199. Unpopular Opinions, Draconian Policies, and a SATs Week Rant

0:00 Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Teach Sleep Repeat. My name is Dylan. And my name's. Hayden and we're back and the Sats week are over. If you were involved in the Sats, thank. That is over and done. With the swearing. You swear a lot more these day, guys. Yeah, I'm not going to do it again because last time it was BBD. Beep wasn't. It it was I, I think I put 13 bleeps in the last episode. I remember counting. I think you've just made that number up. Check them. This is AQ and A. We are packed, jam packed at the minute, so one episode a week. Hope you're enjoying it. Let us know in the comments down below. If you are leave us a rating share it. It helps us just one episode. So the more plays we get, the better for us, isn't it? Oh. Whoa, whoa, whoa. It's just so hard. As little podcast creators, we just we just need more love and sharing.

0:42 Oh. Just please, please, we need you to specifically rate US five stars and share it with every single person you know. Question 1. You often say I agree. I agree it isn't. I put that voice in. Were you being me? No, no, I, I, I'm, I'm letting the person who asked this make like take the Mick out. Of it. OK. OK. That's quite nice. Actually you often say I agree, I agree to one another. What's the biggest thing you disagree on? Teaching and non teaching. Wowzers. I mean we do agree on a lot. I'd say sometimes I agree as well just to shut you up. Yeah, and I'd say sometimes I disagree just to have an argument. Yeah, that's. That's probably quite, Yeah. It's really frustrates me when I disagree and you go, yeah, OK. And I'm like, oh, that's not the sport. Sometimes.

1:26 Sometimes I just don't want to, you know, because I sometimes I know that you can't win, that I can't win genuinely, because you will disagree anyway. No, I'll go. I'll go. What you. Said you literally just said you'll disagree with me now you just said you do that, Hayden. This is the perfect I. Don't do what you said, OK? I never disagree with you. Yeah. But you know, at the end of the day, I think jokes aside, like, you know, we always talk about a bit of an echo chamber and stuff. And I think the reason we get on is because on the big things, I do actually think we align pretty much like little detail stuff, little you agree. I don't think that's true. I don't think we align at all actually suddenly. Suddenly, no, you've said that, Hayden. I don't think we. Agree.

2:07 And I I'd like picking at stuff and digging at stuff more so that we can get to the end guard. And for a lot of people that I can imagine that's quite annoying. And I'm sure it's annoying for you to an extent, but I don't care because in my head, unless it can be really properly justified, then it's got holes in it and it it's worth going to infant degree about. So I think for us it works quite well that we can just go down that rabbit hole for other people watching. Sometimes I can just imagine them being like, what the are they doing? I. Think we're I do think we're getting better better at it, though. I feel like more recently in episodes there have been points where you mainly, to be fair, I've just literally said, oh, I fundamentally disagree or I I couldn't disagree. More. That's what I'm saying. I do a lot. Yeah, but, but we used, I think we used to when people used to say about it's always an. On the podcast.

2:48 On the podcast alone, we used to be a little bit more like, yeah, we'd have to agree with everything. We can't possibly disagree. Yeah, we can. Do I disagree with you on Yeah. Go on thinking it's remotely acceptable on a Monday morning to print an entire week's worth of work. Take the printer for the 20 minutes before everyone needs it. Yeah, like you. Are you laughing because I'm being dead serious? I actually think it's selfish and I really hate that buddy. It's weird because you use the phrase before before everyone else needs it. So I think it's completely fine then in that case, isn't it? No, exactly. Everyone else needs it. No, that's my point. And then during, no, no. And then you're. There for half an hour. Yeah, before everybody. Else no, no. Yeah, because that half an hour goes on, funnily enough, until when we've got that meeting on a Monday morning. So we we come in for the meeting Monday morning, Hayden would still be at the printer with his wad of paper. Yay high, bigger than his torso. Yeah. And and then. I'm sorry, guys.

3:29 I think honestly, anyone spending more than 10 minutes at the printer on a Monday morning is selfish. That's so funny. I I. Everyone else needs to print for that day. You're printing for the Tuesday after. You are so hilariously wrong and I can and I'm going to tell you why you're wrong right now. Because never once ever ever have I sat there knowing I've got 20 minutes of printing while someone else is waiting. I've done it anyway, not one time in. My whole career when I was waiting, but in the middle they'll pop their head, they'll pop their head, see you doing it and just go away and not even say anything. You wouldn't have even noticed them in there making this up. And that is absolutely what happened. No, they would. I've I've been before into the printer. Oh, Bolderlox is over there printing stuff 'cause you fucking now. I'll go off then you. Just you just use your no, no, my head comes round. Oh, my head comes round. I'm going to just read from my brain how oh that's got 20 minutes left on it without asking. Yeah, 'cause I know what he does on a Monday morning. Oh yeah, you guys are print for the week. Don't print.

4:17 OK, alright. If you don't do that, fine. It's rubbish. I've just said anyone who spends over 10 minutes at the printer on a Monday morning when other people have got a print for that day, yeah, is being. Selfish. Yeah, God forbid the other person just comes in and lets them know. Oh, I would also like to do some printing. No worries, I'll stop. Down then that's that's. It's free. If the printer's free, why would you not use it Class? You can use it, but just think. Oh, I've only printed. I've already printed for today and no one's waiting. I better come back tomorrow. And no. Carry on, Carry on. That's fine. Stop. Yeah, you should. Start. I do great. Well done for stopping. Exactly, you should stop. Yeah, so you're gonna agree with a made-up version? Of no, no, no, no, because I've seen you do it before, but also also no, no, but just in general. Now, in general, I just don't think that's acceptable. I think there are certain points where you don't do bot printing. The other annoying thing, you only get one PPA slot a week. I remember being in PPA thinking, oh, I'll print now because I know Hayden doesn't have Monday morning, so I'll do it now on a Tuesday afternoon when no one else is printing and I'll go there and I know they've got to do their job and that's fine, I understand it.

5:12 But the office staff are printing 700 letters for the whole school. Oh my God. And then no one's there, No one's at the printer. They just set off 700 on the printer, right? Go off and do their own thing because they've got a million things to do and they're very busy. Beep, beep. Add paper to the printer so the printer's not even printing anything. Then you do, I've got to go back, get paper, load it up for it to just churn out another 700 things in my BBA. So my my point is in the mornings and in PPA, you should only be doing jobs that you need to do for that day. And if you're available to do it at any point in the day, like the office staff are, if possible, where possible, please do it in the morning when no one has PPA. So when there are PPA slots and when there's morning stuff, don't do your bulk stuff then unless you know for a fact that it is free for you to do. And if you're going to do bulk stuff, stay at the printer, replace your paper when it runs out, and if someone comes to do something quick, get ready to stop your printing and carry on after I.

6:07 Think that's fair enough? No, you're meant to disagree with me. It's no point in this section because you're disagreeing with something that I don't even do. OK, that's fine. Now what? You could do personal, right? Let's taking it personally. Hayden isn't an. Attack on you? Well. It should be you missed the trip isn't an attack. I'm going to be. I'm sorry. I'm just going to help you out here in this argument against me. Right. What you should have said was even when no one else is around, it's still locally annoying when someone uses up all of the paper and the ink first thing on a Monday for the week. That would have been a good argument, but you failed but missed it. Because what you're doing is a classic thing of when someone does something wrong and they go, well, no one told me it was wrong. No one came along and said this was a wrong thing. No, because they're too scared. Because you've got a monopoly. You've got a monopoly of the printer and you're a scary, scary man. Right, Big man at printer. Oh. Rubbish. You just. You just. Rule by fear and then because no one says anything, it must mean it's fine.

6:51 Oh my classic gaslighting, honestly. So that's my do you have anything you disagree with? For me, no, just that a very. Unreasonable, man. Yeah, well, that's the thing. Like we were. We were thinking obviously before and I was like, at the end of the day when it comes down to the meta stuff and we do just generally. Agree. How about like that? Go on then, go on. Sorry you had something. That's it. OK, How about with like we talked about learning walks. I know you don't like the word learning walk rather than the thing itself. However, I genuinely fundamentally agree that it should be OK for anyone at any point to go into any room in the school at any point whenever. Well, I, I, for me, that would be my aim if I was working in a school. There are some people and I feel like maybe, maybe it's down to the environment it's built and in general, I don't know. But I, I get the impression for you, you're a bit stripped back to that where, you know, OK, well, yeah, but just let them crack on with that.

7:37 Don't just walk in at this point. I I like the idea of building up an ethos in a school where the end goal is if anyone walks in any point it's a positive thing and it's a good thing. Lots of people I think look at that and go Oh no, no you shouldn't. You shouldn't be in a lesson at this point. It should all be pre planned. You should get lots of warning. Even if it's nice, I don't care. I just want pre warning. I guess that's my thing where I'm thinking more generic now. What would people push back on? Probably. That I understand it because some, you know, some people will be anxious no matter what and and it will throw them off no matter what. Doesn't matter when you're getting game ethos. Because I ultimately think the same in terms of I do think that should be the end goal that the the school is comfortable enough where it's just OK if your head teachers drop in all the time rather than doing like formal observations that are anxiety times 1000 in the opposite version. So again, like we are aligned.

8:24 Ultimately, I just think I consider other people a bit more than you, that's all. Yeah, fair, fair. Got a question here. It kind of leads. On. No, not bite, it's not bite, it's not bite. I just hate you every fibre of my being. It kind of leads on. So I'm going to go to this question now. It's linked to what we were just saying. What's your opinion in education that genuinely gets other people's backs up? Not a cop out answer that you know other people don't really get annoyed at, but something that will Genuinely this is hilarious. Genuinely make some listeners question if they like you anymore. Enjoy :). That's really funny. I love these kind of questions because I think two years ago on this podcast we would have been too afraid to say. So like I've done it before, I've done something on social media before, like years ago where it's like what, what teaching opinion has people like this. And it's like a bloke with like the sword, 10 swords at his neck.

9:14 And I've done something like marking is a waste of time. It's like, no, no one doesn't think that. It sounds contrary. Yeah, yeah. It's like no one doesn't think that, but I'm trying to really rack my. I think I've got 1. I've got 1 and I and I'm 99.9% sure it'll be the same one as you. Do you reckon? Because we are again quite aligned with our thoughts. Obviously we talk a lot so. It's an echo chamber. Do you want to say it? Go on, I'll say it and then we'll see. We'll see. Because we, I personally didn't talk to you about this before. Mine is that please don't hate me guys. I think there absolutely should be a higher bar in terms of what what teachers know and can do and have a knowledge base of.

9:58 And let me let me explain. Let me explain. I think it's become acceptable sometimes for a primary school teacher to say something along the lines of, oh wow, that year 6 maths is hard, isn't it? No, like, like, and this is where people will get really annoyed at me. And This is why I'm saying this. So if you do hate me because of this, well I guess that's well done. To the person who sent this question in, no. If you're working in a school where you've got key stage 2 and you could be technically placed in as a year 6 teacher, the bar should be as a professional on a decent wage who's got a qualification and not being funny. You shouldn't be struggling with the maths that you're teaching, OK. And, and it's become acceptable, like all primary school teachers, they just have to, there's so much they have to know.

10:44 There's, they have to do geography teaching and history teaching and, and science and all that kind of stuff. And I'm like, OK, OK, right, cool. But for those really core subjects like English and, and maths, you need to know your stuff. You need to be a step ahead of the kids and you need to, in my opinion, at the very least, have a comprehensive understanding and ability to do the key stage that you're teaching. Cool. So what do you want? I'm going to get, you know, just make, take this further to get you in more trouble. What do you really want to say then? Because you see it all the time. If someone comes up to you, right? They're in a school, they're a colleague and they say that maybe they're a year 1 teacher. I don't know. And they say to. You year one's key stage 1. Yeah, right. OK. But OK, fine. They're a year 3. Teachers I also I also still think they shouldn't key stage. Two cool, OK, but either way, then year three teachers to make this safer and they come up to you and you've been teaching year 6 in this in this situation and they say, God, I couldn't teach that year 6 stuff. I don't know how you do that.

11:33 That's weird. Have you got qualifications to teach? So this is what you this is your unfiltered. Version, my unfiltered version is what do you mean you couldn't teach it? It's adding it. It's adding two fractions together. Yeah, so, so listen. I don't just don't know how to do it. It's tricky, isn't it? Yeah, I know. Do you know what? OK, OK. Honestly, teach yourself how to do it at the very least, OK? You couldn't and you shouldn't be a teacher. There we go. Like, like, like, I'm not. I just couldn't do it. If you just can't understand past progress, like whether you think it's relevant or not to the kids, right. If you as a grown adult professional can't understand a part of the curriculum. Yeah, right. I'm sorry, You shouldn't be a teacher. OK? Should you know absolutely all of the curriculum at the back of your hand immediately from the day one when you qualify?

12:15 That's also unreasonable because I just. I I don't think anyone would know everything about the curriculum, especially when they haven't taught right? Even the core. Subjects. Even in the core subjects, absolutely. If you've just qualified as a, as an ECT, you've never been placed in Year 5 or 6, never been placed in upper key stage 2 and you've never had to go that far. It's a, it's completely acceptable that you don't even know like, Oh, I wasn't aware that in year 6 you introduced big mass. Like I, I, I knew it was this thing that, that exists in the curriculum at some point, but I wouldn't have known exactly when it was introduced. And oh, I didn't get the nuance of, of how it goes up to, you know, indices and then with brackets and without brackets. OK, I didn't quite get that. I don't expect them to know that off the back of their hand, right. What I do expect them though, to be able to do is big mass like like, or, or be able to look at it and within 15 seconds be like, oh, that's the rule. Cool.

13:01 Yeah, Yeah. Like with spag, right. There's loads of spag that I don't know. There is loads of spag right now that I don't know from U-6, Right. I genuinely 100% would be like if you asked me, is this past progressive or subjunctive form exactly that. If you asked me, I think I'd be able to have a good go and I'd be thinking about subordinate clauses or I'd think about what subjunctive is or look at it and I'd use deduction and I'd have a good go, right? Yeah, yeah, Yeah. But if you spent 10 seconds telling me what it was, I'd very quickly be able to do it. And what I'm saying is you get teachers who are in year 6 who go wow, that I really struggle with that. I'm like, why? Like we, we do expect 10 year olds to know it. You're a professional in your mid 20s with a qualification. All I'm saying is the bar.

13:43 We shouldn't be scared to have the bar high when we're talking about our profession. We should be defending our profession and have really high standards, not just for the kids, way higher standards for the the teachers as well. Yeah, I think so. I think so. And that is, is essentially in essence what I was thinking as well in terms of mine was all about the bar a bit more in general. I just think my, my, my overall opinion is I think the bar of being able to become a teacher holistically has gone too low. Yeah. I just think that is we have unqualified teachers right now. Yeah, we have unqualified teachers. OK, so so no. And again, This is why people get annoyed. I'm unqualified and I'm good. I know an unqualified teacher and they're better than a qualified teacher. Okay, on an individual level, I know that can happen. I understand that, right.

14:27 But obviously if you remove the need to have a qualification at a certain level, it obviously lowers the standard in general. Yeah, yeah, obviously. Of course, of course it does. Like yeah, and lower the amount of pay you can justify. Dividend exactly why else would you do it? Which is what's happened exactly that and and you've, you know, opened up the doors to to to it being lower paid like you said. Yeah. I just think that it it's part of my defence as as a profession. I want to have this profession on a pedestal. It should be the best of the best alongside me saying this, by the way, this isn't just an isolated thing where I just go. Yeah, that's the problem. Those bloody teachers don't know enough. Alongside this is the pay needs to improve to be more competitive with other similar professions that are graduate jobs.

15:08 Alongside that, you need to make sure that we have qualification status is still required. Alongside that, we need to make sure the training is more adequate. Everything needs to improve, but let's not pretend. Also we don't need to understand that the bar needs to be really high. As well it felt like it got to a point in the last few years I remember thinking this where no one wanted to be a teacher and teachers were leaving in droves. And genuinely it was like how do we get more teachers in without increasing their pay? And it was lower the bar then lower the bar let more people do it. And that, to me was. My friend got in after the bar. Are you saying she's lower? Not necessarily. You just can you have any kind of critical thinking whatsoever. Like a macro level thinking, OK, let's go in the opposite way because it's very easy to think if we increase the teacher pay scale to let's say it was like 55 to 75 KA year, like really, really a huge increase like 20K or whatever.

15:56 Do you think that that automatically would raise the bar? Honestly, yes, it would pull the other stuff up with it because then there'll be a massive pool of people who want to do the profession. It's competitive. Cool. We can put the bar higher then. Exactly. That's how it works. Like it is very simple economics to be honest. With you. Well, they put the bar up and actually it got someone in who was worse. OK. I think things can happen, like, OK, But in general, obviously we all understand that's what's going on. So this is so to try and get away from the the cutlass at my neck. Yeah. This is part of a wider picture, but it does feel like sometimes you can't go onto that narrow level of also, like, I did just hear the other day that, you know, there's a teacher out there who couldn't use a ruler properly. Like, like that's unacceptable. Cool off you.

16:39 Go. If you can't use a ruler properly, you shouldn't be a teacher. Oh, but don't be mean. That's not mean. That's not always. If you can't use a scalpel correctly, you shouldn't be a surgeon. Oh, don't be mean. Don't be mean. No, I will be mean. If that's mean, I will be mean actually. This episode is brought to you by Mathsu. Here's something most teachers already know, but rarely say out loud. Too many children are going through primary school without solid arithmetic foundations. They can't recall key facts fluently. They're shaky on the basics. And when that trickier problem solving is introduced later on, they struggle. Not because the math itself is too hard, but because the foundations they're built on aren't stronger. Enough, And with a new curriculum on the horizon that really puts a focus on fluency across Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, this is only going to matter more. The platform identifies the children's gaps instantly, figures out exactly what they need to revisit and keeps practising with them.

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18:09 Yes. Yes, of course that's allowed to happen. But you teach yourself it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you, you understand it. And if you can't do that, and you don't understand it, and you can't master it if you haven't mastered what you're teaching, how on earth can the children master? Yeah, yeah. And even that is still higher than the bar that you've already said the bar is. Can you do it? Like literally can you do it if I gave you 5 hours with a teacher telling you how to do the multiplying fractions and you can't do it at the end of it? I'm sorry. Bye. Bye. Like you can't teach kids. It's not good enough. So I think I'm, I've tried to get away from it. I'm going to go back into I reckon. We've done it by the way, I reckon. I reckon there are literally people listening to. This probably, Probably, but I don't care. I'm going to round it off. I'm going to round it off. I truly think if you're a key Stage 2 teacher, you should get full marks on the Key Stage 2 Sats.

18:55 Or at least be able to give an error like you know. OK, you wrote a six to zero and someone read it wrong. Whatever. But you shouldn't can mistake, you shouldn't. You shouldn't. You should. You should be able to exactly. That there's not a question you skip because you think I have no idea how. To do this, yeah. Or if you don't know how to do it, you very quickly look it up and then you remember it because like I said before, you might not have taught you 68. You don't need to know those ridiculous GPS things that we all agree the kids shouldn't need to know, but they do because we have to get through a test. Yeah, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the ability to understand it. Like, like, can you, are you able to understand and grasp this? Like. And if the answer's no, then like, of course we all agree that's that's not acceptable, I think. We should stay on this a bit longer. What do you think the benefits are of teachers in lower? Like let's say a year 3 teacher, then that's key stage 2. What do you think the benefits are of a Year 3 teacher knowing they're not even in year 6, Being able to do the entire Key Stage 2 curriculum?

19:38 100 it's it's massively beneficial because you know what the learning journey is like. It's not a case of if they're in year 3, you moved on to year 4 and five stuff because we know that's not the best way to go about stuff. However, if you know where they've come from and you know where they're going, if you know what the end goal is, particularly if you think about a key stage and ending up a key stage 2, and they're going to have the assessment at the end of where they need to be. You can have a really solid understanding of actually, do you know what my role as a year three teachers to make sure these are absolutely nailed. You can prioritise what's really, really important. You can understand that stuff later on. Actually, do you know what? They will revisit this again and again, right? Addition and subtraction, right? When it comes to year 4, year five, year 6, they're going to spend less and less time on it. It's going to be almost like we're just adding a digit. It's not going to be the end of the world. It's 4 digits now it's 5 digits.

20:20 But my job then as a Year 3 teacher is, do you know what? I need to spend a lot more time in the conceptual understanding here because I get that later on in the school year, as this builds up, they're going to get less time because they're going to be doing other stuff. So if you're more aware of that journey and what those curriculars look like, it means that you as a teacher can prioritise what is clearly more foundational in that year group and more important. And I think it makes you a better teacher because of that. So again, the fact, yeah, you can do it or not, that's almost separate to also you should just understand where the curriculum's going. Because if if your start and end goal is just the year group you happen to be teaching, not only is that weak in terms of the children will not always be in those confines. You'll have some children working at year 1-2 level. You'll have some children who could be working at year 4 five level. If you only have the confines of understanding of your year groups curricula, then the curriculum, then you will by definition not be able to understand where those children need to come to catch up. So I, I think in general it's two separate things. Like it's almost a given that you need to be able to actually do the maths that's involved in a key stage 2. Like like, I'm sorry, just come on, come on. You have to just be able to do that. But then also it is way better practise to have a good understanding of where the curriculum goes as well. Yeah, yeah, as I was in, obviously you know this, but I was in year 4 for the beginning of my career. Then I went to year 6 and came back to year 4. I was definitely, definitely a significantly better Year 4 teacher after I'd had some experience. What time Year 4 I just I the prioritisation, you nailed it on the head.

21:40 It was exactly that. I knew which things this mattered more and then it LED me. So my next layer of thought to this is, and I do feel like it's a barrier to school. I think some, there are really good schools out there that can look at a whole key stage and prioritise more appropriately across those year groups. And there are also schools who don't do that and they get too caught up in, yeah, but there's an end of year test for my year group. So I'm not going to prioritise certain things that might be better for this child holistically in the next three years, Let's say they're in year 3, I'm going to prioritise stuff that will maximise their marks on this end of year 3 test. And I think sometimes that that can actually cause like, that's not a good thing. Like we think, Oh no, we need to benchmark them every single year. We need to make sure they're getting the curriculum coverage. Yeah, we do to an extent.

22:23 But sometimes honestly there are situations when COVID really highlighted this. There are situations where if I was to choose with a child who's may be struggling in, in mass a bit more in general between them having a really, really solid core conceptual understanding of the four operations, but a very loose understanding of of shape or a kind of superficial understanding of both of them. And they'll get more marks in their end of year test in this second version. I wouldn't pick that one, even though ultimately in some schools that's going to look worse on me and the school is going to have that vision to see that. Just going to say your scores lower, that equals bad 100%. So I just think that there's a whole thing there I think holistical to think about. Yeah, genuinely that I think has missed a lot in schools because we have these very rigid end of year test, end of year, end of year.

23:05 You're right, you're right. Because I think about, I always, I remember I did a lot of my career in year 4, a lot of my career in year 4. I did some in Year 5. I did a bit of training in year 6 as well. So I had an idea and just yeah, year three as well. And true leading maths, you very much get a good idea of the curriculum all the way through. So I did have that knowledge. However, I did always remember thinking to myself, and this is to be fair, the way the curriculum's already weighted in a lot of schemes, you do spend a lot more time, especially in your frame 4, on additional subtraction place value than you would on shape, right? It's already weighted because you've only got like a week or two on shape maximum. However, I do just always remember thinking to myself, if I didn't touch this, this strand or this subject, this part of maths right now, if I didn't touch it in year 3 and then just taught them in year 6 instead, which one do I think would have the biggest negative impact in doing that, right?

23:57 So for example, I didn't do this in attraction in year 3. Do you know what? I'll just do it in year 6 compared to I didn't do the names of shape in year 3 or 4 and I just taught them in year 6. Clearly it's much, it's worth so much more of your time really grasping and going deep into number and understanding number and having really, really strong fluency and making links between and being able to break numbers up. There is much more use in going deep early with that because it allows you to move on more quickly later, right? If my year 4 class could not tell me what a rhombus was, I'm going to be very honest right now, I didn't give a shit. I did not care. But in the end of year assessment, it's probably going to say plot these coordinates and then underneath it will say, what shape is it?

24:41 And it was a rhombus. I don't care. Like that can be a gap that and some people will really push back and say no no by year 4 they need to make sure they got it. I'll I'll tell them what a rhombus is. But you know what? If they don't get it, do you know what I won't do? Prioritise that over then being able to manipulate number properly to flexibly partition. Being able a child being able to flexibly partition 64 has way more of ramification than knowing what a rhombus looks like. And the point being, let's say later on, 64 / 4, OK, that is something that, yeah, you can do short division. But you know what, really, I want children to be doing that mentally. I want us to be doing 64 / 4 mentally. You have to have such good understanding of how to break up a number.

25:22 You can break up 64 into 40 and 24 and a number four times table. I understand this really well. That's 10 fours and that's six fours. So if I combine them, that's 16 fours. I've just done it mentally that charge just done that question mentally in their head, way more of an impact on their mathematical ability, way more understanding of number and a better, more rounded mathematician. I'll spend more time on that than than just showing them another rhombus. Oh, do you not remember what I said about rhombus? It's just, it's just equal sides with not without 90. OK, OK, cool. It's, it's exactly what you just said there. It's it's prioritisation and I can show them again when they are 11, what a rhombus is and they might just go, oh, OK, and then just remember it now because it's just a fact to remember the curriculum and what we need to teach children.

26:07 Everything's on such different levels and understanding that journey I think let's you prioritise about you know what this is way worth for way more of my time. You, you, you. You're absolutely right. There are just some things that fundamentally are more important to revisit on a yearly basis from an early, early point conceptually and some things that are just not as important. And that's OK to say like, and, and I think a really good people have school improvement plans and school improvement leaders, people that come in external whatever. I think really, really, really good schools are the ones that genuinely take that into account. They don't penalise their teachers for thinking in that way versus maximising their interview data like the better schools do it that way around. Can I let's finish off on this because I want to go back to our school, which I think were very understanding of this whole thing because we had that same outlook. We also used a lot of White Rose in terms of their long term and medium term plans and, and especially post COVID, a lot of stuff was prioritised and the stuff was shifted around and moved and it didn't always exactly match the national curriculum.

27:01 And we also use pixel tests, right? And there was clearly there was a difference between what we were telling teachers to prioritise and do in the lessons and what was assessed always at the end of the year in terms of pixel test. The example being negative numbers, right? Negative numbers. We left till Year 5 in our school. You look at the curriculum, absolutely it's a year four thing, right? Look at maths to the thing we're building out. You can do it in year 4 because it's, it's a year 4 level question. We chose to say, do you know what, let's just take that out. We'll we think children when they're in Year 5 can do the year 4 level stuff and year five level stuff together and get it in the same amount of time. That's a decision we've made because then we're going to free up more time to go with the foundations, especially post COVID to try and fill those gaps. When we did a pixel test end of year 4, it always without fail would have a question on negative numbers. Yeah.

27:45 Oh no, they're not. They're not there. Oh, they didn't. It's a gap. Everyone understood. We know that will be a gap. We looked at pixel hilarious. Percent, percent, percent, percent high, high. Really, really good. That question always dropped off. Yeah, but instead of panicking going the end of you and the end of year test. So we need to do that. It's awful. Everyone understood. We know why. We know why because we've made the decision to focus on something else. By the end of key stage 2, they'll get the same coverage, they'll be able to do negative numbers. That's not an issue, it's that level of understanding and nuance which I think allows for better maths teaching, which unfortunately some schools with a surface level understanding of what's going on with leadership who just look at beta and just go Oh my God, that's a problem. They're chasing their tail a bit and they don't get the best maths teaching.

28:26 Yes, Dylan, I agree. And yeah, we, as always, went off on a bit, not on a tangent, but we just went into depth there, probably because it was about maths in the end, wasn't it? What surprise we make it about that you. Often say I agree, I agree. Yeah, there we go. Right, there's a reason we work together. Exactly. Next question, What draconian behaviour policies have you heard and observed that just humiliated children or just made no sense? For me, immediately comes to my head is whenever children are late, and I mean more primary school children are late. Anything that punishes the child because of that Aristocraconian or, or there's some negative effect on the kid when it's by the way their parents who are getting them into school, I think is just outrageous.

29:07 And they always rubbed me up the wrong way. Do you know what I felt myself sometimes in lessons when a child was consistently late right in in lessons, I remember getting really frustrated because I thought to myself, you're missing the 1st 20 minutes of mass every day. And this is where we do our foundational stuff and our fluency, etcetera. And that was annoying to me. And I had to really let myself inside be annoyed and then be like, but this child was brought in by the mother who overslept and it's not his fault. Yeah. So for me, anything that punishes the child for being late when the child's not in control of being late, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What? What this family managed to do it and get their child in? Why didn't you get your family to get you in on time? Oh. Because my mum overdosed this morning. Yeah.

29:47 No, I'm not even. I'm not even. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, It's like, OK, we'll penalise the kid for that way. Exactly. It's humiliating. Yeah, I'm obviously going to over the top exaggerating, but. No, no, a bit. It's obviously something that. Can happen. Oh sorry, it's not the kids fault because they are 7. Yeah, and and they don't get themselves to school like, oh, but what about those kids who kick off and don't go into school? I'm not talking about them. That's a separate conversation. Do you know what they kick off going into school? I can imagine a draconian policy that when they do eventually get into school, they're told they're told off and shouted at. Probably might make them want to come in. I can't imagine that there's anything, actually. Right. So like. We've been, I've taught you 6 a long time. I've obviously I've had some kids who they cycle into school and their parents think they're cycling into school. They actually went to the shops and spent a bunch of time there, bought a bunch of bought a bunch of sweets and stuff. And like, so obviously with those kids you can, you can have, I didn't even tell them off. Like I just have a conversation.

30:34 I come in late and I blatantly be doing this because one of them will the other one in and I say, come on, guys, you got, you know, you could cycle into schools. You could. Tell them off though. Yeah, but. Even then, I'm just saying to them, look, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to say this to your parent because at the end of the day, they think you're going to school and it's not safe. Like none of us know who you are, you know? But even still, I'm not doing some draconian like yelling at them that you've got to go and you're going to lose your break time now, because ultimately I want to talk to the parent and say this is something in your control. I am not the person in control of cycling your child to school. You're the decision maker when it comes to that. I'm informing you as a parent to make that decision. Ultimately they were late. So can you do something about? It yeah, completely. And, and just to justify what we're saying here, like if, if there were some more draconian issues and stuff, etcetera, we might disagree with being draconian, right? But it is down to the child.

31:18 So it's more fair. Like I, I, I am genuinely thinking of things that are literally not the fault of the child. Another thing that I think of all the time is when, you know, children aren't reading at home or getting signatures, right? Getting signatures often sometimes is different to reading at home. Because I, I've known some children who definitely are reading at home because I know they come in and they show what they're up to and that they are reading at home, but they're not getting their three signatures a week. Yeah, because parents just don't do it, right. For whatever reason, parents aren't doing it comes around at the end of the week. There's a whole school policy. You need 3 signatures a week. I'll just stand at break time to do some reading. No, I and I have my whole career point blank refused to ever keep a child in at lunchtime or break time during their play times as a punitive measure for not doing homework. Because again, to me it's not the kids fault a lot of the time, is it?

32:09 Sometimes. Yeah, sure. I, I still don't think it's worth keeping them in Cos I think playtime is sacrosanct. I think that's part of their day. To me, that's like saying you you're going to miss some of your maths lesson to catch up with your reading. No one would ever do that. Play to me is just as vital. But yeah, any, anything that punishes the children like that. And, and we're coming from a primary perspective and secondary always say what about secondary when it's more in their control. Well, OK, you've completely changed the the example. So of course, yes, that might mean I have a different answer. We're talking about primary school here, you know, anything like that. I just always thought to myself, what are we doing? I just thought of a really funny 1A funny example of happened to me. I've got two things and then I'm going to also dam myself after. That was something I did in my AM QT year which which I look. Back how you're learning. It's fine. Yeah, I know. But I look back and I think, what the hell was I thinking? Anybody did it in my mind? That's the funny, the funny story, right?

32:51 And I just reminded me when I was thinking of children that cycle in and came in late, go to shops. I once had a boy, it was years and years ago who came in late to my classroom. He was like 20 minutes late and he's not normally that late, but it happened every now and then. And he came in. I was like, what you doing at this, Like. And he was, he was like such a lovable child. It was so hard to be crossing. This kid came with this little smirk of like, oh, yeah, I'm late again. And he did. He did have a rough family life. So again, I was immediately thinking this, there's a lot of stuff out of my control here. I'm not just going to be shouting at this child for being late because I know what his family's like. He came in and he's like, oh, yeah, I just, I just popped to the shops, didn't I? I had to get some lunch. And I was thinking, oh boy, let's get his lunch. And he was like, and I got you, I did get you this. And he pulled out a little like a lint chocolate bar out of his pocket. And he was.

33:32 And I was like you trying to bribe me to this for being late by giving me chocolate. It's not going to happen. Give it. Turns out it's worked perfectly well. Perfectly. Well, I'll see you again tomorrow, same time. But it just really made me laugh. Like he was just, yeah, so funny. So you take the register, I'll get you a limp Bunny, yeah. Like you had to be get bigger every time limp bar was not enough that next time 2 limp bars were funny. Have you got one that's actually funny though? Oh, cheers mate. Yeah, that's funny, isn't it? You're funny. But here's here's one that's damning, right? And something I look bamming and I'm like what am I doing in my inky 2 year trying to please the powers that be. You had hair then I did. Very important. Maybe that's the maybe that that was the turning. .0 My God, I think you might be right.

34:12 You shaved your head. You gained your confidence. The opposite. That guy loses your power. You gain power. I did. Turns out that context was everything. We having hair. But I did have hair. Yeah, but good to know the only year I did. Lost it after one year of teaching. You lost. I think you lost it. Already coming over, it was going yeah, the the. Little, little Benny Young. Anyway, right, so I was trying to please the powers that be who was saying, look, we're getting a lot of kids that are going to the toilet in lesson time and some of them are clearly just taking the Mick and they're just getting out of lessons, blah, blah, blah, all this. And I was like, OK, cool, cool, cool. I know what I can I'm going to put something in place. You might remember this. And I, I was like, OK, we had to stick. We had, we had stickers at this school. You have to. You have to piss. Yourself in your chair. Not that bad, I mean. Basically, basically is what I felt like people were being like.

34:54 What you're doing is encouraging this anyone that needed the toilet in the lesson, I was like, OK, you have to come and get a sticker and you've got a sticker in your book that said, I went out out. I went to the toilet in my lesson to to show that you like left the lesson. So when it comes to marking a book, looks why did that kid, why did that kid not do as much? I was like, well, there you go. They went to the toilet in the lesson and then someone came to me. The the the deputy head came to me and obviously explained why that was absolutely mental. But you did that off your own back. Yes, because I was like, were you stickers? And they're trying to say that kids are wasting time. We've got we've got to stop it. We've got to try encourage kids to go to the toilet at the right times and stop them going in lessons. Are you Chairman Mao? From the from, from the top down. And I was like, OK, I'll put something in place that makes them aware that I know that they're just taking the mix sometimes before. They're all taking the mix.

35:36 I know, I know, obviously the floor. I understand the flaws immediately afterwards, but at the time I was like, oh that's a good idea. You know all these stories of you from your ECT and and QT where you're like and I did this thing and they were really mad at me. I started to think maybe they should. Be yeah, I know, yeah, genuinely. But the deputy head came by that like the next day, saw the sticker in the book and he was like mate, and explained of the obvious reasons as to why that was dumb and you can't do that. And it's like discriminatory. Like the kids do just also need to go to the toilet sometimes and making them feel embarrassed because I got to now put a sticker in that book saying they went to the toilet. It's probably not a good play. And I was like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's probably right, actually. Yeah, we don't. We don't want people to feel bad. By the way, we've got your second observation in two days today. Yeah, I know. That's the thing, the school we worked at was extremely toxic from the top down.

36:18 This was me trying to appease them to be like I didn't. I didn't. Hilariously, I didn't care. Don't shift the blame. No, I'm shifting the blame because I didn't care about kids going to the toilet, but they did. So I was like, well this will stop it. Kids. The thing is, kids have got to excrete their bodily waste and it doesn't mean they can't do the join the dots exercise. We. Love them so on my bloody watch. They're not. As if that school needed any more stickers as well. Jesus Christ. Honest to God. So, yeah. Anything that blames children for things out of their control. Yeah, but it's what we've always done. Change it. Yeah, change it, then. That's not a reason to do stuff, is it? Exactly. That. We've got to. We've got to tackle it somehow. Not like that. There you go.

37:01 It's not good enough. Right? Not good enough. Next question. Go on. This is a good one, hearts back to an episode from a few episodes ago where we talk about maths and setting and all this stuff. Go back and check it out if you haven't. I work in A1 formentary school and I do agree that setting would be good for the children. How can it be done in my particular? Setting. I had a couple people mentioned this when we did the the whole one about the research and the setting and stuff. Yeah. And someone commented on Spotify as well about, you know, I love listening to the podcast, but this was frustrating for me because it's very much centred around sorry you just got your belly out. Sorry I was really made me laugh. That's interesting. But if you're. Watching the camera did not flick to me at that point, I'll tell you that. Oh, I've lost my train of thought right now. Was basically saying, you know, it's frustrating because it was all centred on our experience of, you know, having multiple form entry schools where where setting where setting makes more sense and it's easier.

37:51 I think we did. I think we did mention that when we, but maybe we didn't but. I'm pretty sure we said there's obviously a bias towards schools that have more. Of course you can't really set in other schools. This question is really interesting to me. Like how can I set in A1 elementary school? I mean really unless you've got another teacher to take out children and do stuff like it's much much harder. Like you are one teacher doing one input. Unless you split the class in half and try and do 2 inputs. Like to me, it turns into mixed ability where you try and set within it, which we spoke about. I think the most you can do is that like try and let your tops fly. I don't, I don't think, I still don't think mixed ability is automatically bad. I think it's much harder and there's, and you have to be more realistic about what you can do.

38:33 And you as a person can only pitch your, your input at one level. And lots of people said like, can't you just teach to all the levels? Like, oh, great, brilliant. I'll have 10 brains and two mouths. Like what? What? Like of course, of course, like when I do an input, I'm doing an input to everyone. So that input has to be pitched somewhere. Exactly. It's going to be too low for some kids and too high for others. Like cool, by definition do I got no. It's actually just about the sequencing. OK, Well, some children don't need that level of sequencing. Someone is busy now. I'm pitching it somewhere. Yeah. Start low and build up OK whilst I'm starting low, what the what the children can already do it doing? Yeah, exactly. A rising tide helps all boats. OK. If I'm pitching it too high and the kids can't even add 4, they obviously don't understand what I'm saying right now. Like it's so. So my point is down to this like setting. I don't, I actually, I, I know it's a question and answer episode.

39:18 I don't really have an answer as how you can do setting in that kind of situation. But I think what you can do is a hybrid approach where, you know, mixed children up based on ability. Sure. Have a have a focus table, sure. That, you know, are going to have to be doing something else. Maybe if you've got a teaching assistant, you know, rotate with your teaching assistant as to which children you're helping each day. So throughout the week you get to help everyone at different levels. Yeah, there's only so much you could do basically. And there's lots of research out there about how to do mixed ability effectively, how to get the most out of it, and I would just be following those. Exactly, we literally addressed this in the last episode. Good teachers can make either work extremely well. So if you're in the situation where you don't have that choice, it sucks. Obviously. OK, you can't really do setting because setting is predicated on the fact that you have multiple teachers in multiple classes.

40:01 Like that is the very essence of setting. So if you don't have it, then yeah, you just have to you'll you'll just have to focus on, well, mixed stability. Like you said, there's lots of ways you can make mixed stability work. This is another good reason why the argument can never be 1 is completely superior to the other because what we're if we're if we were really saying, which we weren't setting is just superior to mixed stability, then what we are also saying is everyone who's in is forced into situations where they can only do mixed stability, IE everyone for mentary school, whatever. Then we're we're like, I'm not saying obviously on there all those kids are getting a worse deal. That's just not true. But but you know, if the if if there were three times the amount of children in the in the in the school and two more teachers, I do think setting could be more beneficial for them. Like that can still exist, but you can still be giving the children the best you can possibly get. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

40:45 That's what I mean. Like you can still give them the best you possibly get. So, yeah, sorry we can't give more advice there. But like I do just think it it you are your hands are tied in some. Situations there is their own. Sometimes it's opposite way. There is a thing you can not do. There are things you can not do. Like if you if you're in that situation. What you could not do is just have a give the six lowest ability children to your TA every single day. That's like a classic thing not to do. Like Dylan said, just go and look into what makes good mixed ability classmates work. Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. And it's not easy. It's certainly not very tricky easy at all. I did. It just really quick. I did it for one year. I had one form entry, yeah, I regain it that yeah, I lost it again next year. And I was in a very fortunate position where even though it's one from entry, we had AI had a part time teacher who came in.

41:29 So for a couple of days in the week, I was able to actually split my cast and set. So I was mixed ability for half the week and then I and then I did some setting for some of the other week. And, you know, again, I just, you just have to make it work. It was circumstantial like, and when the other teacher was in, was it, what did I teach better? Honestly? Yeah, yeah. Fewer children. Fewer children I could target more specifically. And then I just used it. So it was like I always knew in the mixed ability parts I'd be doing certain things I knew I'm going to have that day where I only have these children. I'm going to focus in on this a bit more. You know, you just got to, you get what you get. You can do 100% right. Last question, we have been told that during SAT week, after tests are administered in the morning, we have to spend the whole afternoon revising for the next day. What are your thoughts? Because I think it's ridiculous.

42:11 Now if people listen to this, that's already done. So this, this was written into US obviously before that. But what are your thoughts? Like, you know, because a bit of revision, any harm in that? Like is this automatically bad or? Look, I don't think it's ridiculous. I don't think it's ridiculous to do it. I don't think it's best practise though either, but I think even just thinking about my own practise in our own school, we generally on those Saturdays, like I said, it's a high pressure morning, It's very intense. I don't think you're going to get the best out of the children by adding on that intensity for the remainder of the school day ready for them to come in the next morning doing it. I think it's nice even from a hosted point of view, right, in terms of like how the Sats come across and your own stress as a teacher coming out to the children. I think it's just good to say, well done, you've done your bit this morning.

42:57 This afternoon we're going to go back on normal timetable or even, I don't know, a treat. We're going to do an extra PE lesson this week, guys. We're going to go out to the field and do something because you've had a very intense morning and this week is intense. Do I think it's the end of the world when someone for this one week in the year does a couple of extra revision lessons in the afternoon? Not really. Like it's OK. It might be a bit annoying, a bit stressful for the kids, they might be a bit tired. You've got to think about those things. It could have a negative impact. Exactly. And I think to me it's more it said here, they've been told that's when the whole afternoon revising, it's like, I don't know. I think what I'd like to see across the board is more trusted professionals like what you're saying. Like, you know, what if the Year 6 teacher who knows their class has made a decision in the afternoon to be like, do you know what they need half an hour outside? Do you know what they need to just chill out for a minute? Do you know what they need?

43:45 A bit of input on something that's a bit of PSAGI, don't know. Whatever. My class need this because of that because I'm a professional. I know them really well. That's why we're doing it just for a break. Do you know what I mean? Like I think it's the top down. Like OK, OK, what's next? What's tomorrow? Reasoning paper three. OK, make sure everything all you're doing all afternoon are why problems, Why problems? 2 marks, free marks. Do you get like, and the context of what happened before is important as well. Yeah, what I would say is I think it's ridiculous. You you can see a reason why you would do both. I understand that we. Disagree. Maybe maybe because I I just think I don't know, there's only so much you can cram. And most, most people do a bit in the morning before the test anyway. Like, yeah, yeah. If you can't do something at this point, like, oh, it's OK. What we're telling the kids do you know what I mean is still in the SAT's week itself where like we need to cram those gaps you can't do. It's like I have, I have been trying for three months. Like what we send the kids like you must get everything possible.

44:35 Let's just relax the children a bit so they understand. You know what? We're going into this test. We could have spent another. You have 30 minutes cramming stuff you're not sure on, but it's OK to not be sure on some stuff. Yeah, it's impossible for you to do this test and not be unsure on some stuff and that's OK. Just do your best. We can't cram, cram, cram, do all last name revising, do a bit of revising beforehand and then just before the SAT start. Just try your best guys. That's what I mean about this. Is it one that's like, yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's stress you're imparting down. I mean, you have to into consideration, I'm sure. But the reason, you know, the reason I think it can be done OK is because I reckon some schools do it nicely. I reckon they can manage to maintain a pretty stress free, free environment. But also just say to the kids, that's only happening this one time. Obviously we're just going to use this one opportunity just to just to bring things to the forefront of your mind again, It's going to be pretty chill.

45:17 We're going to play like, you know, Kahoot quiz or something, play games for the afternoon. But we're just going to revise some key, key things. We're going to make sure we all remember what perimeter means, all this sort of stuff. You know, I, I think it can be done nicely is what I'm saying. And it's not, and it's not ridiculous. No, in that situation I still here. I say after all this, my baseline is don't do it though, genuinely. You agree with me? No, I don't agree with you. You're actually agree with. Me. Yeah. Cool. OK. That's interesting. Right, guys? Thank you so much for your questions. We're going to wrap it up there. Please leave us a review. Please do share it with someone. You might find it useful. I've got demos coming through people booking onto maps because they listen to the sponsor section. If they didn't, they get it again. And that's really interesting because this is actually pre recorded and. You're ruining. You're sorry. You're ruining the illusions, the law. Guys, see you next time.