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Thoughts and ideas on education, culture, psychology, social science and more from our academics, students, alumni and wider community to create lasting and evolving change. Podcasts brought to you by UCL Institute of Education (IOE), the world's leading centre for education and social science research, courses and teaching, and a faculty of University College London (UCL).
More from us: https://ucl.ac.uk/ioe
IOE announcer
You're listening to IOE insights. The UCL Institute of Education podcast at University College London.
Elaine Long
We are programme leaders on the UCL Early Career Teacher programme. Why are we in the Staffroom? We are here because this is where the best professional learning conversations always take place. This is where problems faced by teachers and leaders today can be explored critically, and where meaningful connections between research and practice can be made.
Mark Quinn
Over the course of this series, we will hear the voices of different colleagues as they come into The Staffroom – from ECTs to academics and executive leaders. We will talk about all things education – the challenges and the joys. So why don’t you enjoy a coffee with us, perhaps even grab a biscuit, and sit down for an hour of Staffroom chat.
Mark Quin
Welcome to the staff room. Polly, Rebecca and Rob. Come on in. You can see that the head teacher has removed all our chairs. Uh, this is. We just got a free period between now and one o'clock lunchtime. Uh, thanks for coming in. I can see you're all a bit haggard from your last lesson. Yeah, you could have made an effort.
Um, so here we are. Um, we've got some biscuits for you. I'm sorry that our caretaker, we keep, we keep, we keep trying to retire him, but he won't. Dennis is completely irreplaceable.
Dennis Wallace
This is not going well. It's not going well. Can offer you a biscuit. Can you? I'm fine, thank you. Mr. Quinn, would you like. Can I, can offer you a shortbread finger?
Mark Quinn
II would love a shortbread finger. Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I know who gave you that.
Dennis Wallace
And can I just say no crumb, no crumbs.
Mark Quinn
I'll do my best. Thank you, Mr. Wallace. Go back to your bell where you’re happy.
Elaine Long
Okay. We need to bring this chit chat to an end. Because I have a teaching and learning meeting to run. Uh, Rob, we do need to talk about how exactly that year seven got the recorder stuck up their nose. Um, but we will leave that for now,
I would like you to introduce yourself for our listeners and tell us what brings you to the Staffroom today. Polly, can we start with you?
Polly Glegg
Um, so apart from baking, uh, I really enjoy thinking about pedagogy in particular, um, how we teach children and how we teach teachers. And I've been really thinking deeply about AI and the role of AI. We've already begun a discussion, so I'm here today to continue that discussion. Thank you.
Elaine Long
Rebecca. Can we move on to you?
Rebecca Williamson
Hi, everyone. I'm Rebecca. I'm currently seconded to UCL as a programme leader and I am when I'm not at UCL, I'm at Transform Trust. So I've got very recent experience back in the classroom. And I've been doing a piece of work for UCL around thinking about our neurodivergent participants. So, I really want to think about the lens of learner difference this morning.
Elaine Long
Thank you Rebecca.
Rob Legg
Hi there. I'm Rob Legg. I'm one of the programme leader team. Um, I've been part of the content creation team for the year two programme of ECTP. And today I'm here to respond to the policy video and the, the white paper conversation. So that's my maybe unenviable task.
Elaine Long
Thank you. To be fair, we have given you some really meaty topics to get stuck into. So we're going to need those biscuits. We might need Dennis to bring some more hobnobs on to keep us going a bit later if we do get stuck.
I was really struck by something that Jane said at the start of the conference, which is we can sometimes feel like we're in a race to keep up with developments in AI. It's moving very, very quickly. And I suppose my question for you Polly, if you don't mind, is that is there a risk in the advocacy of AI that we lose sight of what teaching and learning and curriculum really is?
Polly Glegg
Yes. Am I done?
Elaine Long
I'm afraid I'm going to push you a bit more on that.
Polly Glegg
I mean, yes, I think in some ways we could say that AI, so we're talking about generative AI in particular has characteristics that make it similar to other innovations that we've seen in teaching and learning. So, you know, the interactive whiteboard, for example, was going to come in and it was going to revolutionize teaching. And in some ways, perhaps many ways, we saw it used in classrooms in ways that didn't really influence positively the quality of learning, perhaps sometimes took away from the quality of the learning that was happening.
So, I think we could we could see it in the same vein, right, that whenever we bring a new tool into our classroom, there is the potential for that tool to foster better quality teaching and learning for the teacher to use that tool intelligently and thoughtfully within a conceptual framework of really thoughtful understanding of what teaching is and of what that teacher is trying to achieve in their classroom, in which case, you know, big tick, there's also the potential for the, the novelty of the tool or a kind of an enthusiasm for trying it out to override that focus on teaching and learning.
So, I think that's, that's one perspective. You know, it's a tool and it's how that tool is deployed that ultimately is going to influence whether we simplify what is happening in the classroom and undermine the quality of what's happening or whether we enrich it.
There's a second approach, of course, which says that actually gen AI isn't the same as the interactive whiteboard. That it's a whole new paradigm shift. And that what we could see is, is a fundamental move away from what has effectively been a very stable understanding of what the classroom is and what teaching is in the school setting. You know, you can look back at paintings from hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and you have the teacher at the front of the room and the children sitting paying attention and broadly speaking, in a lot of our classrooms, we will still have that now.
So yeah, I guess the risk is there, but it's whether the risk is around current paradigm, new tool or actual fundamental shift.
Elaine Long
It's super interesting, isn't it? It's that question of to what extent do we need to renegotiate the purposes of education, or to what extent do things need to stay the same? And I think a question I hear less when we're talking about AI mediated environments is what do we need to sustain in an AI world and how do we sustain it?
One of the arguments I hear a lot is that in an AI mediated world, we won't need to plan the content, the curriculum. We can get AI to do it for us. And indeed, that will free us up as teachers to do all these other things we need to do in the classroom. All the human stuff, if you like. And indeed, that's already happening. It's happening in some exclusive schools in America, some private schools, and it's also happening in under-resourced areas of the globe where there are teacher shortages and the AI curriculum is making up for those teacher shortages.
I'm interested in what you think about what's lost and gained in those approaches. How do you feel about that separation of curriculum and pedagogy?
Polly Glegg
I might come at this slightly at an angle. For me, I have to be a little bit careful how I say this. There are, there are things that we do in teaching, which we do because fundamentally we think they are absolutely right and necessary. And there are things that we do because they help us to ameliorate a situation which is already not ideal right, now own personal view is that the best way to educate teachers is to do it in a way where that teacher is not the teacher of record for a class, for example, I think it's more helpful to educate teachers in some kind of student teacher role.
We have in this country, we have Teach First, for example, which was brought in as a fix for a particular problem and Teach first has been very successful in its own way. I mean, I say this because my doctoral research was about this, so I'm kind of banging the drum and Teach First then helped us to think about other ways of teaching teachers on employment based routes, but I still wouldn't say that given a perfect set of parameters, that I would think that the best way to develop teachers is through an employment based route. But we do it because it helps in the situation that we find ourselves in.
And I use that as an example because I think it's the same with AI. You know, you're talking about we can use generative AI in situations where there are not ideal, um, contexts for teaching and learning. So yes, if we have a teacher shortage, then sometimes using Gen AI to develop resources or to develop, um, tools, tutoring systems may well be better than the alternative, but that doesn't necessarily mean for me that it's better than the ideal that we might have. We live in the real world.
We have to operate in contexts of limitation and scarce resource.
Mark Quinn
Can I ask you a question about that real world because this is really interesting? So, I'm going to ask you to think about the risks of generative AI being used, it was the replacement word that was on the screen earlier I think. So, where there's a shortage of teachers, whether that's in this country or anywhere else, and a policy solution is to address that with some AI tooling up.
Can you just sort of dwell for a little bit on what you might see as the risks of that approach of allowing us to replace teachers with tools?
Polly Glegg
I mean, I think Qing already touched on this as well, that the way that we've set up this programme and my stance toward teaching is that teaching is contextual and complex and relational and contingent. And, you know, Rose Luckin said AI isn't intelligent, so you gain some things by using the AI tutor and you lose others and for me, the risk is that that the children, perhaps in the fancy private schools, I don't suppose they're just getting AI tutoring, Are they? They're getting a complex blend that still allows for all the richness of having the human involved in their education and that would be grand. But I think that that for me is the risk is that we, we lose a lot of what is absolutely fundamental to education as I contextualize it, you know, I mean, I'm one person.
Mark Quinn
Yeah, a very important person, as an original. We've been talking about policy. We've begun to touch on policy. So, Rob, I'm going to come to you next because you've been given the enviable task of responding to responses to the white paper, as we used to call it. So if we think about the ambitions of the White paper, and there are many and diverse ambitions of the White paper. Do we think that those ambitions are achievable without some fundamental changes to the way we do school?
Rob Legg
So, I think the question that you've just spoken aloud there, Mark, is really the the underpinning question of the White paper. I think that, um, I really agree with what he said when he said that the White paper sets a direction, but also that it raises a range of important questions about implementation. And if we take a kind of zoomed out view on it, the ambition that the document sets out for us that it communicates is a clear ambition. I think it's recognisable for most of us. \many of us will be in sympathy with it and also it's consistent with previous policy positions that the current administration and previous administrations have taken. So, there's an understanding there of the scale of the challenge.
Even if the preamble sets out a bit of a dystopian vision of what the challenge might be. There's a commitment to connectedness between various different parts of the system that we know is important. That's one of our, you know, one of our commonly held truths, connectedness between things like family and school and between phases and between agencies and so on. Strong commitment to inclusion, into the concept of a broad education. So, we kind of know what the ambition is. We also see in, in the pages of the white paper, clear intentions about the systems of accountability as we will move towards them. So we think about stronger and different measures of progress and we hear about consultations, you know, changing what progress eight measures might, for example, look like.
But I think that, my reflection, having spent some time with that document is that between those clear ambitions and the clear accountability measures that we're nodded towards, there's something missing and that space in between those ambitions and the accountabilities, you know, there's a whole collection of how questions that sit in between those two spaces and that's much less clearly in focus for me. So, you know, we've got that probably biggest single change about EHCP becoming ISP for many students. How will that work? What is the scope of that move? What proportions of students that would previously have held EHCPs expect not? How will the funding for that work?
We're told about experts at hand who will work directly with those students. That sounds very good, but what will the realities of that be? And that's just a kind of like a sample of some of the questions that I imagine Hugh has in mind when he says, that there are questions about implementation. So also, you know, there's that three tier system of support.
Will there be potentially significant gains from a much less bureaucratic process? What will be that intersection between ideas of inclusion and ideas of accountability? And I think that the question that he raises at the end of the video about curricular changes and assessment changes, that's the frame within this whole thing operates. So, we sort of wait, don't we eagerly to find out what the final realization of the curriculum review will be.
Mark Quinn
So, you've identified potential gap between the ambition or ambitions rather of the White paper and how it might eventually be enacted or those might eventually be enacted in schools. And the challenge is being somewhat around finances or around where these experts at hand might be. I mean, if they were there, we might already have them at hand, perhaps.
And you've touched on, I was going to ask you a little bit more about those measures of progress, because I think the white paper is quite interesting on that, because it does say that all children can achieve very well and we're not trying to lower expectations of that, but also that there's different types of achievement. I thought that was an interesting direction given, as you say, there's still a murky space about the curriculum and assessment policy and what's eventually going to come out from that.
So, can I ask you, Rob, what would you think the curriculum and assessment, what happens needs to happen at that level for the ambitions of the white paper to have a chance of succeeding.
Rob Legg
I think the promise of breadth is a is a tantalising one, and I think that every time I saw the word consultation we will consult on. I thought to myself, yes, and we will we will all collectively respond, and we must do that. That's a very, very important action point for us all. I think the, the uncertainties around funding are a big part of this and Hugh was right to remind us that there's, to some extent, an unstable political landscape as well that may be playing into the question that you've just raised.
I think in a way, what's more important, perhaps? Well, I'm not sure which comes first, but the biggest change for us really is I think, what Liz Pellicano called the epistemic shift. You know, that change in how we actually think about learners with all kinds of needs. And I think all those questions about curriculum and assessment have to be hung on this hook of a rethinking about mainstream inclusion. And that basically is abandoning any idea of a deficit model, abandoning what has become an overburdensome and problematic focus on formal diagnosis, abandoning our habit of labelling as a profession, and that then raises leadership challenges for us, doesn’t it? You know, there's a whole bunch of leadership challenges which falls out of this conversation and further challenges will emerge.
So, you know how to fill in the gaps between these, these objects that we've described, how to find solutions? What are the implications for professional learning? What are the implications for recruitment and retention of teachers? How can we do all this without getting ourselves too tied up in those systems of accountability, which have been we've seen, we know from our working lives can be distorting and reducing of our ability to actually effect successful change?
Elaine Long
That's really interesting you said that, Rob, because I think this is very much an operational challenge. It is a resource challenge. I think far too often teachers and leaders are expected to make things out of air, just make things happen. And there's often a huge difference between the rhetoric and the reality of things.
I guess to think about things that are within our grasp. Um, as leaders, those things you mentioned about avoiding deficit framings. Those things about taking the needs of all learners seriously. They are leadership challenges. They're not just operational problems, they're structural and relational problems and they're culture problems.
So, I guess that that brings us, uh, on, on to you. Um, Rebecca and I, I think the question that, that, that Liz was really asking us is how can we move away from an intervention culture? Because I think we'd all acknowledge, and certainly that resonates in the white paper. Intervention cultures don't work. It tends to work better when we think about the needs of all learners from the beginning, it shouldn't be an afterthought.
So how do we do that, Rebecca? How do we move away from an intervention culture co we're taking the needs of all learners seriously?
Rebecca Williamson
Thanks, Elaine. I think, and it's this is these aren't my words, they're the words of someone called Amjad Ali who does a lot of professional development. We need to think about as educators. Are we building ramps or are we building steps? Because actually, if we think about building ramps, everybody can use a ramp. And if we come back to there's probably not a single person in this room who couldn't tell me what makes great teaching.
And I think if we come back to those things that make great teaching, so clear explanations, chunk tasks, scaffolds, predictable routines, explicit modelling of thought processes, those things disproportionately benefit learners with ADHD, autistic learners, those with language and communication needs. They do not put other learners at a disadvantage. They advantage everybody.
So, I really think we need to come back to those ideas of what makes great teaching. And I think that idea of challenging the deficit narratives in English language, we have ADHD, you know, in just that we've got the word deficit and we've got the word disorder. When I've been doing some research into this, I found out that the Maori term for ADHD translates as attention goes to many things. And if we think about it like that, there's also a really, I can't remember, so I encourage you to go away. I know we're not supposed to be giving you to do lists, but if you go away and look up the Maori term for autism as well, that just explains it beautifully.
And we were having a conversation on one of the tables over there about when teachers are planning for learners, not thinking about, right, how do I plan for my learner who's got ADHD? How do I plan for my learner who's got dyslexia? Actually think about planning for how do I plan for someone who struggles to hold their attention? How do I plan for somebody who feels really anxious in class? How do I plan for somebody who doesn't have a wide vocabulary? We're shifting the narrative away from those deficit cultures.
I think Liz put it beautifully when she said, and I could see that picked up in the comments from the table groups, that when we start to see neurodiversity as a valuable part of human diversity, then we will get that shift away from deficit narratives. I know that at the moment as well. We've talked about the white paper and we talked about assessment in the context of AI. We had quite a few discussions in the room about assessment in the context of AI. And at the moment, assessment is so linear and it's really contingent on being able to get things down on paper, isn't it? At the end of Key Stage two? Those of you who are primary colleagues, you will have gone through the SATs recently. We need to start normalising the use of assistive technologies. We had a conversation on our table. There was a teacher, Tapp survey that went out, over ten thousand teachers that were surveyed about their last lesson. Only one percent of them used assistive tech.
So, we need to start normalising those adjustments rather than thinking about intervention as something that we do where we take pupils out. And I think just to come back to your point, Qing, children work better when they learn together. If they're being taken out for intervention, they're not feeling that sense of belonging within their classrooms and within their schools.
Elaine Long
That's so powerful, Rebecca. I'm going to go off piste a bit. Everyone knows I do this, so everyone's going to tell me off. But because what I was thinking is we're all leading professional learning in the room and we're all system leaders. So, I guess we've got a responsibility as the people leading professional learning to help this cultural shift away from intervention cultures and deficit thinking.
So, I suppose I'm thinking about what are our responsibilities in the room? How can we positively influence this? Because this is a large room. We could have a big impact. So, I'm interested in your point of view. Polly is one of the principal authors of the UCL ECF curriculum. Do you think we do enough? Do you think there's enough in there or do you think we could do more?
Polly Glegg
I mean, I think, again, it comes back to constraints, doesn't it? Because yes, we could do more. And in the time that we have with the constraints we have, we might have to then think about where we give and where we take. That might be some interesting policy discussions around the three years, right, of the pre-service and the, um, the newly qualified phases. Maybe we move into a more graduated arc of learning, for example. But also we need to acknowledge context and the context of our classrooms is changing. And that's one of the drivers, right, of this increased focus on, um, on how we include all of our learners in our classes.
So, we can't stay still. Um, and it kind of comes back partly, you know, I was saying about AI, is AI a tool or is it a whole new paradigm? Is it a tool or is it context? I would argue it's both. So if, if AI is becoming a context in which our teachers teach and our learners learn, then we need to give that sufficient weight within the teacher development activities that we engage in. I would argue that it's very similar if our pupils and our learners coming through our teacher education, our education systems are changing or our understanding of them and their needs is changing, then the way that we educate those teachers has to evolve with it.
Mark Quinn
Can I come back to you, Rebecca, actually, and you can prepare yourself for this as I'm waffling. We learned earlier today, didn't we, about some of the risks of a human resources approach to professional learning. And we're all involved in this room in just exactly that. You know, it's an early career teacher program. It's a programme for mentors. It's a programme for the professional qualifications for different people at different stages of leadership.
We're thinking we're focusing on those individuals. And I'm often struck by the extra pressure we're putting on those individuals to be better. Right? So just from this discussion, we're expecting them somehow to respond to government policy initiatives. We're expecting them somehow to respond individually to the challenges and opportunities of generative AI. And we're maybe wagging a finger at them who you know, those teachers who aren't the very best at having inclusive classrooms because, you know, it's tough. It's hard to learn how to do that.
And so given that we don't want to put that pressure on all of those individuals, and we actually do see that the school organization has an a very important part to play on this. Rebecca, can you say something about what you feel are the responsibilities on leaders in schools to make sure that that, you know, that great teaching that you talked about, um, you know, is a reality and that those individuals aren't left high and dry to do it all by themselves.
Rebecca Williamson
Absolutely. I think it comes back to that notion of who are the dominant voices. Liz Pellicano talked about participatory insights. I think I got that out but we talk a lot in the school system about pupil voice and actually, whose voices are we listening to and whose voices are being heard and how are we making those mechanisms for collecting that voice really accessible? And I've heard before people saying, I don't do pupil voice with early years because they can't do, you can do pupil voice with early years. You can get those, you know, what does it feel like in this classroom? What does it feel like to be in this school? How do you get that children's sense of belonging? You get that children's sense of belonging by asking the children, but how do you get that staff sense of belonging? You need to get that staff voice, but you need to think about who are the dominant voices.
And I think this term that was I think it was coined by James Charlton “It's nothing about us without us”. So, don't make decisions about your neurodivergent students, about your neurodivergent staff without asking them first. So, I think as leaders, it's on us to be getting that voice and to be thinking about whose voices we're listening to.
Mark Quinn
Am I allowed to say that James Charlton is the younger brother of Bobby Charlton? And we were in the home of Manchester United at Old Trafford. We have to mention the Charlton's at some point,
Rebecca Williamson
Only if I'm allowed to say it was a handball at the weekend.
Mark Quinn
Rebecca is a Nottingham Forest fan. Well done on surviving. We have reached that point in the podcast where we hand you a post-it note. There is no post-it note, but we're going to do it. We're going to pretend that we're handing you a post-it note over to the table, and you get to write on this poster note, and you get to choose where you stick your post-it note.
We're going to do this. In fact, what we want you to do is to have as open a discussion as you can about what you feel links. The three lenses that we've been discussing, what connects the topics of AI and divergent leader, sorry divergent students and pupils and the ambitions of the government white paper.
So, Polly, since you're holding the microphone and we always said that you'd go first. Do you want to kick off that discussion?
Polly Glegg
Okay. So, I guess I talked about AI as a tool that we can use within our understanding of what good teaching is. So, I would say to teachers and to pupils understand how AI works, put the effort into learning what the models do and what their strengths are, what their limitations are, and then use those models to make it as productive as possible for teachers to teach and for learners to learn. And I think that connects to the policy context and to the question around how we serve the needs of all of our learners, because there are, of course, risks, but there are phenomenal opportunities, I think, for how teachers can make use of new technologies to better serve the wide range of needs of their learners in their classroom.
And I would go so far as to say that if we don't equip ourselves with that understanding, and if we don't commit to taking those actions in a responsible and critically literate way, we risk undermining the quality of teaching that we can offer to our students, and we risk underserving those students. So, actually, I think it's for me on that post-it note, I would I would say it's an imperative to engage, to learn, and then to make decisions about how, when, if and why. I don't know how, how, when, why, and if I'd get that right the second time.
But the if is important, right? We don't always use it, but sometimes perhaps we need to be looking at what the opportunities are and for me, that's the imperative.
Elaine Long
Can I ask a follow up question? This is going to be a big Post-it note, but maybe we'll imagine there. One of those giant sort of flipchart, um, Post-it notes. How, how do leaders best do that? Then How do they encourage critical adoption of AI rather than adoption that's not critical, rather than what Jane was talking about, about that sort of race towards, oh, it's a new thing, I must do that. What's the differences between that? And I don't see enough what that really looks like.
Polly Glegg
I mean, we're having this challenge at IOE. So, some of the work I've been doing this year is putting together our policy or our vision document for critical digital literacy, and then thinking about implementation. And what we can't do, of course, is just say to our colleagues, well, you must go away and you must skill yourself up independently in your spare time.
So, what we're thinking about is how we, how we build opportunities for that kind of learning into our existing CPD frameworks. For example, so the formal frameworks, but also, you know, how we use, sharing opportunities to share aspects of good practice and perhaps to unpick those and discuss them like we've been doing in the, in the team together. You know, we share our own learning.
There are frameworks available. So, for example, there's a framework from UNESCO, which is very helpful in terms of setting out different descriptors of different levels of digital literacy. So, there's the UNESCO one is AI literacy. There's an OECD framework around digital literacy. So, these might be helpful to school leaders as a starting point. Um the DfE has an online learning resource for teachers who want to understand more about AI in the context of teaching. So, there are some resources out there which are supportive. I wouldn't want to tell the leaders in this room how they go about operationalizing that, but certainly there are some resources. There is work going on, but work also needs to be done not just at a national level, but at an institutional level. I think to be really clear about how within that institution, leaders and colleagues want to approach the use of technology by the colleagues, by the staff, and also by pupils. So, I don't think there's an off the shelf answer that I can give.
Mark Quinn
But you, you'd favour a gradualist approach to that, an iterative approach to that rather than a big bang.
Polly Glegg
I think there has to be, although I would say that the safeguarding caveats need to be a big bang, because there are some very fundamental risks and that can't be brought in gradually. So there's kind of two parts to it, I think protect and then develop.
Mark Quinn
Okay. At risk of this post-it note being big enough to cover the Stretford End, we're going to pass the microphone on to Rob and ask you the same question, Rob, about how you might connect the three lenses that we've been looking at this afternoon.
Rob Legg
The reflection I have on this morning, the abiding reflection is this, this vision from Rose Larkin about the business of teaching and learning being fundamentally changed by AI. And then Qing's riposte to the effect that fundamentally at the level of the foundations. Those activities are the same. I think I heard you say that Qing, and I think I would like to write on the post-it note something which would help me and potentially other leaders to be reflective about that and that's just to observe the fact that what we're actually doing, um, in general universal education, you know, and academic education for everybody within a society, is a fairly recent endeavour and so we shouldn't feel that we have to be bound by traditions in that.
We heard Polly earlier saying, um, relational and contextual and contingent, and I think that to write on the post-it note, this is all still quite new and to put it up on, I don't know, my mirror in the morning could be a way of enabling a kind of reflective disposition.
Mark Quinn
Reflective and mirror in the one sentence Rob and with no round of applause. I don't know why Rebecca's same question. How what are your reflections on the three lenses?
Rebecca Williamson
I think what really resonated with me around AI was the fact that particularly gen AI has experienced nothing. And if we think back to Qing's point earlier about education is about people. So, policy is policy and it's always going to be there. But fundamentally education is about people. So, when we think about AI, it has none of those experiences. We all bring our own experiences. Your facilitators bring their own experiences, which are absolutely brilliant for the participants.
So, I think that would be my Post-it note. It would be education is about people. And I would quote you Qing, I wouldn't pass it off as my own work. And I think that should go on the laptop because let's face it, that's where we're all going to look. And one of those lovely stickers that you can get that goes, um, you know, near where the mouse pad is, if that's what it's called on the laptop of everybody who has anything to do with education in this country. So right from the policy makers all the way through to anybody working in a school. So education is about people.
Elaine Long
Thank you. Polly. Oh, I think that may be the sound of the Staffroom bell. So as much as I would like to stay here and talk. I think we're going to have to draw it to a close because Dennis might be bringing us lunch. You never know.
So, Polly, Rebecca and Rob, tthank you so much for joining us in the Staffroom and for those powerful provocations. Thank you.
Mark Quinn
Our thanks go to colleagues Rebecca Williamson, Polly Glegg and Rob Legg for joining us this year at our delivery partner conference in Old Trafford. A special mention too, to our stand-in caretaker, Dennis Wallace, who managed not to drop all the biscuits.
Elaine Long
Please do get in touch if you'd like to be part of the conversation. Click on the link at the bottom of the UCL Staffroom webpage.
Mark Quinn
If you've enjoyed this episode, there's more where that came from. Search IOE Insights from wherever you get your podcasts to find episodes of the Staffroom as well as more podcasts from the IOE.
Elaine Long
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