel really privileged to be able to have have this platform. So I I know you don't take that lightly when it comes to the platform that you have as well. It's, it's great, um.

Speaker 1:

So we're just going to talk about, particularly because obviously mark's doing a series of blogs at the moment on the, the updates, def, guidance, and it's really important to sort of ground this in the in the sense in the fact that the in may, the guidance, it's not, it's not an overhaul, is it? It's just a tweak. It's kind of more of an evolution than a revolution. And I just wonder, just first of all, because Mark's written a little bit about the explore phase of the implementation guidance and I know it captures this idea. I like the fact that the guidance captures ideas around social processes, uniting, engaging and reflecting on those contextual factors. So what do you feel is really trying to be captured in that tweak there around the social processes. What is it that you think is the reason behind that?

Speaker 2:

it that you think is the reason behind that. So yeah, so I think in terms of the, the general changes you've got, I think lots of people who've seen the first guide to support will know that explore, prepare, deliver, sustain, it's part of the language of mpqs and it's you know, it's, it's fairly common in the profession now. Um, so they've kind of kept that. I guess on that one, the, the main tweak is the idea that it's a more flexible process rather than just you do this, then you do this, you do that. So that's still a chunk of the guidance report.

Speaker 2:

Recommendation three but yeah, as you say that, these um, there's a couple other recommendations, um, one that I'm getting a lot of um use out of, I guess, and lots of resonating quite well, those, those kind of implementation behaviors, the social processes. So they're engage, reflect and unite. So engage means bringing people, getting people involved, building implementation teams, hearing from people kind of builds, makes things better, but it also builds buy-in and acceptability. Then you've got the unite, sort of coalescing around a key idea or around the evidence, or even around school values and things. Again, that I've got a lot of that, that one.

Speaker 2:

And then you know, reflect is, I guess you know the behavior an organization needs to reflect, but also individuals need to reflect. So I think again, we did some work on this yesterday. Just it feels like these are things that resonate as um, as both, uh, useful steers from the evidence, but but there's a lot of concrete things that we can do, um, that enhance all the different stages of implementation when you think about these behaviors. And what I really like and I only noticed this recently was that all the way through the guidance report, anytime they mention unite, it's in bold and you'll and you'll find Unite well, not just Unite, but any of the recommendations you'll see that in bold. So you can kind of see that these behaviors track everywhere.

Speaker 1:

It's really interesting because I have now worked in ed tech for 18 months or so and obviously, essentially, although Bedrock is a really nuanced and multifaceted platform's lots to it it's used in all different kind of settings. Essentially, there is only one bedrock, there's a. There's not millions of different bedrocks. There's one thing that's being bought and then implemented in lots of different settings. So someone said to me kind of why, what's your role in all of that? And I said, well, actually a lot of it is is the technical stuff in terms of how to use it, etc. Etc. But also it touches on what you said there with the.

Speaker 1:

You know the word unite is repeated because it's about building humans, love stories right, we know this, and it's about building the narrative and building, uh, the kind of the wider picture around that implementation. So, as you said before you touched on it, the idea of how does it fit with your school values? How does this, this thing when you check whether they've got their 20 points or whether they've done their homework or whatever it is all in that lesson how, how does that? It's all very well checking something and then giving a detention out or giving a, you know, a reward out, but actually, how does that link to the deeper narrative around what you're trying to do as a school in terms of turning the agenda around? You know disadvantage whether it could be a send girls boy, whatever it is and I think that's a really important. I do think it's an inescapably social thing.

Speaker 1:

Implementation and I I the most successful implementations I've worked with are the ones where they do really acknowledge that social side, that kind of did you say the Unite side. Have you seen any really good examples of robust implementations where they've really nailed the Unite side of it? Is there something that you could give us an example of?

Speaker 2:

I could definitely articulate where it works particularly well and, I think, where we've started talking about it and and there are some challenges we always solve in kind of big organizations, big trusts as well. We've got certain you know things that we'll find common in our academies and I think if you lose sight of the reason behind why those things exist so we're talking a lot about things like um, you know, kind of formative assessment strategies, like mini whiteboard routines or something like that and and if we, if we lose sight of um, if we get so fixated on this is how the routine works. This is what we do and this is what we say, which you know. I think there are important aspects about consistency and um, managing attention and things, but actually, if we forget that, there's a reason behind that and that's all about building ratio and it's about getting children to think deeper and making sure everyone is accountable for their thinking and the teacher can see those responses. So kind of things that we're coming back to is where do these fit in terms of our principles around all sorts of things?

Speaker 2:

But you know, one of those things around um, ratio, you know, and and this idea that we don't do it because it's a routine. We do it because it'll get more students to think hard and I think that kind of um I know some people talk about, like mental models or schemas, whatever you want to call it this understanding of the big, the big picture, and you know we've done, you know there's lots of these lenses, we can see things through that uh mean that you're not just doing a thing, you're you're fitting that thing within. But those could also be school values. You know, okay, why do we do this thing? We do this thing because in our schools, our values are. My old school was, uh, integrity, diligence and civility. I know you worked at a dixon school so you might have three of those as well.

Speaker 1:

That's Danny Carr's stuff, isn't it? Danny Carr came up with that, didn't he?

Speaker 2:

I'm not sure, possibly because he was at King's, so yeah, but they're still ingrained and, to be honest, the good values you know, I think, the good values to live by, but it does mean that when you do stuff, that when you do stuff, then, and if everyone talks that language, then when you're bringing in a new thing, like it's something like your detention system, okay, is this got integrity? Where we're doing the right thing here, is it civility, is it fair? You know, is it doing the right thing for our students? And then sometimes that's made us make decisions. Well, maybe it's not. Maybe we need to reduce the length of detentions or or do different things. So so that's a long answer, but yeah, no, it's really interesting.

Speaker 1:

I think we all need you know that, the whole cynic thing. You know the start with why. I think it's really important that people understand rationality for things. It's funny my little boy the other day lost it with me because I stopped him playing on his computer game so close to bed. He said my mates are still playing until they go to bed and whatever. And it was only because I kind of laid with him before he went to sleep and I said did you know that when you're playing your computer game, you're, you're, it's really great, isn't it? It's great fun, but you're getting overloaded with something called dopamine. Poor lad, you know, he's only eight years old, but you're getting overloaded with this thing. That's, like you know, really thrilling and lovely. But then you can't just put that thing straight down and go to sleep. You, you need some time for your body to calm down. If you do something calming and relaxing, so you get into a deeper sleep, so it's more relaxing for you, so it's more restorative.

Speaker 1:

I didn't say the exact words to him, but my point being, I would have sent him to sleep, yeah yeah, poor lad, yeah, um, but the the point stands for me is that children he, he's eight, but actually it really helps to understand the rationale behind things. And I remember being I remember very well being a kid and being at school where things would just suddenly change for no reason and it would really wind me up and you think, just because students aren't in charge, they need rationales. We're humans and I think, particularly now in modern day, more than ever, people need rationales. They don't just follow without anything, without reasons, and it's great that this implementation framework is really capturing that idea that you bring people with you, alongside you, and it's almost taking it a step further around those behaviors. And, as you said, I love the fact that you're talking about civility and integrity and those things, because actually, when you're trying to reach young people, I think the more that you can communicate and bring them alongside with you as well, whether it you know, with those implementations, the better. It's funny this afternoon I've just spent some time just for teachers actually putting together a bedrock launch lesson. So if you launch bedrock, you can get them into an it room or a library or whatever to to do their placement tests and their their grammar assessments. It's not just sit down, shut up and do these things and then get on with it. Actually, there's a rationale behind why we're doing this thing. Here's a really brief intro video about why this matters. This is what you do like, so there's a real balance between this is why we're doing it, this is what you do and and that type of thing I think. I just think it's so important.

Speaker 1:

Um, now, kind of stepping back a moment in the, on the left hand side of that explore quadrant, you know the, in the, in the framework we've. We're talking about really, um, the idea about looking at the problem that we're trying to solve. So schools are going to bring in a thing could be a new detention system, could be, you know, um, a reading framework. It could be a, an ed, a piece of edtech software. They're going to implement something You've written recently on the left-hand side of that quadrant, focusing on the Explore framework, about the complexities of that moment. What do you think are the biggest issues that schools face when they are exploring? And we'll keep it theoretical in terms of, you know whether it's, you know, literacy, behavior, whatever it is, what, what, what issues do you think schools face? What are the biggest issues in that explore phase. Do you think?

Speaker 2:

I think I mean one thing is they don't do the explore phase. So if you like, if you start, as your starting point you're going to bring in, let's say, bedrock. That's, that's not the right thing to do. Um, it might be the right thing to do, but you need to be able to know what problem you're solving. So I think, um, it's, you know, if you, if you're doing, if you're thinking the thing I'm going to do, and and then you're going to go, well, what problem is this fixing? You're kind of, you're kind of getting that, uh, getting that wrong. You, you jump into a solution. So, so I think, first of all, spend a lot of time in these kinds of partnerships. I like a lot of time, kind of, um, it sometimes feels too much time, but it's definitely worth it. Where we go, no, come on, is this the real problem? So sometimes, um, and sometimes I'll get a request say, can you do some training on this? And you know, sometimes it's easy just to yell do some training on that. But but really, sometimes I'll go is that really what you want training on? So, like, if I write about knowledge organizers, someone will go can you do some training on knowledge organizers? And I might go well, okay, but is it really training on memory that you really want, because actually that's just one part of it, or retrieval, or whatever.

Speaker 2:

So so we kind of ask questions like um, you know, try and articulate your problem and you know, hopefully you can do that. It should be something that, um, you know is amenable to change. It should be something that maybe there's an evidence base that supports a high leverage, priority, um, and but then we have to ask well, is this actually the problem? Because sometimes we'll come at it with something really big. Like you know, literacy is the problem, or or even writing is the problem. These are massive, so we'll go is it a cause or a symptom? Is, does, does the issue need shrinking? So, like writing could be, could be, could be shrunk. There's various models, reading, you know, everything can be shrunk to something that is more amenable to change. And also we need to say is it the right problem?

Speaker 2:

Um, sometimes, through that, you know, if we think about, say, we've got to fix attendance, well, actually, you know, when you put it through some of those lenses, attendance isn't often the problem. It's, it's a symptom of the problem, and but it's, it's a manifestation of a lot of different things, and so I think one of the things we do is is is do um. I think you told me when we were chatting before that where it originated. So the five why's, and and it's. You know just that idea of.

Speaker 2:

But here's your problem, why? I don't know if it was. Where did it come from? Yeah, I think it's the toyota method, isn't it? So there we go, so, uh, but it's dead useful anyway. So just asking why I did it, I did it with some colleagues yesterday. Then someone said it was really useful. They had one problem. Now they've got nine problems, but but at least the nine problems were ones that they they sort of imply a solution when you so you do them.

Speaker 2:

So so that's definitely what we do, and you know attendance is a really good example. So why? Why is attendance down? And you start to drill that down, and where that works really well is where you've got uh, where you bring in engaged people. So you know, if it's a literacy question, yeah, the head of english or the literacy lead in school could, could, try and do the problem, but bring the teachers work with uh, support staff work with um. You know anyone that might be involved, librarian, anyone that might be involved in that process. To really drill it down, same with you know, if you go for attendance, who needs to be part of that conversation. That'll make it better it's.

Speaker 1:

It's. It's really interesting because, um, we've a couple of us at bedrock have been doing an oxford um executive leadership course recently around kind of leading change particularly, and one of the things that I read about recently was and it's something that I felt like someone I felt really seen because they were talking about action bias and there's this idea that sometimes you can I'm shocking, for anyone who knows me will be nodding along to this sometimes I'm quite impulsive so I'll think right, I need to do something that's going to fix that problem and that's going to fit. And obviously you run into the risk of fixing this, as you say, the symptom rather than the cause. And actually sometimes it's about taking that long, longer approach and really thinking well, as you say, literacy is a big problem, but what on earth do you mean that that's? That's such a nebulous concept.

Speaker 1:

In some ways it's also huge, multifaceted. What on earth does that mean? Attendance, as you say. Either that's a massive issue or it's a symptom of of a load of other things. So I like this idea that you've come up with it may have been you that came up with it the idea of shrinking the issue.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's definitely sort of floating around the research school network, so I won't take credit for that. It was on some slides that and I just we just always use it, so there'll be someone who came up with it, probably Alex Quigley or someone like that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think it's really important to be very specific, and I know that at Bedrock, when my team and I and the support team and our partnerships team, we work with schools all day, every day, and we hear schools feedback about things that they would like or like less of or more of, and all this stuff like or like less of or more of, and all this stuff, and sometimes our head of product, says to us well, don't keep coming at me with a million fixes.

Speaker 1:

Let's work out what the pain points are for the schools before we start to implement any change. And it must be so complex and so difficult in a school not to emotively react to everything in front of you all the time. You've got stressed teachers, you've got stressed pupils, you've got stressed parents. It must be really tough for schools to actually put a pin in stuff sometimes and just slow it right down. Do you see that? A lot in the schools you work with, is that what they're coming to you with? You know, fix this problem, fix this problem yeah, and and again, it's it's the reality.

Speaker 2:

So I think you know it's a luxury that sometimes we've got to have time to do stuff and and I think, uh, you can, you could probably pause one thing, do it really well, take your time, do lots of things, but the reality is there's never one, there's never one priority. So I think it is really really hard and often it's trying to do it the best that we can, and you know there are multiple conflicting priorities. So, but I think it's brave to be able to say again another colleague from a session yesterday you know they were saying look, we know we want to improve our assessment policy and our subject, but the one we've got is okay and it's not a bad assessment policy. So we're going to take our time, we're not going to scrap this. We're not going to scrap this, we're not going to immediately redo it, we're just going to take our time. And in September next year we'll, or this year now, um, we'll be, we'll be ready, but we won't, we won't do that.

Speaker 2:

So so there are messages around sort of de-implementing things, taking your time. I think the reality is that you know, sometimes it's all very well saying you know, there's these students who may be struggling in year 11, uh, and we could say, oh well, we need to take what are the symptoms. And oh well, it's a transition in year seven. Well, that's not going to help in the immediate thing. So I think we are predisposed to fixing that and we should fix that, we should do that. But we also need to then think okay, what could be the yeah, the longer terms, the upstream?

Speaker 1:

solution. Yeah, so what exactly? So on the flip side, there are some things where you just need to get some pupils over the line because that's what's right for them at the moment. At that moment, sometimes it, you know and I think that's a really important caveat, a really important counterpoint that you've made there around sometimes it you just need to fix something in front of you right there and then.

Speaker 1:

But often in schools and you can see it with the strongest schools I've seen and worked with, particularly the Dixon schools what the best schools do is they take the longer-term view and they put their energies into those long-term things. So I remember very well when, um, the school that luke sparks founded which one was it? Uh, dixon's trinity, dixon's trinity I remember going there really early days and thinking. I remember thinking I was quite early on in my career, thinking god, they're really, they go, and I couldn't quite understand why they were making such a deal of such of so many small things around lunchtime routines and all this. I remember thinking I'm not getting this, why would you put so much energy into this? But down the line, when you, when you go to that school, and when you hear what's written and what's said about that school, you can really understand what they were doing in those early stages. Now, and I think sometimes it's really important to take the long-term view sweat the small stuff, um, and then you you're in a much better place to quickly solve. Solve the things that need solving quickly.

Speaker 1:

Um, I do want to, for the last sort of 10 minutes or so, get, get on to literacy, because obviously bedrock, a lot of bedrocks, um, podcast listeners are literacy coordinators, assistant headteachers, deputy headteachers, headteachers with a real interest in literacy. I mean, I've mentioned the word. My favorite word this week is nebulous. I've probably used it four or five times. It's a great word. When you look at a word like literacy and it comes to the explore phase, if you like, of something like that, how do you go about unpicking something like that? I mean, you are an English teacher who now specializes, I guess, in working across lots of different phases and aspects of the education system, if you like. Where do you? You know, if someone comes to you and says I want to solve literacy in this school, I would imagine that you'd think that your head would explode. You'd think, well, where do I even start with that? Where do you start with that? Where do you start with that? Where do you start with solving a problem like literacy?

Speaker 2:

I've got to say again shrink, shrink it. So again, it's very rare that people it's as nebulous as that. Often it will be writing or even be an aspect, Sometimes your things around different groups, but sometimes boys writing and things like that. So so all those usual things, but, but. But what can be really helpful is having a having a frame or a lens to help shrink the issue. So you know, with the example of reading we've got the reading house. So if you've seen that on the key stage, yeah, we respect that all the time. So that's a really good way of breaking down writing and saying, right, where's the real problem? It acknowledges so reading is really a is a complex thing. Of course. It is um and it can help you both sort of diagnose need. It can help you to intervene to scaffold um.

Speaker 2:

Similarly, we've we've found the simple view of writing fruitful. Again, you'll find that in the eef guidance reports and it breaks down writing. It kind of places working memory at the center and it says writing composes of three main areas. It's the transcription aspects. You know handwriting spelling would be under that. And then you've got composition, text generation, ideas, vocabulary, and then you've got the executive function part. So again, looking at it through, something like that helps you to narrow it down, helps you to be more concrete. Maybe it helps you get more information. So, because I think the key issue to all of this is it's really hard to close a gap. That's abstract, you know, it's really hard to close the literacy gap, the attendance gap, the whatever gap, but when you shrink it down, you can go well.

Speaker 2:

Actually, what we're seeing here is a is a is a handwriting issue. So we're going to see what the research says, we're going to improve our teaching of handwriting and and again, I think this is something that applies to lots of different phases. Um, it's obviously the foundational aspects, but I think, as a secondary english teacher, I do wish I'd know more about how to teach handwriting as a uh, as more than just let's make writing neater. That's kind of where I looked at it, but really I see it as a, as a cognitive aspect that's taken demand. So so I think doing things like that, and and again, once again, though it, you know it's really hard because cohorts are like that, and and again once again, though it, you know it's really hard because cohorts are very varied and and you know, you've got things at the very individual level, at the class level, you know.

Speaker 2:

So solving writing in a school is always going to be multifaceted, um, so, but but a lens like that can be, can be super useful and just again, sort of facilitated processes to do that. I think the other thing is just, uh, getting your data right. So, um, sometimes when we say you know writing's problem or how do we know, and sometimes it can be biased towards the most recent ofsted or the most recent sats results and you have to triangulate that information. So you know what, what does, uh, this data tell us versus that, what does the student voice tell us? Triangulating information tells you what you know. It doesn't just tell you whether it's a problem, but might tell you which aspects to start to we've um done some really good work.

Speaker 1:

This week a school in in kent actually, um asked me to look at their reading age data and, uh, from because they've actually just used used our reading test to kind of assess. I think the key stage three pupils and what I always tell schools to do is exactly what you've just said there is think about. Well, you might feel a panic because of a recent writing assessment or or whatever it is, but actually, let's, if you get the conditions right to sit the reading test, let's think about get the conditions right to sit the reading test. Let's think about where this, where your learners sit, compared to the national picture. Have you got an issue compared to the national picture of you know representative sample size? And then then you can start to drill down and we'll actually know. Broadly speaking, we don't really have an issue because we are roughly on that stay nine bell curve where we need to be. Now there's a natural distribution. But what we can start to do is look at, you know, look at stay nice, look at micro populations and start understanding where the issues are rather than just we have an issue with reading in our school.

Speaker 1:

You, as you say, shrink the issue and I think, as you say, triangulation is really, really important. And the other thing we often do is we say to schools can you share your reading age data with us and we can triangulate for you. You know how much, for example, just you know we're looking at one variable how much bedrock have they done? Is there a connection with progress in their reading age, between assessments, for example? And where is it that you need to target your resource more? And I think you're so right in taking the longer term view, but also being prepared to stand still and triangulate. I really understand that that might feel more uncomfortable because you're not doing something right there and then, but actually it's much more important to give it a few months and do the right thing eventually, because you did mention before you've touched on it a couple of times upstream and downstream issues. Just unpack for us. What do those two things mean? Because I think that's a third element here to think about.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm trying to think of that, how that, how it's different from cause and symptom, but I guess the the analogy would be you know, um, you know I health wise, you know you could, um have things that are about dealing with the consequences of poor diet. Let's say um, upstream would be fixing that with a better diet. You know so, um, and in school it could, you know, an upstream issue might be. We could be saying let's say um, well, let's say literacy. You know, if we're saying in year 11 we've got these problems, then the downstream impact is from, maybe something that happened upstream in year seven.

Speaker 2:

So his idea of people falling into the river. We can collect them all the end of this river, or we could go up to the top and stop them falling in the river, and there's a million ways to do that. But I think we said that before. Sometimes it's hard because if people are in the river, we want to save them from the river. So it's both dealing with any downstream issues whilst trying to ask ourself right, why, what could we do earlier on in their journey through school? Or what could we do, uh, right now that might cause, you know, because you know we can't go back in time, but we can do some things now that might stop these things from being issues in the future. And it's trying to.

Speaker 1:

It's trying to work out where, where our attention is best spent really, which is always the trade-off in schools for kind of opportunity cost what I really like actually was it was before was when you said your colleague had commented on the assessment framework or the assessment policy and actually, actually, right now it's, it's serviceable, it, you can work with it, but there'll be other more fundamental things that actually we can't wait on. So the best leaders I've worked with um and I used to love working with with, with a chap in my last school, um. I'd always come to him with a million problems I, this is going wrong, this is going wrong, this is going wrong. And he was so good with me because he taught me to pause and he said to me um, there's a few things here here, and that was like one of my. That's now one of my go-to lines when I speak to schools and they're saying, well, this is going wrong, this is going wrong.

Speaker 1:

I love that line because there's a few things here suggests I'm just giving myself pause for thought to think about what we need to solve right now and what, as you say, what's upstream, um, and just really, as I say, putting a pin in what's going on right now, to give us all time and space to figure out, as you say, whether we need to throw a life ring in, to extend the metaphor to things right now or whatever.

Speaker 1:

There's something further up to fix and that's why I think, when it comes to literacy, shrinking the issue and really thinking about where we are in the process on that, you know, upstream or downstream, that's really clever. So, as we kind of bring the conversation to a close, um, if I, when we speak to schools all day, every day, um, who were looking at trying to pin down subject specific vocabulary, disciplinary literacy, tier two vocabulary, specific vocabulary, disciplinary literacy, tier two, vocabulary reading solutions, all this type of stuff, what would your one piece of advice be to someone who is starting out on this journey, who is looking to galvanize the literacy agenda at their school, for example? What would your one key piece of advice be?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'd say you know the explore phase is definitely really important. So once again, you know why are we redoing our literacy policy, what's the problem we're trying to solve? And I would say again, work through that sequence, so kind of ask this. The first question so again this is we're referring here to the explore framework tool from the updated implementation guidance report has these two questions um, is it right for our setting? So start with that, really ask what's right for our setting. That's a combination of the problem. Get the problem right and then what does the evidence say about solving that problem? Um, good places to start are trusted sources. If you're not sure, the eef literacy guidance reports, there are others things available there. But find those trusted sources to kind of help frame.

Speaker 1:

This has been really good. There's there's so many golden nuggets that I'm going to be able to pull out and share with people. This has been really fantastic, mark. Thank you so much for coming on, um, and we'll definitely get you on again in the in the next, in the next 12 months, I'll take up more of your time, but it's been great and uh, yeah, follow. Follow Mark on LinkedIn. Have a look at what he's writing on LinkedIn. Follow his blog, um, it's well worth it. Get subscribed to that, um, and continue to feed feedback to us about our pod and what we're writing at bedrock.

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