Bedrock Talks from Bedrock Learning

34. The Role of EdTech within Literacy with Jenny Webb

• Bedrock Learning • Season 2 • Episode 27

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What happens when we treat reading as a checkbox rather than an ongoing developmental journey? Jenny Webb, Director of English and Literacy at Carlton Academy Trust, pulls back the curtain on the challenging reality of literacy in UK schools today.

Despite government claims about improvements in reading standards, educators are experiencing something quite different in classrooms. Jenny explains how up to 25% of children in less advantaged areas cannot functionally read, yet many schools remain unaware because they're not testing properly. She challenges the artificial barrier we've created between reading and learning, arguing that reading proficiency continues developing throughout teenage years and beyond - long after basic phonics have been mastered.

The conversation explores how schools function as evolving ecosystems requiring flexible, adaptable systems rather than one-size-fits-all approaches. Each year brings new cohorts with different needs, yet school leaders often face immense pressure to move quickly to the next initiative instead of maintaining sustained attention on literacy development.

Educational technology emerges as a powerful ally when implemented thoughtfully. Jenny shares how adaptive reading assessments can provide nuanced understanding of students' abilities, freeing teachers to focus on the meaningful human connections that make education transformative. "What has to be me and what doesn't have to be me?" she asks, articulating the complementary relationship between technology and teaching.

Whether you're an educator, parent, or literacy advocate, this conversation offers a compelling framework for understanding and addressing the complex literacy challenges facing students today. Listen now to discover how combining sound educational principles, responsive technology, and human connection can create more effective literacy development for all students.

Speaker 1:

Hi everyone and thank you for continuing to download and stream the Bedrock Talks podcast. I'm Andy Sammons, the Head of Teaching and learning at Bedrock Learning. It's my privilege today to be joined by Jenny Webb, who is director of English and literacy for Carlton Academy's Trust. When I said I was going to do a podcast, I'm pretty sure I had Jenny's name in my mind from day one, so it's so lovely that she's found the time to speak to us. It's just, it's a privilege. So thank you so much for joining me, jenny. It's lovely to have you on.

Speaker 2:

So kind. Thank you.

Speaker 1:

It's nice to be here so yeah, we've got a few things we want to discuss today. Obviously, jenny is, across all things, literacy English, a name to many English teachers around the country, a popular name, someone that people lean on for advice and for direction when it comes to their own CPD. And I think I wanted to start with a question which is off the back of the. You know the discussion around Oracy, the curriculum review in recent weeks. Um, you know, we're now considerably after the post post pandemic. Now, I suppose, um, where, where do you think we are now when it comes to literacy, and what, what do you think should be the priorities in solving next? So we will take that first part of the question first. Where do you think the literacy landscape is right now, jenny?

Speaker 2:

um, I think I think it's really challenging. Um, I think one of the one of the prevailing issues, I think, is that we don't often have the right information, so where we get kind of messages from kind of the previous government saying that we've smashed reading and everything's great and phonics is working, um, the way they expected it to and actually, um, what teachers are experiencing in the classroom is a kind of dissonant to that, you know, and we're going wait a minute, we're not, it's not smashed, yeah, and I think that there's a. I fully believe that. You know, systematic synthetic phonics is the right approach, right For don't get me wrong for early reading teaching, but we haven't really had long enough for it to be a really really well embedded, well well trained kind of thing through primary kind of early years, primary kind of key stage two, key stage three, through primary kind of early years, primary kind of key stage two, key stage three. Like we haven't yet seen the span properly because we haven't had that long. Really, in the grand scheme of things it feels like ages ago since all those reforms came in, but the reality is that we haven't actually had that long in the life of a child, you know, when we educate them for, say, 14 years like it's not really that long, um, and also we've had the pandemic in the middle, so we've had massive disruption to the kind of consistency and provision that these children should have had.

Speaker 2:

So what we're finding is very much that children are coming through to secondary. I mean, I'm not a primary specialist, um, by any stretch but what we're finding is that children come through into secondary um, some of whom have, um, they're fine and they've got the skills we'd expect, but a lot of whom do not have the skills we would expect, so they don't have the kind of reading fluency, comprehension, kind of confidence, sense of themselves as a reader that they need in order to handle a secondary curriculum. So we are in a challenging spot there, um the pandemic, and I mean to be honest, you know, I used to be the head of english at an all through school where we got children from 3 to 18 and we got that. That was years before the pandemic, and we had children who came in age three or four to our early years provision, who were non-verbal even then. Right, um, and that's not the, that's not because the parents are evil, it's not because anyone's like meant harm to these children, but it's often that they're coming from families where they haven't had a lot of success in education either. They don't know how to help. Um, you know there are there are loads and loads of complicated reasons why that happens. So you know all of these things go hand in hand right.

Speaker 2:

A child's ability to read um is massively kind of impacted by their ability to talk early, by their exposure to lots of kind of um, to lots of talk from grown-ups, from peers. Um, you know, exposure to nursery rhymes and kind of all those you know rhythmic things and there are so many things that kind of make an impact on that child's kind of very, very, very early development in literacy. And we see it come through or not come through um to kind of to older students and the damage is really kind of really really challenging and complex to unpick. So what I started this answer with really was that like we don't have enough information.

Speaker 2:

What we often do is we just assume that primary school have nailed it and primary schools have got an enormous job to do and they don't have the resources or the time they need to do it in a kind of comprehensive way.

Speaker 2:

Some primary schools in certain areas of the country are dealing with far more challenges than others are, and it is it's it's a huge task, and so we do get these issues spilling into secondary.

Speaker 2:

Some places have it more than others, and the schools I work with in west yorkshire get it in a really really significant, kind of serious way. Um, you know the in my experience of working across lots of schools in the north and I'm talking kind of the schools I support through my trust, but actually also the dozens of schools I've been very privileged to go into and support in various areas of kind of I don't know, you know what we would have called the industrialised north, so places like Manchester and Bolton and kind of Bradford and Leeds what I find is it's not uncommon to get 24%, 25% of kids in a school who are not able to functionally read in working class areas, and that is absolutely shocking. But one of the biggest issues we have is that a lot of schools don't even know that that's the problem, because they're not testing, they're not doing, they don't have a broad enough kind of net to check.

Speaker 1:

I mean we're going to get onto a little bit about the role of testing in a moment, but I just wondered what your thoughts were on when we had Natalie Wexler on a few weeks ago.

Speaker 1:

What a legend, yeah, she's just incredible. She spoke about this artificial barrier that persists in the US but also in the UK, between reading and learning, and I wonder if what you've said around the phonics something is persisting even as early as primary, where they nail the phonics test, where they get the national benchmark or whatever it is. They get to that point. But actually then this is no, not to be smirch, primary school at all, but I wonder if in education as a whole, we are, we are, we fully understand that link between reading and learning and that they're not two separate things. Is that something that that you think could be addressed much earlier? I mean, as someone who's led in an all-through school and someone who now has a very large influence across different phases, do you think that problem is pervasive in the UK as well, that reading and learning are two separate things, and is that contributing to this?

Speaker 2:

Do you know? It's a really interesting question because I'd never really, until I kind of read or kind of heard Natalie Wexler talking about some of this stuff, I'd never really framed it like that for myself in my head. I think one of the key things that I observe is that people think that learning to read is like a checkbox and you've done it. So there's like, oh, we did the phonics test, we did the phonics assessment, they've nailed it. But the reality is and you know, if you look at anything that like Megan Dixon says about this, like you do not finish learning to read once you've nailed your phonics.

Speaker 2:

Reading development is something that continues way beyond secondary like kind of, way beyond kind of key stage three even. You know, children are developing their proficiency, their sophistication, their ability to kind of read in more complex ways, all the way up to kind of teenage, kind of and beyond. And what's really important is that we don't see it as this thing where, oh, they can read, um, because actually you know, there are lots of things that are easy to test in reading, like do you know these? These phonics sounds right, you know your pure sounds. Do you know these diagrams? Do you know these? Blah, blah, but then actually we mustn't stop there. We mustn't stop kind of with that, because just because they know their phonics doesn't mean that they can comprehend something in a history textbook in year seven. Um, there's a, there is a. There is a disconnect between, like, I know in theory what these sounds are and what these words are, and I know what all this, all these words together mean. You know, and there's a.

Speaker 1:

Well, yeah, we're in the realms of, obviously, disciplinary reading, disciplinary literacy there, and I think that you, the work on that that colleagues have done, is really powerful because it shows that there is a. You know, those people who know me won't be surprised that I very systematically revised different essay plans. I did it in a very, very ABC way. I got great grades off the back of it, but when I got to uni I really struggled. I didn't know like.

Speaker 1:

I did a history module in the first year of uni alongside my linguistics degree, and it really freaked me out the fact that there was this massive book, you massive book list to read and I thought, well, I can't, just I can't read eight books a week. What am I supposed to do? I can't read eight chapters from eight books in this, but this is madness and I think that I wonder if we need to. You know, teresa Quammen spoke speaks about this really well, about developing reader identities in and of themselves, but also in different disciplines, is really important as well yeah, yeah, it's really important and I think, like there's a it's the it's the need we have in schools, because what we're doing is so complicated.

Speaker 2:

To make things simpler, yeah, so what we do is we go right, um, we need them to get to this level here with this thing, and if they can do this thing, then we can box that off and we can move on to this next thing. And it's very, very, very tempting to kind of compartmentalize things, separate them out from each other and kind of try and conquer them. It's not like divide and conquer, right. So it's very, very, very tempting, as a literacy lead, for example, to say, right, this year we're doing reading and we're going to have like these, um, these rules for each subject in terms of you know how we read in a disciplinary way, and we're going to have like these, um, these rules for each subject in terms of you know how we read in a disciplinary way, and we're going to have, um, these children, if they fit into this category, going to go into this intervention, um, and then we've nailed it right, we've done it and you haven't, because it's so much more all-consuming and pervasive than that. Right, things, everything feeds everything else, and so thinking that you've nailed it because you've got kind of some um, because because you've got a set of things that you can do, is you know, I I say this like quite a lot I did an um, I did a keynote last summer for a load of head teachers, um, and basically the person who asked me to do the keynote said, right, they want it on writing because they did reading last year.

Speaker 2:

I was like, oh okay, right, so I just did my keynote on you think you've done reading? Well, you haven't. Um. And so many of them came up to me afterwards and said and said, yeah, you're right, we haven't, uh, we haven't done it. But it's this like we, and I understand why we think like that in schools. I understand why because being a school leader is like an inexplicably kind of difficult and unrelenting job, right, and there are always other things and there are always people who will be like no, why are we still doing that? We did it last year. Why are we still doing that? We've nailed it. And it's like no, we haven't nailed it. That often what we do is we forget that our schools are these evolving. You know, a school isn't a building. Well, we nailed it in this building last year.

Speaker 1:

A school is a group of children who change every year and so, and the staff change as well, by the way, and the needs change and the demographics of both staff and pupils change exactly so.

Speaker 2:

It needs to be about having systems that can evolve, can be flexible. It needs to be about having systems that can evolve, can be flexible. It needs to be about having kind of testing systems which are appropriate for the children you've got and which aren't just blanket kind of everyone does the same thing. It needs to be something which is a lot more nuanced, difficult to do because, particularly at secondary, like bigger schools by miles, the kind of bigger cohorts, um, huge amounts of challenge in terms of the fact that you know they suddenly start being all hormonal and stuff, everything becomes a little bit more difficult, like it's harder to convince a 15 year old to do a reading intervention than it is to convince an eight-year-old to do a reading intervention.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I don't want to make big sweeping statements. What primary colleagues do is incredible and difficult and actually there's a reason. I'm a secondary teacher and I actually think that what primary school teachers do is harder than what we do in lots of ways. But in terms of that kind of system leadership thing there is so much to think about, and I think that's the difficulty is that people just don't have the time and the headspace and often the clout to be able to say no, we're still working on this. We still need to work on this.

Speaker 1:

We can't move.

Speaker 1:

It's funny you should say that because when we work with schools at Bedrock, one of my jobs I see my key job when I work with large multi-academy trusts and I work with schools Any organisation is to think about that stick of rock that runs through the implementation.

Speaker 1:

So you know why you've bought it ideologically, you know what you want this thing for. But if the leaders and the middle leaders and the pupils and the parents don't understand what the benefit of this thing is, it can just you know, in Bedrock's case it can run the risk of being this nebulous thing that people are just do it to do, avoid my homework, uh, avoid, avoid my home or avoid detention. And I think what we really have to do is make sure that everyone understands the underpinning um driving purpose behind this thing that we're doing. And even though that can be multifaceted and nuanced and all those things, I think it's really important that leaders take the time to pause, pause and do those things properly. But, as you say it, it can't get away from the fact it's just so difficult in schools when, as we said before, they're complex buildings. You know the learning rainforest tom sherrington's brilliant book just shows it. That really illustrates that quite nicely.

Speaker 2:

I think um it's like I think there's a you know, in my own experience I've you know, we're using bed rock in our trust and in two of our schools, and one of the schools is um, just, it's just a much bigger school, so it has a lot of capacity right, we've discussed this before like has loads of capacity. They had two middle leaders who could kind of dedicate their time to implementing this thing across this vast cohort. They have, and they have absolutely smashed it Right and they're seeing the impact in their reading data like mid-year. So like it's really really, really impressive what they've managed to do. But that was an appropriate time, an appropriate rollout for that cohort, for that school at that time in their development. And I've got another school which is equally beautiful, equally like they've bought in their body.

Speaker 2:

I've got another school which is equally beautiful, equally like they're great, love them they're wonderful, they're wonderful, they're all wonderful, but, like you know another school that they want it just as much, they are just as committed, but they don't have the same kind of capacity, right? So the way we, the things we choose to prioritize, have to be the the next right thing, rather than that thing over there that we want. It's got to be the next right thing. It's like we've got to be patient and there's got to be a sense of like. Do you know what? It's okay if these schools work at different paces? It's okay if we go? Do you know what?

Speaker 2:

That is not going to be in place straight away. Because, actually, and like drives me crazy, because I'm the most impatient person in the world, as you know like I just want it now. But it's so important for me to remind myself that actually I want it done well. I don't want it done at any cost, right, I want it just, I want it done well. So it has to be the right thing for that school, and that's what I'm talking about with that complexity piece.

Speaker 2:

Like there is so much and there can't be a one size fits all and there can't be a kind of. You know, we're committed to bedrock as one of the things that we use to support children's reading development, and we have other kind of things that we use as well and other projects underway. But, like there are, it's about kind of recognizing that you have to have kind of a cocktail of of solutions without having so much that it's chaos. You've got to have a cocktail of solutions and then you've got to be thinking about how that works for each individual child that goes through a pathway, rather than just everyone does this one thing and then we've fixed it I couldn't agree more.

Speaker 1:

And that's what. When we speak to schools, I often say well, what else is in place? Where does this fit for you? What's the big, big reason behind it? I mean, what, what, what? What was your reason then for going, going with bedrock for across your, your two schools? Because you've obviously got, uh, you use vocab, um, which obviously you've kind of hinted. Uh, alluded up, these alluded to before, but the reading test as well. If we could just maybe take each of those two things in turn, because obviously that was a decision for you to elect uh, to, to, to use that. There's other things out there, as everyone knows, but why? Why bedrock vocabulary for you then? What was it? What need do you? Did you feel you were addressing?

Speaker 2:

We're using the accelerate kind of program for homework and it's kind of. I did a lot of research and you know I'm like I read everything about everything and what was really powerful for me was that a lot of the other programs I looked at and I won't mention any names, but I looked at a number of the kind of market leaders plus a couple of other kind of startups, and what was really really striking for me was how the Bedrock Accelerate program basically uses. It uses a really really, really sound series of kind of direct instruction techniques to teach words. So like the fact that it uses like and it does it really really well as well, because a lot of programs say, oh, we use this and I'm like, yeah, that's not really what it is.

Speaker 2:

I don't think you understand when you get in front of it, it's yeah, yeah like actually lots of kind of variation, lots of repetition, lots of kind of pulling things back that students have struggled with before, like it's just it's a really, really, really strong program that is built in quite a complex way, so like it feels very um. You know, something that a lot of our kids just really love is being able to see the words they knew before, that, sorry, the words they didn't know before, that they now know, so they can see this kind of tangible progress for themselves. Um, and that's a really powerful thing. I like the platform. It works really well and actually knowing that the company works with us. So, you know, we had, as you know, we had some we've got a very, very high prevalence of children with vi and hi, so visual and hearing impairment, um in our cohorts in bradford and we um have been able to feed a lot of things back to bedrock about, like what our children need in order to access that platform properly, and the response has been incredibly positive and really like collaborative.

Speaker 2:

So I think there's been a real kind of it's about that being able to make it actually work. Because, again, it's the same, it's very, very tempting to just buy one thing in that's very blanket everybody just uses the same thing, everyone does the same thing and and that's the program and that's what it is, and you just have to do it when, actually, if you put in a little bit more effort and make sure things are going to work and look at the individual children and how things are working for them and work with a company that will think like that that you know this tiny little number of children is just as important as this massive big group of kids and that's a really important kind of principle for how we run our trust and how we kind of think about literacy development. So, yeah, that's been a really positive thing.

Speaker 1:

And how did you initially sort of because I know what I would say, but what was, what was your? How did you initially kind of broach this with? With colleagues at the schools? What did you initially kind of broach this with colleagues at the schools? What did you say to them and what did you say? You know you're laughing why.

Speaker 2:

Because, as you know, I'm quite a dynamic human being, so I have to work really hard. I literally like script myself sometimes before I go into meetings like that, because I have to make sure I'm not going in and just saying this is how it's going to be, y'all, because that's a little bit of that's my like, that's my instinct is to go in and just tell people. But that's not the right thing to do in my job. Like I don't tell anyone what to do. I'm an advisor, basically, like I'm a. I am a director for literacy and English, but it's just my job to know a lot and to advise and support and coach, rather than to tell right, and that's really important. So, and I take that really seriously so, like, my job is to make sure that the literacy leaders and the heads of english are more skilled and knowledgeable and have more headspace and more capacity than they had before. That that's the whole mission. So like, um, I mean, I'm very lucky to work with some really excellent head teachers and basically I go into those meetings and I present the evidence generally. I literally did a table for them and said this is what this would cost, this is what this would cost, this is what this would cost. These are, I think, the benefits educationally for each of these options, and I was really really lucky that they all said, yeah, let's go with option A and we agree with you. Do you know? Know what I mean? So, like, it's about kind of being able to say to colleagues you know, because my, our schools had already started trialing a different program before I appointed um and getting people. So getting people to start a new thing is one thing. Getting people to stop an existing thing to start a new thing, yeah, it's harder, um, but they were generally incredibly receptive and um, they saw, they saw how one was better than the other. Do you know? I mean, we were able to kind of really talk about it and show the platform.

Speaker 2:

But I think it's also it's not just about the platform, because I do think the platform is great, but it's also about saying this is our children right now. This is the gap, this is the problem we actually have to fit to solve. It's the thing we have right now. The right thing to solve that problem. No, what is the right thing to solve that problem? Well, it has to be something that will do this and this and this and that's what bedrock did for us. So it's that kind of right now, bedrock is the right thing for our cohorts.

Speaker 2:

We have one school that doesn't use bedrock and it's because it's is the right thing for our cohorts. We have one school that doesn't use Bedrock and it's because it's not the right thing right now for them. They actually don't need a thing. They don't need an online platform right now at all. They need other things because their cohort is fundamentally different to the other schools. So it's about making sure the schools can see that this isn't just me saying everyone needs to do the same thing, so I have an easy life. It's actually me saying right, your school right now, based on the data we're looking at, based on kind of this day line distribution, based on the kind of work we've done with parents, with students, with teachers. These are the key problems. These are the biggest levers of change. Yeah, how? Yeah?

Speaker 1:

and I think so the the core thing. I mean we often talk about the EF reading house and the idea that comprehension is underpinned, and the big learning this year for me is that comprehension is an outcome. It's a byproduct of lots of other things that are going on, starting with phonics, starting with word recognition, but then you have to address the elephant in the room around vocabulary, and we also have the grammar instruction as well, and you, you have to pick those things up and you have to. I always said I want something that's going to in terms of bang for my buck. I want something that's going to give pupils wide ranging fiction and non-fiction, that's going to give my teachers if, if you know, insights into the growth and insights into the vocabulary that they're learning. That's what the big thing is.

Speaker 1:

So what about the reading test then? How have you found working with that this year? Because you obviously we touched on in the last segment around diagnosis and things like that. What's your experience been with that? In fact, let me stop a moment what's the role of ed tech overall, do you think in helping you do those things, assess and intervene? Where do you see ed tech? Because you mentioned you know I'd really be interested to hear your view on that. Where do you, where does ed tech sit for you? So I think it's really important.

Speaker 2:

I think it's interesting, isn't it? Because lots of people are kind important. I think it's interesting, isn't it, because lots of people are kind of scared of it. People don't like change and not everyone is really confident with tech, and so a lot of this stuff feels a bit like voodoo. Um, now, I'm a bit of a tech head so I really enjoy kind of exploring new things and looking at. You know, like I'm getting very excited about looking at like ai and stuff at the moment and there's kind of a a.

Speaker 2:

What's important is that you know, what we do in schools is, um, particularly in secondary schools, right, we're dealing with massive amounts of data. We're dealing with like huge kind of like lots and lots and lots of numbers, every single child, and there are, you know, maybe a thousand kids, more than a thousand kids kind of in an average size secondary school, and so we've got these vast quantities of data and we could do so much with all of that information if we had the time right. So people who are massive nerds like me, who love a spreadsheet and want all that information right Like you know, doing an on paper reading test that has to be marked is an enormous burden on an English department or whoever it is who's going to mark them. It's also less effective as a reading assessment, because an online reading test, something that is computer-based, can be adaptive. And for anyone who doesn't know the difference, like, basically, I could give you 40 questions on a piece of paper and see what your answers are, but if you're really, really weak, you might not be able to handle any of those questions and then all I get is zero. But what I really needed was to know that you were actually minus seven or minus three, right, and there's a difference between those two things. So if the test can't give you easier questions than the 40 on my sheet, then all I know is that you couldn't answer those 40. I don't know how bad it is, but on the other side it's the same thing, right? So if a child gets 40 out of 40, that doesn't mean that they know everything. It just means that those 40 things were within their capability. So an adaptive test will give a child easier questions if they're struggling, harder questions if they're smashing it, and it will keep going up and down until they get a really refined grade.

Speaker 2:

Now what's important is that, like, with that comes loads of complexity, because children sometimes like that interface with a computer can provide lots of barriers. So what you'll often find is that so a child who gets a really high reading age or reading scores or whatever it is a standardized score or whatever it is you're going to use, and a child who gets a really high reading age or reading scores or whatever it is, a standardized score or whatever it is you're going to use, a child who performs very, very highly on an adaptive test, is very likely that it's likely that that is a very accurate result, because it's really really hard to score highly by accident because you'd have to get so many right in a row, right, whereas a child who just clicks through and says like, just guesses, because they're annoyed that day or they don't see the importance of it, or they're like, oh, I don't want to do this again, like, or just the culture isn't right, then actually that child could be a good reader, but they've just had a bear and they didn't take it seriously. So it's actually very. It means that you have to understand those reading age tests can be quite volatile. So you have to know that it's going to be a thing where you will have to retest your bottom 20% to make sure you will have to.

Speaker 2:

You know we have systems in our schools where we know that we're not having to mark things by hand. We're saving loads of time, we get a result instantly. But we also know we're going to have to spend some of the time that we've saved going through those lists and looking for anomalies. So are there kids in here? We we send out the list of really really weak scores to the English department and just say can you just flick your eyes over this and tell us if there are any that are suddenly screaming out to you that aren't accurate? Obviously, once we've done a couple of tests, we can compare with what they've done before as well. So and what you'll often find is that children will appear to have made a massive progress between two points, but actually it's because the first time they didn't take it seriously and so we have to kind of work that back and just not get carried away with ourselves, right?

Speaker 2:

so that ed tech sorry to answer your actual question like yeah no, it's really useful most important thing for me is that we use the tech that is available to us to save time, to make us more efficient, to make us, to give us insight that we wouldn't have before. You know, there's so many really interesting analysis tools we can use. There are loads of really interesting kind of bits of information we might not get otherwise that I think are incredibly powerful. But we have to know how to use those things effectively. We need to have systems in place where children take it seriously, where it's part of the culture of the school. We know that we do this like this and every time this comes up, these are the rules.

Speaker 2:

Like my schools that do this. They do this beautifully now, but like they do it where they have. Like the children know the drill. They one of the schools does it in the hall and brings in invigilators and just has Chromebooks set up and the children have like the same message. Someone reads out a script. Do it. When they're finished they go to their normal lessons. Like it's a very, very slick system. Another one does it in classrooms but like every teacher has the same slides they'll read through, like there's a very set system and when that works and when the children know they're supposed to take it seriously and we say to them look, we don't call it a test, we say it's a diagnostic, just because the word is a bit less scary. I think you know, and we say this is so, we know how to help you and if we don't get the right information, we might be giving you help that someone else needed.

Speaker 1:

And again, that's the importance of the why, and there's so much of what you've said there that you know, in case listeners aren't aware. Obviously, the bedrock test that Jenny's referring to fully adapted from the off, so it will serve the first question at chronological age and then it will adapt after that and the team has been working so hard this year to get to the point where there is a maximum of 25 questions. So there's a highly, highly reliable result that we have. It's 0.94.

Speaker 2:

That's the thing that came from some feedback that we'd given, but also I'm sure some of the schools are given. We were like this is a great test. We actually think the test is. Really. I'm so impressed with this test and what it does.

Speaker 2:

But compared to kind of I've used I've used all the market leaders in the past, like at various points, um, and this is my favorite one and what we find with this test is that it gives us a better spread. So if you do kind of a standard box and whiskers diagram and you look at kind of your top um quartile and kind of all four quartiles and look at the spread with um, I actually the first year we switched to bedrock, we used the mgrt and we used bedrock and I did a quartile spread one and the bedrock test gave us a much broader. So what it did was it showed us the extent of how strong our top readers were and the extent of how weak our weaker readers were. It gave us a much, much broader spread. So it wasn't just it wasn't because the other test was squeezing the children on either end, so it looked a little bit better at the bottom and a little bit worse at the top, which means that you can't be as flexible with your curriculum design, with all the, you can't be as responsive if you don't have accurate information. And so what's been really powerful for us is like that has just given us more accurate data and it is honestly it's like knowledge is power the more you know, the better you can do for your cohort.

Speaker 2:

If you've got data that is not accurate or it's giving you a slightly dodgy, skewed view of things, you miss things, you miss patterns. But also the fact that we went back to Bedrock and said the test is great, but it's taking too long for some kids, particularly at the top end. Basically, the children were just never stopping because they just kept getting things right and it just kept giving them more questions. So we need the test to take easily within one lesson, easily. It needs to be shorter and basically, bedrock went away and fixed it and it is much better.

Speaker 1:

Basically and there's other, there's, I mean you're talking as well about you can't avoid it the basics of administration around. You know, if a pupil does have a mare on one day or the fire alarm goes off, you can void the token and give it. Give it, you know the test can be reset. You can also download test statuses as well so you can see where your mop-ups are. And there's various things that the bedrock team have built into the test to make it so that it's very easy to administer as well, which is so important because it it has to speak to the lives of teachers and the complex world that we live in.

Speaker 2:

So if it's not something that's just really easy to press a button and get your answer, then people don't have time for that, nobody has time for it.

Speaker 1:

So, and that's the, that's the kind of value of it, I think, and just being very, very open to hearing what people are saying has been really powerful I mean, I know that we're coming to the end now and I just one thing I think the common thread of what you've said today around, particularly around, ed tech, is that it needs to be something that augments and that increases efficiencies, to allow teachers to then go, teachers and leaders to then go and focus on the core issues for their schools. Right, that's the key, isn't it? It's about augmenting and making and freeing up time for the most critical stuff and whilst also being able to do things for you that a bit of paper can't you know you need I think it's really about, like there are things that ed tech can never do right and we shouldn't be asking it to do yeah, don't ask it to do things that are impossible.

Speaker 2:

Like there are things that have to be us and I ask this question all the time right, what has to be me and what doesn't have to be me? And if, if, or what has to be the teacher in the classroom, what doesn't have to be the teacher in the classroom? Because you know, it's the same thing with, like, when you look at things like ai marking or something the teacher and like a child might write a story and it's not the ai's job to tell the child that the story was funny or it's the best thing they've written all year, or it really made them chuckle. Like that is their teacher's job. Their teacher needs to look them in the eye and say, like that was something really special, like you've got something there. You're not hilarious, that's a great piece of writing. That is the reason we do this job, right? That that's the point, that human connection where you say you make progress, that's amazing, right? Or like that thing was wild and I loved it. Right, that that's the best thing about being an english teacher when you get those really quirky writers, yeah, but, and so I can do that.

Speaker 2:

But an ai could um give feedback about, like, the frequency of particular types of grammar error across a whole cohort? Could give it could pick up data about trends in vocabulary usage. It could pick up. It could give like marks according to a particular mark scheme which are generally quite accurate. Actually, like there are so many things that it could do that we therefore wouldn't have to do like if and actually it's that kind of what is going to actually help us do our job better what are the things that we still just need to be able to do ourselves, and how can those two things meet in the middle?

Speaker 1:

so it's implementation, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

yeah, exactly so. Like those things meet in the middle where we're able to upload new reading ages and talk to staff about the progress kids have made every time we do the test, and that's a really powerful thing, and we have to make sure that that information meets the staff and the staff understand what that information means and what that means for them in the classroom, right. So that piece of tech has done a huge piece of work for us. It's done all of that kind of um. It does a lot of the analysis for you actually um even though I'm a nerd and I want my own spreadsheets to do other things too but it's that like um, that that's us working in concert with the tech rather than the tech feeling like it's working us.

Speaker 2:

Because I think what I often find when I go into schools is that they're being, they feel like they're being ruled by the ngrt or by the bedrock test or by the accelerated reader test or whatever test is they're using. It's not the test's fault, it's the way the school's using it, because they don't fully understand it is they're using. It's not the test's fault, it's the way the school's using it, because they don't fully understand it. So they're going oh, we do the test and then we have groups for things. I'm like, yeah, but what are the groups for? Do you understand what the data is telling you? Because the data is telling me that that child doesn't need to be in that group, like there's a kind of it's that for you, or are you feeling compelled to do things because of it and this experience?

Speaker 1:

I think that's really important and what, what? Yeah, that's a really nice place to finish, um, and it's been such a pleasure. Jenny, thank you so much for coming on, um, it's a pleasure working with you, um, as part of the implementations aside from that, but, um, yeah, what a lovely, fantastic way for me to finish the week and, yeah, it's great. Thank you so much, um, and I know listeners will be very thrilled that they get a chance to listen to you. So, thank you so much, jenny, and have a lovely weekend and easter me you too.

Speaker 2:

All right, thank you.

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