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The Still Human Podcast is for teachers, leaders and school staff navigating the realities of working in education today.
Hosted by Julie Liddell and part of Edwin People's wellbeing and culture offering, this podcast features thoughtful conversations with teachers, principals, psychologists, authors and education leaders exploring what matters most: leadership in schools, staff culture, workload, burnout and sustainability.
Each episode focuses on supporting the people behind the roles, because thriving educational communities start with looking after the humans within them.
Still Human delivers training, workshops and strategic support for staff wellbeing and thriving cultures. Edwin People provide strategic leadership and HR services that help schools and multi-academy trusts grow confidently with people-centred solutions. Both part of the Edwin group, we work together to positively impact the lives of young people.
Learn more at www.stillhuman.co.uk and www.edwinpeople.co.uk
[00:00:00] Julie: Welcome to the Still Human Podcast, where we dive deep into the heart of staff wellbeing within the education sector. In each episode, we bring to the table a diverse array of guests, including experienced teachers and leaders, experts in psychology, health, and wellbeing, as well as thought leaders in the sector.
[00:00:16] Whether you're looking for practical tips, inspirational stories, or innovative approaches to wellbeing, our podcast aims to support, inspire, and empower [00:00:25] those dedicated to nurturing the next generation. I'm your host, Julie Liddell, and today I'm chatting to Sarah Seleznyov. Sarah is the strategic lead for learning and development at BIG Education Trust, and one of the founding headteachers of School 360, an innovative primary school in East London.
[00:00:43] With over 30 years of experience in school leadership and teacher professional development, she brings an expertise in solution [00:00:50] design and implementation to her work. A published author and researcher currently completing her PhD, Sarah specializes in leadership and teacher development and school innovation.
[00:01:00] Her extensive background in leading whole school transformations and designing human-centered leadership programs directly informs her role as editor of A Practical Guide to a BIG Education. This was such a great episode to record. I [00:01:15] really loved reading the book that Sarah has recently co-edited. In it is a wealth of practical advice and solutions from a wide range of authors across the UK who are adopting the head, heart, hand approach to educating.
[00:01:29] There's some really exciting and innovative approaches, so get your post-it notes ready when you read this book. During the episode, we talk about the vision for what a holistic [00:01:40] education should and could be through the lenses of leadership, curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment, as well as the importance of tinkering and tree hugging.
[00:01:50] Enjoy.
[00:01:56] Sarah, hello. Thank you so much for joining me today
[00:01:59] Sarah: Thank you for having me.
[00:02:01] Julie: So I've really been looking forward to this conversation. Um, I've [00:02:05] just finished reading the book, um, that you've recently co-authored and, and I'm sure we're gonna talk about a lot, um, in this episode and, and it was your book launch last night, so I'm hoping you're in fine fettle today, um, and not too jaded by the experience.
[00:02:20] But I loved reading this book. I found myself just shouting, "Yes, that," like, all the way through it, and it's covered in Post-It notes. [00:02:30] So yeah, I, I'm really excited to talk about your book. So Big Education then, it's a vision, it's a multi-academy trust, it's a charity delivering, um, a, a rethinking skills project, and then obviously, as I've just said, it's now a book that you've edited with Robert Lobato.
[00:02:50] But before we get into that, could you just tell me a little bit about your background, [00:02:55] um, and how you got to be doing your current role?
[00:02:57] Sarah: So I've had a very kind of strange career trajectory within education, kind of going in and out of schools. So I've worked for 30 years in the school system. Um, I've been teacher, deputy head, and head teacher, most recently setting up School 360, which is a brand-new state primary set up to be deliberately different as part of Big Education Trust.
[00:03:19] I've also [00:03:20] worked at the Institute of Education. I'm a PhD student who's just finishing their PhD, and I've worked for various education charities, and I've worked as a school improvement consultant as well in Islington, which is one of the kind of boroughs in London with the really high levels of deprivation.
[00:03:35] So lots and lots of different experiences, but I've also always been interested in empowering teachers to do things differently, and that's been kind of the theme that [00:03:45] unites my career, I would say.
[00:03:46] Julie: Was there a particular moment or experience that kind of, kind of channeled that, that way of thinking or shifted your thinking about education?
[00:03:55] Sarah: Yeah, there was actually. I was trained about 20 years ago now in an approach to teaching mathematics for primary school pupils, which used to be known as cognitive acceleration in maths education, which, which is now known as [00:04:10] Let's Think, and it's a professional development program led by a team of researchers at King's College University, and it really changed the way I think about children, and it really changed the way I think about teaching.
[00:04:22] It's premised on Vygotskian and Piagetian principles, but in a firm belief that children can solve problems themselves, and we don't always need to tell them how [00:04:35] to do it. We just need to show them how to work with each other to solve problems and to overcome challenges. And that kind of view of classroom teaching really...
[00:04:47] Changed the way I taught and the way I thought about pupils. But also the professional development model also mirrored that. So it was about... It involved live teaching as part of the professional development program. So it involved you not [00:05:00] just being told what to do as a teacher, but you're being given some ideas, and then you get to actually go and test them in the classroom with your peers, and then reflect on them and talk to a team of researchers and see what their perceptions are about how lessons should be designed and how shocking it was that this child did this when you didn't think that it was gonna happen.
[00:05:20] So the whole premise of that approach is about agency for teachers and [00:05:25] agency for pupils, and that did really, for me, transform everything that I did from that point onwards.
[00:05:30] Julie: It's really interesting, isn't it? 'Cause those theories really have been around a long time, haven't they? Mm. The fact that we haven't built on them more.
[00:05:38] I know they are touched upon, and they are kind of central to kind of any study of education. But it's really interesting, isn't it, that, that you cited those and that kind of approach to professional [00:05:50] development as being different. Because you're right, it is. It isn't embedded in the way that we, we kind of do approach, you know, teaching and learning.
[00:05:58] So yeah, it's really interesting. So a big education then. It's an idea, and from what I gathered from the website, it's a way of encouraging discussion about what a more expansive experience might be. And I think it said on there [00:06:15] that we've gotta go back to what we think the purpose of school is. What are we trying to achieve?
[00:06:20] So tell me, tell me in your words, what do we mean by a big education?
[00:06:24] Sarah: So f- at Big Education, we believe that every child and young person is entitled to a big, expansive, broad, juicy education. And it, we, we describe it as an education of the head, heart, and hand in equal measure. So [00:06:40] that's not a term that was coined by Big Education.
[00:06:42] It's been around for many, many decades, if not centuries. But it's really-- we really think at the moment, in the last few years in particular, we haven't got that balance right in the school system, particularly in England. So an education of the head is all about academic learning, and we think that's very important.
[00:07:00] Learning things, learning about things, and being able to use that knowledge [00:07:05] is, is a very, very important skill. We think increasingly it should be about interdisciplinary learning. You can't solve a problem like the climate crisis unless you are looking across science, geography, politics, lots of different areas.
[00:07:17] Those are the kind of skills we need to be teaching our children. We all want our children to pass their exams and get the grades they need to make choices in their lives and about their future education. But that has def-- that area, that head area of education, has [00:07:30] definitely had too much emphasis. We also need an education of the heart, which is about wellbeing and relationships.
[00:07:36] We're seeing now with the attendance crisis and the crisis around mental health and wellbeing for young people, that we haven't done enough to support them in the building those relationships and protecting their own wellbeing. And then the hand. So we've got AI now, who can do a lot of things for us and will [00:07:55] increasingly take jobs off us as human beings.
[00:07:58] But there are lots and lots of really critical skills that children and young people still need to manage an AI world, basically, such as critical thinking, creativity, problem-solving, communication, collaboration, design thinking, all of those kind of principles that will enable to, them them to navigate a world that uses AI as one of its primary [00:08:20] tools.
[00:08:20] So we think it's time for a, a bit more emphasis on the heart and the hand, and the whole book is structured around that idea of how do we get that balance right again, because we think it's gone a little bit wrong.
[00:08:32] Julie: Yeah, I suppose that kind of really answers my next question, because I was gonna ask you which is the area that tends to be neglected, but, you know, is that kind of what concerns you most about the current system?
[00:08:44] Sarah: Yeah, and I [00:08:45] think over the last few years as well, so the book is separated into four sections. There's leadership, curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. We're always thinking about leadership. We're always training our leaders. We spent a lot of time in the last few decades thinking about curriculum to the neglect of pedagogy and assessment, I would say.
[00:09:04] Because the way we shaped our curriculum has given quite us, given us quite a rigid assessment framework, and it- [00:09:10] we've basically stopped thinking about pedagogy, about how children learn best in the classroom. All we've been thinking about is the curriculum and the content and what they need to know, and not what are the best ways for children to learn, and what are the sort of pedagogical approaches that will enable wellbeing, engagement, belonging, and enjoyment in the classroom.
[00:09:31] Um, I know we, we do believe that if you change one of those three things, [00:09:35] curriculum, assessment or pedagogy, all of them have to change. But I think there's been, there's been a neglect of pedagogy in the last few years, and that's definitely been a bit problematic, I think.
[00:09:44] Julie: I wanna come back to those four themes, um, in a, in a couple of moments.
[00:09:48] So if we kind of focus on the book then, you have your schools within the trust that deliver on the ethos of BIG Education, as well as a growing collective [00:10:00] across the UK of people who share that vision. Um, so the book, as I read it, it kind of came across as real sort of professional generosity, really, of those who are sharing the lived experience of people either working within BIG Education Trust or working with the tools and techniques in other schools.
[00:10:20] And yeah, it kind of has lots of practical solutions as well as kind of exploring [00:10:25] challenges as well. Um, was there anything that you learned from editing the book?
[00:10:30] Sarah: This is my favorite thing to do, actually, is to help people in the system whose voices are very quiet to have a voice and to share all the great work they're doing with other people.
[00:10:42] So- In the book, we've got... We- I run a project for Big Education called Rethinking School, which is all about [00:10:50] innovation and trying to create this head, heart, and hand approach to leadership, curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. And we have about 40 schools in the project at the moment, and those are the ones who I've helped to write the chapters in these books.
[00:11:03] And I think it's really important to have multiple voices in a book like this because at Big Education, we don't believe there's a one-size-fits-all way to get learning right. Every [00:11:15] child in every context, in every location, in every school needs something slightly different. There's no one-best-fits curriculum or one-best-fits pedagogy or one style of leadership that's gonna work in all situations.
[00:11:28] So it's really, really important that a book like this has all those stories from lots of different people. So each of the chapters has a story by a leader or a teacher, but then it also has a little [00:11:40] case study by another teacher or leader saying, "Well, that's what this guy did, but this is how I did it," you know?
[00:11:46] And there's no... There's not one way of achieving a head, heart, and hand education. There are multiple ways, but you can start on any of those little pathways that take your fancy and you find interesting and go forward from there. And I really... You know, it, it was a wonderful moment for me when I had the conference, um, and the book [00:12:05] launch, and there were some authors there, and they got to take away their free copy of the book because that's...
[00:12:10] That for me is about agency. It's about empowering people to have a voice, not just within their own school, but across the system and to be influencing practice beyond their own setting. So I know it's hard work for people in schools, and I know I'm asking a lot of them. Like you say, it's a kind of professional generosity because they don't have the time to do [00:12:30] this.
[00:12:30] They're not given extra time But they get something really nice out of the end, and I do think they feel proud of what they're offering to other schools and all the wonderful stories and practical tips and guidance that other people can get from a book like this.
[00:12:43] Julie: Yeah. And it added to its richness, didn't it?
[00:12:45] And I felt like in doing so, you were maybe able to see your context and your setting rather than it just being, "Here's the way to do it." All of those [00:12:55] voices give those different contextual based examples, which, you know, as I say, added to the richness. And also didn't feel like it needed to be read in a linear fashion.
[00:13:05] And I sort of started reading it like that, but then I actually went towards the back 'cause I was really interested in thinking about assessment and where it was gonna go. Just out of curiosity really, where we were gonna go with those chapters. So yeah, I mean, um, it [00:13:20] definitely felt like the sort of thing you could keep coming back to and dipping into, and I assume that's, that's kind of was always the way that it was designed.
[00:13:27] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. It's intended to be an easy read because I know teachers are busy people, and I really hate it when people write books that are really dense and difficult to get through, you know. You, you have a lot of academics that produce articles like that about education. You think, "Who are you producing this for?"
[00:13:41] Because teachers don't wanna read things like this. School leaders don't [00:13:45] wanna read things like this. So this is a very, very simply plain English written book. And like you said, you can start anywhere. You can just have a half an hour in your lunch break where you're eating your lunch at school, and you can pick a chapter that you just like the look of the title and just skip through that in your half-hour lunch break and see where it takes you.
[00:14:04] And that might lead you to another line of inquiry and another chapter, but you don't... There's no- not necessarily any, any order in which you [00:14:10] need to read them. Absolutely. So the book,
[00:14:12] Julie: as you said, is divided into leadership, curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. Can we talk about a few themes in the book that kind of stood out to me, um, if that's okay?
[00:14:24] The first one was around the notion of design thinking, and I know you've mentioned that just briefly earlier. That seems to be kind of an underpinning approach to problem-solving. So I wonder for [00:14:35] those maybe unfamiliar with what we mean by design thinking, could you just tell me a little bit about what it is and what you think it can offer schools?
[00:14:42] Sarah: Yeah. So design thinking is a kind of underpinning, uh, approach that we use with the Rethinking School project to help schools undertake innovation and change projects. And I think, um, the issue is that as school leaders and as teachers, we have this tendency to sort of see a [00:15:00] problem, solve it, see a problem, solve it.
[00:15:02] We don't really spend enough time really thinking about the problem that we're facing and really understanding that problem and then thinking about- Have any, has anyone else had a problem like this before? And could we draw on any of that knowledge and that experience, um, and that learning in order to produce a better solution for our own students?
[00:15:19] So the design thinking is what we call a double diamond, where, and each of, each of the diamonds opens up your [00:15:25] thinking and then closes down your thinking. So in the first, um, double diamond, you start with a problem, and then you open up your thinking. So you say, "Let me get a really, really deep understanding of this problem.
[00:15:36] Let me go and talk to some stakeholders who are involved in this problem." The children, the kids, the parents, the staff, um, the teaching assistants, the midday meal supervisors. What would they say about this problem? What solution ideas do they have? And what do [00:15:50] they think is really at the heart of this issue?
[00:15:53] Um, maybe I'm gonna look at some school data, some numbers, but, and maybe I'm gonna look in some books. Maybe I'm gonna watch some lessons, but let's get a really rich picture of what's happening with this challenge. And once I really think I understand my problem, then I'm gonna do what's called horizon scanning.
[00:16:07] So this is still part of the opening out of the diamond, where you go out and you look at research or good practice or articles [00:16:15] or visit other schools or talk to other people who've had a similar problem and try and find out how have they solved it, what ideas do they have, what are the things that might work for me and my kids and my staff.
[00:16:25] Then you begin to close down the diamond and say, "Okay, I've got all this information now. What am I gonna do with it? I'm gonna design something, and I'm gonna prototype it, and I'm gonna test it at a small scale in my own school." So then, uh, the moment you start doing that, the diamond opens out [00:16:40] again because you think you're testing this, and all these unexpected things start happening, and you have to pay attention to those and say, "Is it really working in the way I intended?"
[00:16:47] And that person says, "It's not quite right, and could I tweak this, and could I tweak that?" And eventually, that helps you to narrow down the double diamond again and come up with a better iteration of that solution. So it's a slower process for school improvement and for innovation, but it's one that involves more stakeholders, it's more [00:17:05] collaborative, and it's much more likely to help you to come up with a really purposeful, tailored solution that's gonna solve the challenges that we're facing, which are often really, really complex right now, like why don't children wanna come to school?
[00:17:19] There isn't a simple answer to that, you know?
[00:17:22] Julie: Yeah. Yeah. Is it a tool or a technique that children could employ? On some level?
[00:17:28] Sarah: Yes, I actually do [00:17:30] think that. It's actually part of my own school curriculum, the principles of design thinking, and the best model for that is actually in this book. It's from, uh, the University of Sheffield.
[00:17:40] Um, and they have written a chapter about maker skills, which are very much using a design thinking methodology. So yeah, it's chapter 20, and it's called Design Thinking as Pedagogy. Um, and the u- I, I love the University of Sheffield because they have this maker [00:17:55] cycle which talks about the STEM subjects and how you can make them aligned more with a design thinking methodology and h- help therefore to prepare children to give them those skillsets to know how to design problems to solutions in their real, in their own lives and in their own futures.
[00:18:09] So they talk about, uh, a sort of three-way cycle of tinkering, skills teaching, and product design. So normally when we do a DT project, for example, we start by [00:18:20] designing a product, then we go and get some materials and we build it, and then we test it, and it didn't quite work 'cause we didn't quite know how to use those materials.
[00:18:27] And they're saying, "That's nonsense." If you take a design thinking approach, you start with some tinkering with some materials and some resources and some techniques, and then the teacher can watch those kids and say, "Well, what skills do they actually need to learn now?" If I'm doing woodwork or I'm doing electricity, I can see they, they've worked [00:18:45] out how to do this, and they perhaps worked out to do, how to do some things I didn't expect them to do, which often happens with children.
[00:18:50] But maybe I need to teach them X and Y and Z. And then I'm gonna say to them, "Right now you have tinkered with these materials and these techniques and you've got these skills. Now you're going to design your product and you're going to build something and be really proud of it, and it's gonna achieve the goal that you wanted it to achieve."
[00:19:07] So that's, that's design thinking as [00:19:10] pedagogy in the curriculum.
[00:19:11] Julie: Love that. Because that is part of preparing children for the real world, isn't it? Because that's where I've come across design thinking before, very much in kind of the business design world of, yeah, as you say, the products or kind of self-employed people trying to think through how to kind of market their, their products or whatever that is.
[00:19:30] So, you know, equipping children with those skills is, that's a skill for life, isn't it? [00:19:35] And I just love the fact that one stage is called tinkering.
[00:19:39] Sarah: It's a lovely word, isn't it? I think it's David Hargreaves that talk, talks about teachers tinkering in the classroom as well, which I think is a lovely idea.
[00:19:48] Just experimenting with things in the classroom and seeing how things go.
[00:19:51] Julie: Yeah. I'm gonna use that word more. I love that. So you, um, authored a couple of chapters yourself, didn't you? One [00:20:00] maybe follows on a little bit from there around, um, what it means to be evidenced informed, um, and particularly how we engage teachers with evidence and support them to generate their own.
[00:20:10] So could you tell us a little bit more about, about that?
[00:20:13] Sarah: So no surprises, but I'm not a big fan of the sort of- idea that only researchers can generate and use their own evidence. Uh, I'm a big fan of teacher agency, and I do believe that [00:20:25] professional development, for example, should be used as a way of getting teachers to tinker with their own practice, to inquire into their own practice, and to generate their own evidence about what works in the classroom and what works in the school.
[00:20:38] And I also feel that as school practitioners, we have a very narrow understanding of what data means. So when I say data to teachers, they think I'm talking about attainment data [00:20:50] or attendance data or behavior data. Basically, they think I'm talking about numbers in a spreadsheet. And data is so much more than that.
[00:20:59] When you're designing a change to practice or when you're evaluating the impact of something, numbers are important, but so are the stories that people tell that tell what happened behind the numbers. So data includes the [00:21:15] passing comments that people make to you in corridors. They include things that kids tell you about their lessons.
[00:21:21] They include the work that's in books and what it looks like. They include the conversations that people are having in the staff room. And there are all different kinds of ways to gather that data to give you a really rich picture of what's happening in your school and what's working and what needs to be changed.
[00:21:36] If you're just looking at the numbers, you're just looking at a very, very [00:21:40] narrow subset of data really. So yeah, my big plea is to just open up our view of what it means to be evidence-informed. It's not just about reading academic reports, and it's not just about looking at numbers, um, when we're making changes or planning for changes.
[00:21:57] Julie: Yeah, absolutely. So your second chapter that you co-authored was about play-based learning. Why does play matter? What role does [00:22:05] it have in schools?
[00:22:06] Sarah: I am an absolute play fanatic, and when we opened School 360, that was the core principle of the whole school. Play, playful learning, and playful thinking as a pedagogical principle across the whole school.
[00:22:19] I think in- England in particular, and I'm specifying England because over the border in Wales they have a very different situation to us. We formalize learning, [00:22:30] uh, for young children in a way that's actually developmentally inappropriate. If you look across all the high-performing, uh, nations in the world, the vast majority of them don't formalize learning until age seven at least.
[00:22:42] Look at all the East Asian countries, look at all the Scandinavian countries. They all have what's called a kind of kindergarten style education, which is completely play-based until age seven. My husband is Russian and wasn't even taught to read [00:22:55] until he was age seven, because that's the optimal window for doing that kind of teaching, when you get that kind of cognitive growth spurt and m- maturity spurt and you're ready for things like that.
[00:23:05] So I think it's actually cruel the way we treat children in a lot of English classrooms. Like I said, over the border in Wales, they don't have formal learning until, um, post year two. Um, they run a play-based curriculum. Lots of other countries do. It's perfectly [00:23:20] possible. It doesn't damage learning in any way.
[00:23:23] It's not about lowering expectations. It's about changing pedagogies, and actually we found in School 360 you get better outcomes. When you walk into those classrooms, you don't see disengaged, bored children who are fidgety and don't want to sit at a desk for 45 minutes or on a carpet for 45 minutes doing what they're told to do.
[00:23:43] They're making active [00:23:45] choices in engaging with their learning. The learning has to be very carefully structured, but so does a whole class lesson. Um, so it's not extra work, and teachers who teach that way enjoy it much more because they're not sort of wudging a square peg into a round hole, you know? If we look at a lot of boys or summer-born children or special needs children, they really are not ready for [00:24:10] that kind of education, um, at that time in their lives.
[00:24:13] Um, and it's, it's really not fair to do that to them.
[00:24:16] Julie: And I think we can look overseas and, and if you kind of wanna put that kind of heart and the wellbeing hat back on it, you know, I'm not saying there's a direct correlation because I don't know whether there is or whether the stats bear it out, but, you know, the happiness levels and the wellbeing levels of particularly Finland, Norway, [00:24:35] Sweden, where, you know, they have that play-based education to start with.
[00:24:39] You know, there's potentially- do you, you know, part of the picture, isn't it? Yeah. Well, I think it is- And- ... and I've always believed that
[00:24:46] Sarah: We're not doing well on those measures in the UK, are we?
[00:24:48] Julie: No. And we're falling.
[00:24:50] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. And that's partly what this book is about. It's like we need to make children happier, basically.
[00:24:56] There's no reason for education to be so miserable. [00:25:00] My son is doing his GCSEs at the moment, and he's miserable, and there's no reason for learning to be like that.
[00:25:06] Julie: It takes the joy out of learning, doesn't it? Yeah, absolutely. And there's a brilliant example in the book about rethinking lunchtime, and I think it was in Tim's chapter, maybe.
[00:25:17] Was it Tim Stern's chapter? Yeah. Um, and he said something like they were on plan 108 of trying [00:25:25] to work out how to do lunchtime before landing on what they were gonna do, what, you know, on this family-style dining i- in, uh, School 360. And that reminded me of the, the more French style of doing lunches, um, which I've always advocated because I worry so much about the rest and digest around [00:25:50] not teaching children how to engage with food, enjoy food, communicate- Yeah
[00:25:55] with people, those social skills. And all we seem to want to do is shorten lunch periods. And I, and I get why. I get the rationale behind that as well, but I think we're doing them a disservice, so I love that bit in the book. Um, tell us a little bit more about that family-style dining and what's that all about.
[00:26:11] Sarah: So this is something that we wanted to do from the outset at School [00:26:15] 360. We wanted to make meals a learning situation for the student, for the pupils. So, um, we opened obviously only with reception, and we've kind of grown over the years to year one, year two. We're up to year four now. And, um, we have sort of gr- instead of having canteen-style tables in the dining room, we have group tables like you might have in a family home, and the children sit in [00:26:40] mixed-age groups, um, at those tables.
[00:26:42] They lay their own table. The food comes over to them in bowls with big spoons. They serve each other. So we have some days that are particularly bad. There was one day we used to call couscous massacre day, where every time someone took a big spoonful of couscous out the bowl, 50% of it ended up on the floor.
[00:26:59] But that's part of... That's learning, you know. How do you do that? Serving each other the water out [00:27:05] of the jug without pouring it everywhere and pouring it over the edge of the water, you know? And then they clear... They have a chat with the adults who are there. We have a great kitchen because we use Chefs in Schools, which, if you don't know, is an amazing charity that puts professional chefs in your kitchen so you get high-quality food that everyone wants to eat.
[00:27:22] And that means staff want to come and sit with the kids and just chat to them, and they're not- testing them on their work or teaching them [00:27:30] things. They're just having a, building a different kind of personal relationship with the children, hearing their funny stories and, you know, being asked strange questions and, and building a kind of social relationship with those children.
[00:27:41] And then they clear their own tables, and off they go out into the playground. So yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's a really, it's a really lovely thing to see. It's like a military operation. But it's really made a big difference to relationships [00:27:55] in the school, which is one of the things that the book is about, really, the importance of relationships at all levels among staff and between staff and pupils to really give that education of the heart.
[00:28:07] Julie: There's so many powerful chapters. I loved all of the chapters around outdoor learning, and outdoor was kind of a theme, wasn't it? You said about the, you know, you know, children going outside, um, after their lunch. Um, there [00:28:20] was, you know, chapters on health and wellbeing and embedding that kind of within the curriculum, behavior, culture, preparing learners for the future.
[00:28:28] There were so many that, as I say, I got overexcited about, um, and used a whole pad of Post-it notes. But are there any themes or any chapters that you personally kind of love or find impactful or anything around the work that you do with Big [00:28:45] Education?
[00:28:45] Sarah: I am really keen on chapter eight, and connected to that, chapter 21, because this is about a big piece of work that we do is, with our Rethinking Schools, um, schools that are on that project, which is about, um, creating learning experiences that are more motivating and engaging and don't just give children subject knowledge, but [00:29:10] help them to develop real competencies progressively.
[00:29:13] So chapter eight is about project-based learning, so this is about having meaningful, interdisciplinary, carefully constructed project work in your school that is authentic, purposeful, and relevant to the pupils, that helps them to think about things they actually care about and that actually matter to them, rather than just teaching [00:29:35] units of work about X, Y, or Z.
[00:29:37] Chapter 21 kind of goes with that because once you start teaching in this project-based learning kind of way, you realize that you're actually not just teaching subject matter, you're also at the same time teaching competencies like metacognition, collaboration, creativity, communication. And chapter 21 is about how do you teach those progressively, how do you build [00:30:00] them into units of work, and how do you develop tools that enable pupils to, um, self and peer assess against those kind of progression frameworks so that they know- What it looks like to work towards being good at collaborating or being good at metacognition.
[00:30:17] Um, so those are real favorites of mine because I think I've wrote a particularly angry rant on the BERA website about the [00:30:25] damage that has been done by pushing the secondary curriculum subject strands down into primary and moving away from interdisciplinary learning or projects or topics or the, the lovely work that we used to have in primary schools because I don't think that's pedagogically appropriate, um, for primary school pupils.
[00:30:43] But I also think actually a lot of key stage three pupils could benefit from interdisciplinary projects as well. [00:30:50] There's a really interesting chapter that goes with that, chapter 23, about, um, something that's happening in the independent sector, 'cause they can obviously go a little bit further than us.
[00:30:59] So Bedales is a really interesting independent school 'cause they've... Going back to my son and his boredom around GCSEs, they've said, "What's the point in doing all these GCSEs when we know that the majority of our kids go on and do A levels? All we really need them to have is the English and Maths, 'cause that's [00:31:15] all that anyone's gonna look at in the future for GCSE results."
[00:31:17] I don't know if anyone ever looked at your GCSE results when you were going for a job. Never. But, but they did look at the English and Maths. So they're saying, "What if we drop the other GCSEs and we create some interdisciplinary project qualifications that are more interesting, motivating, and engaging around real-life authentic learning experiences, but they are accredited like [00:31:40] GCSEs by the exam boards?"
[00:31:41] So this is a really interesting kind of future-facing chapter because we're hoping that if schools like Bedales start to do that and get these qualifications accredited by exam boards, maybe there's then going to be a time when these will move into the state sector and we won't need to have kids sitting eight, nine, 10 GCSEs and drowning by exams, basically.
[00:32:03] So yeah, those three sit together really [00:32:05] nicely for me in terms of what, what we need to be doing with curriculum, which I think has gone a bit awry in this country.
[00:32:11] Julie: Yeah. And, and that last chapter that you were talking about was the one that I was interested in. I went there to see where the thinking was going, um, around that assessment.
[00:32:21] Are there many other schools kind of following suit to Bedales or are the- is it kind of quite New and it's-
[00:32:27] Sarah: There are some other schools doing that. Some of them who [00:32:30] are... Or actually Robert's school in this book, um, Robert, my, my co-editor, his school is looking at moving in that direction. I know Latymer School is also looking at moving in that direction, so.
[00:32:41] But obviously they're all in the independent sector because the rest of us are all locked into Progress 8, and it's impossible for us to do things like that right now. But I really do hope that by letting them lead the way and letting them show that it works, that will eventually then become [00:32:55] policy.
[00:32:55] Julie: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's, yeah, great that we've got people within the system actually being the change that they wanna see, without wanting to sound too corny. Um, but yeah, that's really interesting 'cause certainly, you know, I taught A-levels for 26 years and watched the life get squeezed out of them from when I first started teaching, which was much more...
[00:33:17] There was the, the opportunity to [00:33:20] teach a topic area, go off on a bit of a tangent, explore it all from the point to which I left, where it was death by exams from day one, 'cause otherwise you couldn't get through it all. And it was- Yeah ... you're learning this for the exam, you're learning this for the exam and, and it did take the joy for them and for me.
[00:33:38] Sarah: Yeah. I, I call it foie gras. You know how they make foie gras? The, the, you know, they put the funnel in the goose's mouth, and [00:33:45] they bang the food in, yeah, until the goose's liver is fat enough to make foie gras. That's basically what we're doing with our teenagers right now.
[00:33:53] Julie: I'm with you. My daughter's doing A-levels.
[00:33:54] It's painful.
[00:33:56] Sarah: Yeah.
[00:33:58] Julie: So that message, um, probably the one that stayed with me, maybe start with heart. We know that people learn best when they feel safe and connected. We know how important that is. What does that look like in [00:34:10] practice for, for staff and pupils? How, how do we make sure they feel safe and connected?
[00:34:14] Sarah: So there's a lot about this in the leadership section of the, the book actually. There's a lot about building systems that enable teacher agency and give them a sense of engagement and belonging. There's a really lovely, um, chapter four about professional development models that promote teacher agency.
[00:34:33] There's a really nice chapter [00:34:35] about peer review across schools as an alternative to kind of mock studs and, um- Which seems to be a kind of industry of its own nowadays, which are very judgemental and external. And this is about schools helping each other to improve. And then there's a really, really lovely chapter about changing the way we think about behavior in schools.
[00:34:57] So we're not thinking about behavior management, but we're [00:35:00] thinking about relationship building. And there are lots of schools in the Rethinking School project who are really shifting the way they think about that. So moving away from sanctions and rewards towards restorative approaches that start with a set of values or expectations about, uh, pupils, um, and build outwards from there, rather than starting with a set of rules and enforcing those rules at all [00:35:25] costs.
[00:35:25] And that chapter six is, is actually one of my favorites because it really kind of resets the way we think about our relationship with children and puts them on a more of an equal footing with us and helps to induct them into the adult world, where there aren't just rules and you get punished for not following them and rewarded for following them.
[00:35:45] Real, real life is about relationship building and it's about being able to make the [00:35:50] right choices yourself even when the rule is not visible or it's not being enforced directly. Children are gonna be out there as young people in the world as, as grownup in jobs and they don't... They're not gonna have like an army system of discipline around them, which is what we kinda got in a lot of secondary schools at the moment.
[00:36:08] They need to learn to be motivated, independent and to make the right choices themselves and that we [00:36:15] think happens through building effective relationships.
[00:36:17] Julie: Can I just move on to staff for a moment then? Because a lot of what we talk about on the podcast is building staff wellbeing, embedding staff wellbeing as part of the culture.
[00:36:27] Do you think the way of big education and of doing big education, do you think it has a positive impact on staff and their wellbeing? Do you have any evidence or, or any [00:36:40] anecdotal kind of- Yeah ... you know, research you could point to?
[00:36:43] Sarah: So, um, chapter one is all about this actually. It's about, it's about a set of tools called the Big Eight and it's about how leaders build cultures of agency and creativity.
[00:36:54] So it's really about how you build relationships with your team as a leader but also across- Your staff team so that they [00:37:05] feel empowered, and supported, and held at the same time. Nobody wants a free-for-all. We know that from classrooms, don't we? No one likes teachers who can't keep a kind of circle, a con- a containing circle.
[00:37:19] Um, in some fields of literature, it's called, it's... They describe it as like the shell around the egg. Like, the yolk and the white move around inside. You need to have some freedom, some agency, but everyone feels [00:37:30] happier that there's a protective shell around the outside. And what The Big 8 does is it creates a framework of expectations that are mutual in your school, and then within that, it enables people to feel agency, wellbeing, and belonging, um, because they're listened to, their voices are heard, they're accepted as human beings, um, in the workplace.
[00:37:53] Um, and they're [00:37:55] empowered to try things out, to make mistakes, to get things wrong, and try them again, and then get them right, you know. Um, and to be given time to develop, which is what human beings need. We went through a terrible phase with teachers where you'd get a single lesson observation which wouldn't be good, and then you'd be on a six-week improvement plan, and then you'd be out.
[00:38:19] I mean, [00:38:20] I, I do a lot of work with- in Japan as part of my PhD, and we were on a school visit once and they s- we said, "What monitoring and evaluation is there for teachers?" And they said they were the, the... They didn't really know what we were talking about. They're like, "What you, what do you mean?" So we explained this system to them of how we observe lessons, and we grade teachers, and blah, blah, blah, and this.
[00:38:40] And I said, "So what happens if you have a teacher in the year three team [00:38:45] whose practice is just not up to scratch and the kids are not doing very well?" And the Japanese professor said, "If year three... If that happens, the year three team, it's their responsibility to support that teacher until such a time as their practice is good enough."
[00:39:02] And I think that's a really nice way of thinking about how you develop people and build their skills and their capacity. Nobody [00:39:10] goes into teaching because they wanna be bad or they wanna do a bad job. People just need different kinds of help at different moments in their career journey, and that's what the chapter about, um, professional development is, is about really.
[00:39:23] It's about meeting people where they are and giving them the time and the space and the support that they need to really develop pra- their practice in ways that they want to develop their [00:39:35] practice.
[00:39:35] Julie: I still think there is so much fear locked in the system. Yeah.
[00:39:39] Sarah: People are scared- Yeah ... of lesson observations still now to this day.
[00:39:42] Yeah. In School 360, we have a professional development approach which the vast majority of it consists of us videoing ourselves for 10 minutes interacting with children, and then watching those videos and giving each other reflective feedback. And it's completely shifted the [00:40:00] dynamic around- What it means to have someone in your lesson.
[00:40:03] What it means to have someone in your lesson for a lesson observation is you've got someone judging you, you've gotta get it right. So you end up either stuffing that lesson full of stuff that you think they want to see, and it's a dog's dinner, or you end up panicking and everything goes wrong, and it just doesn't come out the way you wanted it to.
[00:40:19] Or you end up teaching in a way that you never normally teach, and therefore the feedback that you get [00:40:25] is irrelevant to you in your practice. And if you can just get little systems, like the video reflection system that we have going, where people just feel comfortable to watch each other all the time, then when someone comes into your lesson, you know they're coming in because, A, you've asked them to come in, B, you've told them what to look at, and, C, they're gonna talk to you in a really sensible and sensitive way afterwards about what they've [00:40:50] seen and what they think might help in terms of you achieving that goal.
[00:40:54] So it completely flips the paradigm around lesson observation. I think that's what we really need to do here in, in UK schools, 'cause We did ourselves a lot of damage over those decades of judging teachers through Ofsted, uh, criteria.
[00:41:08] Julie: And it comes back to building that psychological safety, doesn't it?
[00:41:11] It's, you know, that teachers feel safe to make [00:41:15] mistakes, to ask for help, people. You know, that, that it's okay to say, "Actually, it wasn't great," you know. But I'm re- you know, 'cause teachers naturally are reflective practitioners, aren't they? Because we believe in learning, and we believe that, you know, that learning is continuous or, you know, fr- from what, what I can kind of Take from that is it's just building on those natural kind of propensities anywhere that, [00:41:40] that we have in the education system.
[00:41:42] I love that. Can you tell me a little bit more about the Rethinking Schools project then? So I'm just thinking if people are listening, obviously, as I say, you've got the trust, you've got the book that everybody can get and, and learn absolutely loads from that. But, but what's the project? Who's it for?
[00:41:58] How can schools get involved?
[00:42:00] Sarah: So every year we take on 10 new schools We're obviously looking for [00:42:05] schools who want to come on that innovation change journey with us towards a head, heart, and hand offer for their staff and for their pupils. We ask each school to pick a change team, and that change team consists of leaders, but it also consists of classroom practitioners because leaders can make things happen in terms of t- staff time, professional development, and money, and policy change.
[00:42:28] But teachers are the ones who try things out in [00:42:30] their classroom and say, "That really worked. No extra workload, made a massive difference to pupils in my care." And they come along to eight face-to-face days across two years, and on each of those days, they visit a really inspirational school, and that's just really incredible.
[00:42:43] We have some great schools in the group, um, some really, really inspirational practice. And they also, um, split up and, and follow some lines of inquiry. So we've had various lines of [00:42:55] inquiry. We've... This year's cohort, we've got a line of inquiry around competency progression that talked about, you know, creativity, metacognition, how you integrate that into the curriculum.
[00:43:04] We've had a couple of lines of inq- inquiry around AI, general AI, um, usage, and also one around formative assessment using AI and digital tools in Key Stage 3. We've also looked at play-based learning. We've looked at changing [00:43:20] approaches to behavior towards more of a relationship, um, a relational restorative approach.
[00:43:25] So we've had lots of different lines of inquiry going, and each of the groups at the end of the two years, they produce a shareable output, which you can find on our website, um, so that other schools can come on that same journey. We also run little social media campaigns around the schools. We get them to write blogs, and they get chocolate bars every time they write a blog, which they love.
[00:43:44] Um, and that gives [00:43:45] them a kind of profile in their local area of, you know, we're doing something different here. We're, we're trying something new. And a lot of the themes that we're following at the moment are, are very much in line with the white paper around engagement, belonging, wellbeing, attendance, all of those kind of themes.
[00:43:59] So yeah, we're looking for eight schools for next year, and we have sponsored places actually. We have very, very cheap places this year on the project because thanks to sponsorship from some [00:44:10] partners who have allocated funding towards the project. So we would love to hear from any schools who are interested in coming on that innovation journey with us.
[00:44:17] We teach them design thinking methodology. We teach them all about, uh, implementation science, which I'm a little bit of a geek about for my PhD, and the science of change in schools, and how to take people on a journey with you, and we hear from all different kinds of inspirational speakers like [00:44:35] Professor Bill Lucas, Professor Louise Stoll.
[00:44:38] So lots and lots of, of really great opportunities. Yes, if you'd like to be ... your school to be a part of that project next year, do let me know.
[00:44:45] Julie: Lovely. And how can they get in touch then, Sarah? Is there a website specifically for-
[00:44:49] Sarah: If you Google Big Education Rethinking School, you'll come across the website.
[00:44:53] Yeah. Or feel free to email me. Um, you should be able to find my email, sarah.seleznyov@bigeducation.org. That's really [00:45:00] kind. Thanks, Sarah,
[00:45:01] Julie: that's brilliant. Just a couple of last questions then really. One was to do with yourself and Robert, the co-editor. You wrote a little bit at the back of the book. "The late Tim Brighouse famously spoke of the gaps in the hedges, the spaces to innovate even in a system that does not encourage it."
[00:45:19] Sarah: Just talk
[00:45:20] Julie: to me- Yeah ... about that gorgeous little quote-
[00:45:22] Sarah: Yeah ... quote. So this is a saying from Tim Brighouse, and [00:45:25] basically the meaning of it is, when times are hard and it feels like your hands are tied, and you've got all these accountability frameworks around you, and Ofsted expectations, and the local authority breathing down your neck, and exam results to churn out, you sometimes feel quite powerless, and you think, "I can't
[00:45:42] I, I haven't ... I can't actually make any changes like this. I can't offer a head, heart, hand, um, uh, offer to my pupils, [00:45:50] because I've got too much of this other stuff going on." But Tim Brighouse said, "Even in the densest of hedges, there are always little gaps through which you can peer." And I think each of the chapters in this book just offers you a little gap.
[00:46:04] Start by changing one small thing and making it more right for the pupils and the parents and the staff in your schools, and that will take you on a little journey, and [00:46:15] you will realize that you can actually have both. You can have high academic achievement and do the things in these books. In this book, none of the people who are writing this book are working in failing schools.
[00:46:28] You know, they're all doing the do and getting the kids those results that they need and giving them a really strong, um, foundation for moving forward with their futures. But they're also making it more [00:46:40] balanced in terms of head, heart, and hand. We actually believe that if you get a better balance of head, heart, and hand, you'll get better academic outcomes.
[00:46:47] Julie: Wonderful. Sarah, one final question. We ask the same question to all of our guests. If there was one kind thing that listeners could do for themselves today, what would you suggest? Be anything education-related, personal related, but one kind [00:47:05] thing you would suggest that our listeners could go off and do for themselves today.
[00:47:09] Sarah: So as you know, there is a chapter about outdoor learning in this book. And I'm a big fan of engagement with nature as a strategy for wellbeing generally, but also as a strategy to help- engage people in tackling the climate crisis. If you're more engaged with nature, you're more likely to care and to do something about that.
[00:47:29] So there's one [00:47:30] thing you can do to be kind to yourself, and I often do this for myself. I had a bit of an episode of doing this during COVID, is go for a walk in a natural space. And what I used to do is do a bit of tree hugging, but you don't need to go that far. You can actually just walk around a green space and feel the air and feel the calm, and it's a great way to re-level yourself and calm yourself and get perspective on [00:47:55] life.
[00:47:55] Julie: Gorgeous. I love that. I would also add, take your shoes off for a minute.
[00:47:59] Sarah: Yes. Yeah. That's why hugging a tree is so nice. You're touching, you're actually touching it. But I won't push that on anyone. Everyone thinks that's a bit weird.
[00:48:08] Julie: Sarah, thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure. I can highly recommend this book, A Practical Guide to Big Education: Balancing Head, Heart, and Hand.
[00:48:18] It's out now. Bloomsbury, um, [00:48:20] have published it, and it's not only a call to action to think differently about education, but also the book provides, you know, so many actionable suggestions. So I loved it, and I'm sure everybody else will too. So thank you for your time today, Sarah.
[00:48:35] Sarah: Thank you so much for having me on.