Ep 81: Why Is Education So Obsessed With 'Reinventing The Wheel'?

0:00 Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Teach. My name is Dylan and. My name is Hayden. We're back, Hayden, with another episode. I always say that when I'm not sure how to continue. I'm excited too. And I'm going to start off with one thing. Welcome if you are new listener, because I'm not being dramatic. It has actually doubled in the last like two or three weeks. People are listening to this. So thank you so much for coming along for the ride. A lot of you guys coming from Instagram. We're going to touch on that in a second, but firstly I just want to start off with how your week's been Haiden. Bit of a catch up. We've both been in school. Obviously you had something you wanted to say about pupils. Yeah, so, so kind of outside of school, I guess, but I've. No, I don't want to hear about it then, but obviously we've.

0:40 Been in the game for 10 years now and when we started, we both started in year 4. And I am starting to see more and more and more and more when I go out and about now because obviously I live fairly close to where we've worked all this time. Old pupils who are just adults now. And it freaks me out because in my head, I'm still 23. I've just started teaching. Like it's only been a couple of years. They can't be old yet. They probably still look like they used to look. They're maybe like, you know, an inch taller. No, they're just full on adults. So I was in a shop half a day just buying some bits for, you know, my never ending bathroom project. Oh, that bathroom project is still going. Probably people who are listening two months ago might have heard used. To Yeah, yeah, that same one, yeah. The bathroom, which is 2 metres by two metres. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Yeah, that one, the one, there's nothing in there right now, right? The one that we're really quickly trying to record this. Yeah, because there's a title coming around. Yeah, and this.

1:24 Podcast Studio is obviously just the other side of a of a work site, so exactly that, yeah, I don't know why we rented the studio right next to a work site that happens to be my house, this tiny third. Bedroom just awful. I was buying some bits for that and the I say the kid, the man, the man that served me. I was just thinking, I know you. Yeah. And I was like, Oh my God, I taught you nine years ago. Did you mention it here? No, I didn't say. Usually I would, but he didn't look like, I think you can tell, can't you, when they sort of look at you and double take, like, oh, I know that person. And he was just like totally in work zone. Yeah, yeah. And I thought, I'm not going to say anything because I didn't teach him that much. Like he was in my year grade, but maybe for like once a week, like a carousel sort of thing. And I was like, Oh my God, I feel. Old, well, ten years, 10 years from their point of view to you, you probably won't look too much different, obviously. Whereas 10 years for us, it's insane when we see these like children to adults, that teenage year gap where we miss unbelievable amounts have changed. It's crazy.

2:17 Have you met anyone yet? Like out in a pub. Only that time that we went out, yeah, and that person was working behind the pub. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So not being able to serve alcohol, not quite 18 yeah, but was doing a little job we're. Like, hey, we. Talk yeah yeah that was crazy but I've I've not yet had that either where I've been just gone to the gone to a pub for a drink and they're also and they're also just at the pub because because I think now is the time where in year 8 sorry in years in year 4 they're eight years old aren't they 8 turning 9 yeah so so now is the point where 10 years this year they're turning yeah I have turned 18 but the. Problem Half the problem is we don't go to pubs. In fact, we have time to. Do it either we're perfectly timed having children and and not going to the pub anymore when our ex pupils go to the pub and I think that's just nature telling me something.

3:00 So don't worry anymore. Just stay at home. Well, kind of leaks it out, I suppose. This is completely nothing to do with school. So you're you're allowed. Yeah, I'm allowed to say that because I am the host, the anchor, the Rory. My son is 1 as of recording this tomorrow. So this comes out on Monday. Rory will be one on Saturday. Can you wrap that? Can I rap what this podcast episode? Can you rap what you just said? Oh, Rory, my son is one, right? God started rhyming. I know you because you're normally when I when I give you this kind of challenge, you kind of go off on one and my heart's open. No. Because I'm in a, I'm in a reflective mood here. No, fair enough. I'm not in a, I'm not in a very, you know, angst, angsty, no rappy mood. Yeah, you wouldn't do. That the only rap I'm thinking of is wrapping his presence up, which he will not remember.

3:43 There is a part of me, you know, when I'm going to rush home after this to get everything ready. There you go. I just wait. He won't know anything so but you know, we've gotten some bits. We're having family over tomorrow. We're going to the zoo on Sunday with mates and that. Are you having one of those absolutely mad like Instagram parties where they spent 7 grand on some huge place with like massive balloon arches? New one? Well, this I wanted. To touch on this, because I've justified the stuff we have done, we're not going remotely over the top like that. Lawrence bought some, Lawrence bought some like balloons to make like a little arch thing. OK. There's like going to be a one balloon. We're obviously going to wrap everything up, set it all out for him and morning cake, there's a cake on the way.

4:23 He's going to do a cake smash a nice little while I do a little photo shoot of us doing a cake smash. So we're doing all this stuff. And I thought it is, Do you know what I've really come around to the idea of? I would be very cynical 10 years ago and I'd be like, what are you doing? Oh my God, So stupid. You can't do anything. Yeah, actually, no, it's from. It's for us, isn't it? It's for the bears. Because then you take the pictures, the memories, like the key can look back on it and see what's happened. And also from our point of view, it'll be a nice day with him. We'll enjoy it. And it is for us as well As for him. And I think it'd be really. Exactly. The picture. He won't remember it, but he will. But he will at some point look back at those pictures and be like, oh, they really love me. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? That's what you wanted. Yeah. They really celebrated my first birthday because. Because they love me. And what's that worth? A few £100.

5:04 Yeah. Are there any Instagram trends for birthdays that you haven't done or have you just? No, no, no, I don't see. The thing is this is something I was going to make a joke now, but this is genuine. But this is genuine. We will maybe talk about this because I still can't get my head round people who work in education and teaching, who post pictures of their kids online. And I know you, you've come to the conclusion you're online that that's fine and thousands of people do. And I'm not saying it's inherently a bad thing, sure. But having gone through like all of the prevent training and like the very stringent, like just don't do this though, because obviously it's the right thing to do and it's safe. And you know, just err on the side of caution. I'm not, I'm not trying to be no, no, I'm trying to be horrible. I genuinely, I'm just like, I, I really want to get into the minds of people who work in this industry who then are like, yeah, I just put them online.

5:49 It's fine. Well. Like I didn't like our babies. Yeah, I, I just, it's so funny 'cause I'm so the opposite. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like. My honest opinion, this is gonna sound really horrible, but this is the way I justify. No, it's fine. Go is. I've just called you. I've just. Said, I'm not saying this to you, right? But my thought is 'cause I do this with loads of things like when people are in in shops being like, Oh no, I don't wanna get contactless card. My fault is who do you think you are? Nobody cares. So do you think all that prevent training is nonsense? I. Don't all all the safety. Anything to do with this? I don't think it's. Nothing, no, no. All the safety stuff online where it's like never, don't obviously don't post you. Can't mind, this is what I find funny right? So your post pictures and people post pictures of like emojis of their face. I'm like, what do you think? Is it that? Is it just? No one's got his face. Is it just this part that matters? Yeah, that is it.

6:31 Yeah, the identification, because no one if, if my baby was was like, if my baby, you've got a picture online. Yeah, you could identify your child online because you'd be like, oh, I can trace that to your account, to Lauren's account. I know whose baby this is. It's this baby. And then if I know where Hayden lives, I know where this baby lives and all that kind of stuff. And I'm just like strangers online don't need to see his face. That's my opinion. Where I'm just like, there's no need for that to be anywhere. And with AI and with, you know, such ease of manipulation these days, I don't want his face to be on the Internet Willy nilly. I don't want to be providing that like his, his face might find its way on the Internet somehow in the background of picture when he's gone to soft play. I can't control that obviously, but I I can control physically taking a picture of my child's face, putting it online and pretty much saying, here you go, anyone. Like we've got over 11,000 nearly 12,000 followers on Instagram now.

7:24 And I'm just like, oh, I don't know, probably person I don't know personally. 11.5000 of them, yeah. I just don't want my baby's face though. I. Get it? Your point are like totally logical. And I'm not even going to like pretend that don't aren't valid, but I just I just can't. To me, it's like, I don't know, you know what? I'm always like probabilities, right? I'm always working on that. It's I'm like, yeah, do you know what? I could also walk down the street and get struck by line and hit by a car at the same time. I just think it's so ridiculously unlikely that anything could possibly happen because we're nobody. Like people with millions of followers make vlogs of their kids. And it's like, I just look at them like, what? Who am I? Or they can do it but. Well, I spoke to Lauren about this every day because she she's into this kind of stuff.

8:04 You're Lauren. I think it's the same way that you just get following like a family on Instagram, on YouTube and stuff. And she she watches this one family on YouTube and it does have young children who, like are in their school uniform. Is that we? No, no, no, no, no. But I think that's one of them. It's someone else, young children in uniform. Yeah. And the video is that the dad and the mum surprised them of the trip to Disneyland. Yeah. And they go away. And it means they're missing Friday at school. So that's one thing which straight away as teachers were like, oh God, we know that's bad, but also I don't mind when kids go on holiday. So that's already a grey area, but there's just kids just talking. They're in their school uniform on a YouTube video, thousands of views. That's I'm just like, what are you doing? That's obviously awful. He's got your school uniform here with a logo, like just just everything we've been taught as teachers, like that's a terrible thing to do. And and then we're there as teachers watching it, taking it in like this is a nice video.

8:53 But also, wait, what? Isn't this like the exact opposite of what we say is the way to be safe online with young children, with young children now? You're doing it right, but I just I just want to ask like, what do you think would happen? Genuinely, what do you think could happen? Like by posting Rory, that's not not on our like not on our podcast one because that is different. Like that is 10,000. I get it. That's a different level to like your personal private because you don't even do it on your personal private. That that's probably, I could probably sit and justify it doing it, but I've just come on the side of. Just don't do it at. All yeah, because you're even even I reckon on everyone's personal account, if you went through who follows you on your personal account, I reckon you'd find some people who you're like, I don't actually know you. I don't actually know who you are. Like I've just I know of you, you in the area. You're a friend of a friend of a friend. And I don't know, I don't know what you're into. And the the for me, you've seen what AI can do now you've seen what like you can generate from a picture. And I'm just like, not yet.

9:50 Yeah, it's it's I'm just. Concerned I'm online. No ones no no ones. AI my my opener. Yeah, no ones. Doing it like what? Yeah, yeah. Maybe not to you, you're just a weird middle-aged man like, but there are weird people out there, Hayden. There are weird people out there with children and stuff and it's just I, I just again, there are thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who do it and it's obviously fine. Yeah. I'm just saying from a point of view of a teacher having sat through hours of training on this stuff, I find it counter intuitive to then just do it. Yeah. Fair enough, Maybe I've been indoctrinated by the no, not safe. Been indoctrinated. I think you're just, you've always been a very I, I you always been like this. I, I kind of, I don't think I'd even you'd need to have a baby for me to work out that that would be your opinion genuinely, because I just know.

10:33 What you're No, no one was shocked when we said we're not uploading. Yeah, you're. Very because that is very you, and I don't think it's a bad thing at all. But I don't think what you're doing is, is inherently bad. No, I or the only point I'm making is I, I would love to get into the mind. And I have done here a bit, to be fair. Yeah. Of a teacher who sat through all that training and then decided to kind of almost go against it or, or, or at least just say, well, you know, I understand all those risks, but I'm choosing this. I I was very interested. In that jump bit, funny enough, yeah, because the training to me is like. Is it specifically different? Yeah, I don't know, maybe it's just a one step away where it's like when your kid is, when your teenage daughter at 13 year old, thirteen years old is like a prime suspect for, you know, just all that horrible life. Then we'll get into it all horrible side.

11:14 I thought we all know exists, right? It's like you maybe, maybe don't post the pictures of them all over the Internet in their uniform. Yeah. Like it's uniform is more for tracking and stuff. That's what I mean. Like it's just easy. It's easy to find them away from whereas but it just general pictures. I'm like, OK, I can walk down the street and the same people can see me with my child. I don't. I don't really care if people see me and pictures of my child. My child is one of billions. Like I just nobody cares. Honestly. My honest thought is nobody cares. OK, nobody cares. That is my honest. Thought maybe I'm cynical. I don't. I'd love to help people think genuinely because we follow people who do both. And again, I think it's enough widespread on both sides where there's clearly not an obvious answer, else it would be way more, way more one way. So I'm very interested.

11:57 It depends how much you think the risk is. As simple as that isn't it? If you think the risk is risky enough, do not do it. OK? Just don't do it then. Like objectively it's just regardless of our opinions, your child is at less risk than mine. By definition. Well, yeah, OK, Yeah, OK. Because. I am posting pictures and and you like you said those things do exist. I just don't think that exist enough for me to be. Remotely worried about it like. And I just I'll share pictures on my Instagram to my 300 not even that like 200 and. Something. Yeah. And it's closed and you do, you know you are in control at least of that aren't? You but you know, we shared a picture. You shared a picture on on our. Yeah, before the whole blow up. Hey, dude. Yeah, yeah. And but it doesn't bother me. I'm not I'm. Not Yeah, that's fine. The other day I post, I think I posted a meme, very popular meme at the minute, of this boy who's like a youth pastor, who's a child who's on like Ellen DeGeneres or something old, an old show. And it's the mean way he's going. Yes, yes, yes.

12:49 And he's doing like a sermon basically. And he must be like for this kid. Oh, OK. Yeah. And, and I made a meme out of it. I didn't think twice about it. And I was just like, I made a silly meme. It was when you're doing your marking, you get to the last three books and you remember they were on and you're like, yes, because you're going home early. And I posted it. I know you're like only honestly, like 4 hours later when I saw the notifications coming through, I was like, oh, that. Should I have posted that? Yeah, I have just posted someone else's kid. Like, I know they agreed to go on television. And I suppose my point here is that's why I don't do it for Rory because I've seen this meme online. I've gone, well, they, the parents and the child decided it was fine to go on TV. So it's fair game. I can make a meme out of it. It's nothing. It's safe. It's and I'm like, oh, wait, I don't think I'd like that the other way around.

13:33 And then I started thinking of a million things of where is my line if we got invited on ATV show. Yeah. And they wanted to film a little bit where it's just with the family and Rory's playing Exactly. Would would I say no to that? And I'm like, it's so funny. I probably would be OK with that. Yeah. Despite that being millions thousand times worse than anything you've discussed. Yeah, exactly. And that's why I'm like, I really had like an inner monologue like argument with myself almost of what is acceptable. And that's why I wanted to ask that question. Basically, I don't need to think I'm just attacking you. No, I'm not. I really I really want to get to the bottom of. It, but I've always found it funny. I'm glad you brought it up because I've always wanted to say without being without being offensive to you, like no, so offensive. Why do you think like it matters? Sort of. Thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. Well, that wasn't remotely planned. That was really interesting. We're doing the pod. Yeah, we're finished on some nice comments in this in the catch up because I just wanted to reflect really quickly. Yeah, about the fact that honestly in the last, I think in the last week or two, we have literally gained I think maybe in the month we've gained about four or 5000 followers on our Instagram insane.

14:27 And that is translating to listeners to the podcast. And one thing that has been unreal for the last two weeks have been the constant ream of people getting in touch with us either on a comment on a real or via a message, very much more detailed DDM, where people are basically saying, thank you for talking about this. No, it's nice and it's lovely because we, we sometimes I worry and I know you do that we can when we really get our teeth into an issue, for example, talking about, you know, basically being a teacher and how it's unmanageable. I did a reel where it was me talking about how I'm scared I'm going to quit. And I just explained how I love teaching, but I'm, I think I'm heading towards quitting this job. That's where I think the road is taking me.

15:09 You know, we've spoken about just in general. You spoke about the fact you've got a young family now and you don't understand it. It seems to be incompatible. Yeah. And there's been so many people when we put out there, we didn't know we get this response, but so many people who are saying, Oh my God, thank you. Thank you for talking about this. Thank. This is exactly how I feel. I hate that I think I'm going to quit teaching. I love teaching. It's what I'm good at. It's what I've become a professional at. But everything around it is so crap that I'm scared I'm going to quit as well. So it's going. To be a bit more of a taboo than we realised, isn't it? Because we've always talked quite openly about these things. And I think we maybe forget because we do create our own, our own echo chain. But we say this on the podcast a lot. Dylan and I tend to agree on most things and we do try actively to sort of challenge each other now a bit more. But yeah, maybe it just made us realise that actually a lot of people don't talk about it at all, and it is kind of just refreshing to just chat about it and we'll do it out in the open so that hopefully you guys can engage with that conversation. We will continue to do it because it's really refreshing to see people saying, yes, I agree. And and you know, 95%, ninety 8% of the comments were like that. They're really positive.

16:14 And there was one real, I think you wanted to mention something about it was a real basically saying what is what? Here's the benefit to being an amazing teacher. It was a really good one. When you posted it, I said I messaged you didn't. I said, oh, that's provocative, right? Yeah. Because it basically said is there there's like there's no reward. Sure. The real that Dylan posted, if you've not seen it, is something, it says something on the lines at the beginning. So I've got it playing right now that there's no there's zero reward for being a good teacher. Yeah, what? What do you actually get? Like in any other walk of life, if you're good at something, what's the reward for being good? Amazing teachers are punished with extra workload and 0 and responsibility with zero reward is what you put. And I thought that's going to get some people's backed up. And it was interesting 'cause most of the comments, despite what I thought, did actually agree and just kind of make Sarki comments like, oh, what you get is extra workload and and the toughest class next.

17:00 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But there are a few comments that I just thought I, I just, I didn't talk to you about that because I wanted to just. Throw them at me. I want to. Throw them because I want to get your raw. Opinion. Yeah, OK, let's do it I. Want to see if you get like get if it gets your back up, or whether you just have like an actual response to it. Because I'm not being funny as well. Genuinely, I've got the Instagram and I miss 75% of the comments at the minute because it's just too much. Because you're. Not like you often respond or like. Them. Yeah, yeah. You haven't done it to some. Of these, yeah. So here's one that I thought was interesting. Really short answer, someone just put, the answer is intrinsic satisfaction. That's what you get. I mean, that's true, right? But I think you can get intrinsic satisfaction by not doing 4 hours of planning at the weekend and just teaching a lesson nicely to the kids.

17:43 I feel like I get intrinsic satisfaction and I don't necessarily go above and beyond and have loads of extra responsibility in the classroom. I think, do you know what? I understand what that person is saying. I don't want to completely RIP apart what they're saying because because it is true. If you're a good teacher, you get more of the kids and you do probably get more satisfaction. But I, I think there has to be a point where that's not a good enough answer, is it? That's not really a justification for squeezing pay for 15 years. It's not really a justification to look at someone who's doing really well and say to them, oh, well, actually you can do more now because you're, you're getting more out of the kids. You're more valuable, so you can do more. So sorry, go back to that, But you just said I'm more valuable.

18:23 Oh, can I get like a monetary or can I? No, no, no, no. We just want you to do more stuff, please, because you're good at it. Yeah, the word valuable is like it's broken the second you say that. Yeah, you know what that means? Yeah. So that's valuable. Yeah. That's my response to that one. That was quite a lot. I'm just going to read a couple more because it'll be the same response. But there's quite, there was quite a theme. Like someone else said, self gratification. That's typically why people want to be teachers. This whole that whole toxic culture of don't do it then if you don't want it, you do it because you love. It it is, it is honestly double edged sword that where there are two answers which both completely rinse that the outlook answer 1 is like I always say, people are leaving, that what you're saying isn't a solution. People are leaving because it's awful. We'll just leave then. I do you want to stop people leaving because that's not what we want.

19:07 And the other edge of that sort is, yeah, let's let's just completely dismantle that. You know, you can go into a job because you want to and because you can get lots of out out of it and because it's amazing for society, which we all seem to agree, by the way. But these jobs were like, this is great for society and you get a lot out of it. But but it's the one of the least well paying jobs compared to being a a quantity surveyor. No, Dylan, because no, you're missing the point. Actually, you're completely wrong because this person said teachers aren't financially driven or they wouldn't be teachers. You've you've, they've got you there, aren't they? Yeah, they've got me there, got me there. Because you know what, The reason I became a teacher isn't to put food on my plate and pay my energy bills on my mortgage, which is skyrocketed. Yeah, I'm about to refix my mortgage in the next few weeks. Yeah, and my remortgage payments are going to go up by about two to £300.

19:48 So do you know what fair play my love for children pays for? That I've got one more for you. OK. And this one, this is the only one that I thought that's just quite interesting. I think you might you might have even replied to this. I don't know. Yeah, I know you didn't. Someone else did. Cool. It starts with I think you get a genuine self sense of fulfilment to try to recover. True. And then he says most kids also recognise and appreciate an excellent teacher. Generally speaking, your life in the classroom is also easier and more enjoyable because there are fewer behaviour problems and more engagement. So if you're a good teacher, it's it's saying that actually your life is better because you don't get as many behaviour issues. The kids respect you more as a result. So I thought that was an interesting one. What do you want to say? To that, you know what I think that's, I think that's actually right. I think that's correct. Because if if you know what, cutting it down to what it was, I was asking what the good teachers get right. And that is something they get.

20:33 I was, I was hinting at, you know, actual reward. Yeah, actual monetary value, you know, time out to do something. But you know what? That is absolutely right. Because if you're a better teacher, you do tend to have more control over your class. But but, but I'm going to preface this massively because it doesn't matter how good a teacher you are, some of it is out of your control. It is not as simplest to say the teachers in charge of behaviour done. It's not like that. We all know that because we could swap with another teacher and go into their class and have a much harder time with. Behaviour 100% Well, we've done it. Surely you've had I've had at least at least one class in my whole career where I felt like I was totally out of control and their behaviour was like unruly. I could I couldn't control and I've started to think, Oh my God, I'm not a very good teacher. I just and it without my control. I just could not control them.

21:21 No one could have. And that's where that comment, although I get what they're saying and there is truth to it that it is. If you're better, it is easier. Doesn't mean it's necessarily easy though. And I don't want anyone to sit here and watch this and think and listen to this rather and think, oh God, I struggle with behaviour. Is that because I'm a bad teacher? Bad teacher? No, not at all, because anyone would struggle with a certain class. So let's just dismantle that direct correlation that you're trying to build there, a loose correlation. But yeah, I get it. Yeah, interesting. OK, well, but. No one really addressed the point though. No one actually addressed the point of it. Should there be some financial gain though? If you're literally better as a teacher because, you know, whatever we met, however that metric is measured, I don't know. Then there is basically what we were trying to say is there's no incentive.

22:06 There's nothing that's like, hey, if you kind of like meet these targets and do this, actually there's this incentive. You don't have to. You can just be a teacher and just crack on with your job or if you really want to drive for these things and push these things and be a subject leader and do this and then maybe work up the ladder and blah, blah. There's just no incentive for it, and the financial incentive is not there. The whole sector, along with many others, is built on goodwill. Yeah. And if that could well was eroded, and you know what, it's being eroded, which is why we have the retention crisis. I think at the end of this podcast, we might talk a little bit about how to actually fix this because it's kind of links to what we're going to talk about. If we actually want to fix it, then that's what we really need to target. The erosion of goodwill is what is breaking. This we got to how we fix it because we got rinsed by someone the other day, didn't we? Saying yeah, you're just moaning about the problem though, and you're not telling us how to fix. It you know it was.

22:50 Like, it's the podcast, mate. We're just, we're just talking about the problems. All right, leave, leave us alone, all right? We don't know the answers. Well, we do. We do tend to in actual podcast talk about, you know, what we could do instead. So that's the problem with posting short form content is the context. Yeah, the context is gone a lot of the time, Right. Anyway, let's play this Jingle. We've had a long chat. We're going, I'm going to spend the next half of this episode talking about something that we mentioned last week, which I think is a massive bugbear for us too. And it's reinventing the wheel. I can't wait. Reinventing the wheel. That's what we're going to talk about this week because as teachers been in the game for like we said almost 10 years each now and we're still in the game. We are starting to see the reinvention off said wheel.

23:33 So when we talk in education about the obsession that we have as educators to do something over and over again, what are we actually talking about? What? What is reinventing the wheel in the terms of education? Why is it a problem? Like what is the current situation we're in? In education, reinventing the wheel is when you are planning from scratch every single year for some reason, despite the planning existing for those objectives, not only just in your school, but perhaps in your county or in your trust or even just in the country. Because we're all kind of teaching the same thing. And it is getting to the point where you're 10 years in, not thinking of anyone in particular here, where you're 10 years in and you're still finding yourself every year just replanning and replanning and replanning from scratch, From scratch. And you think, Oh my God, I've taught the same year group for five years in a row.

24:21 Why on earth am I still sat there at the weekends? Because let's face it, it's not a school time, is it at the weekends planning lessons from scratch for objectives that have been here for 10 years. That's what I'm talking about when I'm mentioning and reinventing the one. I don't understand why we have got to this date. Why is that happening then? Why is that a thing? Because, you know, someone might say to you. And we've heard people outside of education multiple times when we've mentioned this, who are in different industries who say why? Yeah, So what? What's called? Why don't you just use the old just? For a real quick bit of context, I had someone painting, you know, the never ending bathroom that. We talked about. Oh yeah. Someone painting the ceiling a few weeks ago. And genuinely, we just got into conversation about teaching and he literally said, can't you just use what you did like last year?

25:03 If you're in the same class, the same year group teaching the exact same sets. And I was like, yeah, that would be good. I sort of didn't. And I kind of felt embarrassed. I actually felt embarrassed. Did you have an answer for him? Not really. And I was like, my God, This is why I want to do this episode. I mean, like get into the nitty gritty of it all. And I was like flustered almost of like, well, I, I mean, I kind of, I could sort of, but, but we can't because we've changed this one thing now. And every year we seem to change something. So this thing's changed, which was messed up the slides. We've got to change it. We've got to change the way we present it. And all our lessons are a bit shorter now actually, because we changed that and we changed the structure of our day and, and so that we can't use that anymore. And I was a bit flustered thinking why can't I just use all the stuff I use? So are there legitimate reasons then to do this? Because you're, so I, I really want to think about now why?

25:46 Like what is this coming from? Because from my point of view, the reason why we, we feel the need to do this, there's twofold 1 is from the top down in certain schools, something being laid out as to say, right, guys, from now on we're doing this. I'm afraid that means we're going to have to slightly change how we're doing XYZ. And that is just laid out in front of you. You're told to do it and that's frustrating and it can be frustrating even if it's really well meaning and we understand it. That kind of reinventing the wheel is like, oh, sorry, we're going back to what we did five years ago, which seemed to work well because in the four years when we changed this, actually that didn't work quite well. And when we changed it after three years, it did have an impact. So what we want to do is really, really go for that a bit more. So after the second two years, we need to make sure we're going to do that a bit more. And then you come back to say, no, actually it's not working. These kids need this.

26:30 Can I tell you what I think the two key reasons are? Yeah. So that's one of them. What was that one of them? Yeah, it's kind of one of them. What do you think? So I think firstly, there is a grass is always greener culture and it's like to the next level in teaching. Like it's ridiculous. You know, it is just, it is the cyclical culture that you were trying to get at then where you see teachers have been doing it for 1520 years, rolling their eyes in staff meetings and you sort of ask them why. And they're like, yeah, because we did this 10 years ago and we did it for three years and then we decided to do this other thing. And I think we have this horrible, horrible. And I do think it's toxic. Grass is always greener on the other side, sort of culture and teaching where we where we are gaslighting ourselves into thinking, oh, unless we if we haven't changed something in three years, then we are stagnating. That word in teaching is like a proper buzzword, isn't it all stagnation.

27:16 We don't want to stagnate. What do you mean stagnate? Have you seen how the curriculum hasn't changed? What do you or is it on a stagnate or what? Like the curriculum that hasn't changed and has stagnated in 10 years. Can't we? It's not stagnation, is it? It's just the same curriculum. Like it doesn't matter. And also, it's not stagnation because it's new children. I never understand this argument when people say it's a stagnant curriculum. It's a new lot of kids doing this less. It's not the same children. That would be stagnation doing the same thing over and over again. You get a new cohort every year. So from your point of view as a teacher, of course there's going to be some sort of stagnation because you are teaching the same objective three times in a row. But for the kids you're in front of, it's brand new for them. Yeah. Yeah. They've not seen what. Yeah. And what you delivered three years ago is what you need to deliver last year is what you need to deliver next year. Until that curriculum changes.

27:59 And what do you think? Who do you think you are? You're Oh, I'm better than the curriculum. I need to change it. School better on the curriculum. We need to change it. Yeah, I get that. There are. We'll talk about this later. There is a place for change when actually you've identified something that is just terrible. I get it. Like not every school's perfect. And therefore, to stay as they are, they're going to be things that are bad. But I just want to come back to this energy, right? Because I think there's another layer on top of this, on top of this culture of we need to change stuff. We need to change stuff all the time for some reason, for no reason. It's got you back up, yeah. Really big time. We've been dying to talk about this in this podcast because I think on top of that, we've got another horrible layer that is fuelled by this first layer of also there's no money in time, time in education. So when it does come to making change, it's always rushed and terrible. It's like, not always as I'm exaggerating, but there's a good chance that a school will identify the need for change. They don't have the budgets to actually explore it properly and research it properly and get training in and do this and that and that and spend some time on it. They'll just be like, oh, we might have also come in next year or the year after.

28:53 So we need to change this right now. Everyone right now, we need to change this. And all the grass is always greener. So we're going to go with that one. That one's better. Look, that's better than what we do right now, isn't it? Because what we do right now is obviously terrible because we've done it for three years. So that one over there, yeah, that's probably exactly the same. It's new though, isn't it? Shiny? Oh, let's do it. The grass is really green. Come on guys, everyone do loads of workload. Change it. Three years later, guess what happens? The exact same process. And then you go to the next scheme and then you go to the next scheme and they go to and eventually you get back round to realising all of the pros from that first one. Everything has pros and cons. So the pros always look great when you're only focusing on the cons of your current scheme and you go, oh, the pros of that one look good. And then you've got your teachers rolling their icing and yeah, they do look good. And they remember 20 years ago when we did the same thing. And that's the horrible stagnating, unstagnate whatever anti stagnating cycle cyclical cycle of chaotic grass is greener attitude and teaching. Well, I think that's basically what you're saying there is. It's one side versus the other.

29:46 It's the argument where we're stagnating because we're not changing anything. And there's the argument you're making, which is, yeah. But change for change's sake is obviously stupid as well, because here's the big problem and and you've alluded to this, I'm going to try and summarise it in one in one. Hit. I've vented now. So yeah, no, that's good. I'm going to try and summarise it in one hit because you, you alluded to this last week, there is a culture in teaching of snobbery, of turn your nose up at someone who dare suggest that you can use playing. You already have that. There will always be a few people who be like, what? It's a new cohort. You've got a new set of children. What do you mean? You think you could use the same lesson? Of course you can't. And this idea that you can't possibly be a good teacher unless you are tweaking everything about a lesson for the children in front of you.

30:31 Now look, don't get me wrong, I think you do have to adapt. It's a huge part of teaching. It's a massive skill to be able to do. So you have to do it. And that's fantastic, right? But there are different ways to adapt. If you have a good lesson, which you put time into planning once you can adapt how you deliver the lesson, you can adapt how fast through a lesson you get, you can adapt. You can adapt your pace. You can adapt lots of things that don't mean you have to press the delete button on that smart go from the ground up again and plan from scratch. And that's something that I see a lot of that I I'm at the point in my career right now where if someone was like that to me and a bit snobby a bit. So have you used that before? I would say yeah.

31:12 Yeah, I planned it four years ago and I've used every year since. Yeah, and you know what? The kids understand it because you know what, it worked four years ago with that cohort, this cohort, there are a few more kids with, let's say rounding. I love going to rounding because I think it's an amazing example of you have to know stuff before you even do it. And then lots of children get stuck in it and some get it really quickly. I think rounding is an amazing example of how it's hard to teach maths sometimes because, OK, this year for example, with rounding, let's say there are more children who can't even count in their hundreds. So when I'm rounding to the nearest hundred, it's almost pointless me doing that because those kids can't count hundreds yet. So you need to be able to count hundreds and know what a multiple of a 100 is first. There are also a bunch of kids actually who are really good at it and they very quickly come round to 100 and you need to think of ways to stretch them.

31:55 That can change year to year. There can be more children who don't know how to count hundreds, fewer children who get on quickly. There could be a much larger breadth of children. But if you've planned a lesson well, you don't have to re plan it the next year. You just have to have children doing different things. That's where the adaptation comes from for me. And I think quality lessons and quality planning, it doesn't have to be reinvented every 45-6 years just because you think it does and you've heard this before, I've heard this before. As mass leads, you might say, guys, we're not changing anything this year. Crack on. And it's almost as if people are waiting, Yeah, because they're indoctrinated to think, well, if. We're not changing anything we're doing. My job. That's bad, isn't it? No. No, you did, you did you all put in tonnes of work last year like when we did our, we did a lot of maths A. Couple of years ago, over about two years, I mean. And when there was a lot of change, you know, people did do a lot of work and they, they replanned a lot of their lessons and, and made sure it was up to scratch with White Rose maths, which I know you'll talk about later because you love it. And so do I.

32:49 And yeah. And then then after a couple of years and we've done it, or it was sort of like, yeah, just just tweak it. Maybe maybe change some of your starters to suit your current class, but like, yeah your lessons are fine. Yeah, that chunk of time you get to go over stuff that might change. Oh. Hang on. Sorry. Yeah, the curriculum is exactly the same as it was last year. So all those lessons you planned last year and you're no more upskilled than last year. There's no reason for you to replan them because guess what? You don't know anything more or nothing's changed. Just use them again. A big, a big, we're gonna come back to it towards the end of this chat. Is this has a this the problem is this, this attitude has a direct link to the retention problem, workload issues just piling on. And, and when do you know when teachers feel resentful? It's not when they've got to do work. It's not. And we've talked a lot about this.

33:30 Teachers know they've got to do work. We understand this stuff to do outside of the school time. We, we, we get our school holidays, we know there's a pay off. We know we have to do a bit more during the weeks that we're in school because that's how that's real life. Get over. It's a job. When we're resentful is when we look at the sheer amount of stuff we have to do. And 50% of it is pointless. Yeah. And And this is what falls into that category. Yeah, It this is. Pointless and it's, and it's, it's exacerbated by the fact that it's not in directed time. All of that pointless stuff is always outside of directed time. And therefore it's your evenings and weekends when you're doing the pointless stuff, which just makes it feel worse. If it was in directed time, you'd be like, well, I'm, I'm, I'm on the dollar baby. Like, if this is, this is what they want me to do, then they're, you know, I'm getting paid for this. They're wasting my time.

34:11 But when it's outside of school. Yeah. And that would flip things straight away. If it was in director time, I would do displays. If it was in director time, if they said to me, you've got your morning out, I want your classroom to have these five displays. I'm a worker. Yeah, you're paying. Me. Yeah, Thank you. Brilliant. Of course I don't have to enjoy every second of my job, but what I do have to do is take control of my own time and not do stuff in my own time that I I know is not helping my job. I think you've captured perfectly what people outside of teaching think about teachers, right? They I think they see, and I don't even blame them honestly because because at the end they only get a surface level understanding of teaching, right? I think they see from podcasts like this and other teaching channels that are kind of snobbery of if my job isn't perfectly satisfyingly enjoyable for me, then I don't want to do it. And I think that's what they see and that what they're not understanding is no, we're saying we don't want to do it for free.

35:02 I don't. If I'm doing it for free, I at least want to make sure it's useful. Like that is kind of it, isn't it really? But people see that snobbery of, no, they just, we all have jobs. We don't want to do stuff. Most people don't really enjoy their job, or at least don't enjoy a chunk of it. And it's OK because indirect time would do it because we're just workers like everybody else. Yeah, sorry to jump. In no, no, you're absolutely right. And, and I just have this vision there of, you know, just turning it back on them and saying, OK, well, if your boss asked you to do something, you know, won't help your job on Sunday for three hours, would you just be OK with that? Yeah, of course you of course you would say no, I'm not doing that, mate. Unless you pay me overtime, then I'll do it. Because if it's on your money, then yeah, sure. Right, let's have a very quick Jingle. We're going to talk about schemes after schemes paid and what do you think about schemes? What's a scheme, Dylan?

35:46 Well, a scheme is something that you might buy into as a school, and it's basically seen as almost a shortcut to understanding a subject. And what I mean by that is we've talked a million times about how as primary school teachers, it is honestly pretty much impossible to be experts at the history curriculum, the geography curriculum, the math curriculum, the English curriculum, and as lead in a subject, you might think I need to help my staff and you might buy into a curriculum, a curriculum scheme. So you might by into a math scheme or an English scheme, and the idea is that by doing so, you're taking some of the burden off your staff and you're saying, well guys, we're in a scheme now. This might have a progression, it might have some resources, it might have some tasks for you to do, something you can point your staff towards to really reduce their workload. Are you telling me that the national curriculum for geography at primary school does not already have all of this intrinsic detail in it, seeing as it's a government document for 30,000 schools?

36:39 Are you? Tell me that's not what I am telling you is that I think the geography curriculum is two sides of a four with a few bullet points saying do the Aztecs please? Right. So scheme history. Well, we'll ignore that. Do the do rivers please let go through the ads. In RE. Oh, and I'm fussed. But it is just two sides, yeah. So Scheme kind of fills that gap doesn't it, between the National Quicken, which is extremely vague and basic, to you actually having to deliver 6 lessons in term? It kind of. It plugs that gap and it helps. It helps you out. Yeah, and you know what, schemes can be unbelievable. Yeah, but I've got to say some schemes can can be dragged. I know you've been, I've had a vent, right? I know you've been waiting to have a vent about schemes for ages. So can you break down what is it about schemes that can take them on this range of being extremely good and useful? Do you clearly think some are too utterly terrible to the point that it actually offends you because you're getting annoyed?

37:31 Yeah. So firstly what I'm going to say is there are a group of people who get annoyed at schemes for a completely different reason to me. So I'm going to outline that first. They get annoyed at schemes because they think schemes straight away bad, because they feel like schemes are there should be no one between a teacher and the curriculum. They feel like schemes box people in, They feel like schemes which just aren't very helpful for that creative process. Is it a culture thing again? It's a culture thing again, because do you know what? Do you know what are they wrong? Probably not. But when am I going to bridge that gap and learn this curriculum inside out and understand all these themes that I need to weave into my lessons? I, I can't do it. I can't do it unless I'm putting hours and hours and hours into history and then geography and then RE and then science. I can't, I can't do that. So I don't. That's not why I don't. I've got this problem with schemes. My problem with schemes, it is when you as as a primary school teacher or anyone in school who's looking at a scheme, the breadth is unreal.

38:22 So my problem is for a good scheme it should provide you with lots of stuff, lots of resources, lots of ideas. Some schemes do this really well. Some schemes are dreadful. I'm going to talk about a scheme that does it really well for a second. White Rose Maths to me, as a scheme that you can buy into is unbelievably good and the reason it's unbelievably good is because anything you can think of that you might need to deliver the curriculum is in this one. Hub OK, let me test you then. I'm a maths teacher. I'm not very confident I won an overview for the year. It's that so White Rose has that it's an MTP and what it also does is every year grip has a medium term plan where it goes through topics in order and small steps to breakdown what how you might deliver in the lesson.

39:09 But it also makes sure ensures progression because you can go to year 2, year three-year 4, right? Look at multiplication and you can see that progression there. So as a school leader implementing a scheme, you know that if everyone is just looking at the scheme as a base point, you can ensure that progression. OK, brilliant. So I'm happy now I'm thinking, OK, that's taking a big weight off my chest. I'm now in Term 2 and I've got a I've got a multiplication unit coming up and the small steps are telling me I need to do a lesson on factors. Yeah, what else does it offer me then at this point, right? I need to teach it to the kids. So there's another document where each small step has two to three sides of A4 broken down. Each small step, there are hundreds of small steps. What like a guidance? It's a guidance. You can go to it and you can, you can look at it and it'll give you question stems that you could ask as a teacher.

39:51 It'll give you examples you could put on the board. It'll give you 5 different representations of how to how to deliver it. It will explain it with annotations to say use this to show this, use that to show that. So I'm feeling confident in the concept now as a teacher. But still. I've got a standard though and I need something on my smart board because we use smart balls or PowerPoints or whatever. Provide slides for every small step. There are slides on there, PowerPoint slides. I think this is amazing. Those people I spoke about a minute ago would look at it and go, oh, it's just a this is the, this is the time people use. It's just a plug in and play curriculum. It's awful. There's there's no chance for a teacher. There's just such an issue where we can just just use what's there. Yes, but you know what? We implemented White Rose because we saw, do you know what planned by specialists, Amazing stuff.

40:35 Everything's there. Not one person in our school blindly follows that White Rose progression. White Rose themselves say we would not expect a school or a class or an individual to just blindly follow all of these and do all of the questions that you're given. What White Rose did was they gave us everything and said to teachers, we trust you. Off you go. Do what you need to do. Adapt, supplement, get stuff out of your class. Don't need that. Take stuff out of it. But do you know what it did? It saved so much time because it gave you everything you needed. You weren't working from scratch, adapting what's there. As a teacher, that's the skill you need to do. That's what I'm talking about when I talk about adaptation.

41:16 Adaptation does not have to be starting from scratch all the time. Oh, we couldn't possibly use a scheme because how can you? What? The children in front of you, they might need something that that isn't on the scheme. Yeah. Do you put it in? Yeah. What? Honestly, going back to rounding, what more could a child need because they're from a different county than in someone else? To our county. Yeah, oh, oh, wait. Have you taken into account the background factors of these children and rounding to the nearest 100? Dylan children in Essex, they learn to round in a different language to us that was like, no, I think there's no. You know, there was an Anglo-Saxon burial site recently down the road. We've got to implement that into our rounding to 100. No you don't. No you don't. It's just rounding to 100. Do you know what there is? There is probably a best way to teach rounding in general. Whatever that way is, I don't know. Yeah, and it would be acceptable to do. That, yeah, and that, but that's why White Rose is really powerful, I think, because it will show you how extracting the the skills to count in hundreds, it will have a list of stuff that your child should be, children should be able to do already.

42:10 And that's where you can do your adaptation. Well, let me play devil's advocate then. Our school, OK, it's been successful in our school. And I think that maybe is down to the fact that we've got one really good teachers anyway, we aren't and that's just potluck. We work. We don't choose what we work with. And two, I think we did put a lot of training in to really encourage that variation and, and, and and adaptation. Yeah. Are there schools in the country that, if provided with a scheme like White Rose, would just follow it blindly to the detriment of the? Yeah, there are, there are and, and this is, this is the argument against that. So I want to really break this down now because now I want to talk about schemes that are bad in my opinion. There are lots of schemes out there. I'm not going to name any names, but I'm sure if you're a teacher working in a school, you're at some point would have picked up a scheme and been like, where's the stuff?

42:52 What? I don't have anything. 1% of the. Work what that's that's not helping me at all. And a lot of schemes are honestly glorified medium term plans and they'll just take from the curriculum what's already threadbare and say what year 4 you need to do Romans. Here are 9 lesson objectives for the Romans. Have fun. Maybe some like ideas a. Couple of ideas make. Perhaps you could do this or that. OK, do you have that task for me then? No, no, no, no. OK, so you have some, you know, basic slides then I could work through because you know, if, if I'm just comparing 2 Roman emperors to maybe a modern day leader, surely that's quite a basic that you know, you can just, you can provide me with that information. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We can't provide you with that information. Why not? What we want to do at this scheme is we want to give teachers the power to plan as they need for their children.

43:36 We don't want to plug and play. Are you saying you don't want to do the work no do? You think that's what it is? Do you think it's, do you honestly think like how much do you think they believe that the idea that we are just encouraging teachers to not think about their lessons and just deliver blindly and how much do you think of it is it is a load of work for us as a company to provide those lesson slides. Honestly, when you see the comparisons with like White Rose, for example, I think don't do a scheme if you can't be asked to put this actual work into providing the stuff for the scheme. If if your scheme is honestly a glorified MTP with some information, but you've got to go and supplement that, make up all of your own tasks, make up all of your own slides. Honestly, what you're buying there is just how to like lessen objectives and, and, and it frustrates me because I think that there's OK in both methods here of a really detailed scheme that gives you everything. Think White Rose to a different kind of scheme. Think of almost any scheme that you've seen, honestly, where where it's just very threadbare and you end up having to do hours and hours of work anyway and you might as well have died from scratch.

44:40 The negative about that one is huge amounts of workload for the teacher. The negative for the White Rose one is it's a bit plug and play. People might just blindly take it through and it might not be exactly what the children need. OK, pick one, Pick one if you're really serious about solving this crisis we have in schools, about actually looking at the retention problems and how horrendous it is. Pick one that you think's easier to to fill to fix. OK, as a school is the one where your staff have got to go away and build from scratch a whole curriculum anyway, even though you bought in a scheme is is that more detrimental because. You don't want the people to. Do a plug and a play. Risk of people couldn't possibly themselves because they're not possibly. Risk that, OK. Yeah, we'll use for. Something we don't want to risk that. No, no risk.

45:21 That or you have to implement a bit of training, which is to say, here you go, trusted professional teachers. Here's everything you might possibly need for for for your curriculum. Can you just make sure when you're actually using it that you just adapt slightly? Supplement, tweak what? What's what's easier and better to do? It's obvious to give your professional teachers everything they might possibly need, and to teach them how to then adapt it if they don't know how. To I agree, that last bit is really important as a, as a good SLT, good leadership team, it's kind of down to you. You know what, if you're a leadership team and you get in a scheme and then you get really annoyed a couple of years later because you think, do you know what the teachers aren't, they're not putting much time into adapting this stuff. They're just picking it up and using it as it is.

46:02 And actually it's not now, it's now not that effective because they're doing that. That's on you. It's actually not on the teachers. If you've done nothing. That's what I mean. If you've done nothing, if you've just gone, oh, there you go, there's the stuff, change it though. If you put in some training, then so say to your staff, hey, we've identified an issue. This is the issue. We think this scheme could be really useful, but we're not using it properly and we're not using it properly because too many of us are just picking it up and using it exactly as it is. And it doesn't work with this cohort you've got right now because and because this, this, this and this, this reason. So here's how we can, how we can use it. Not the grass is greener now over there because I've identified one con of this. So now we're going to use this other scheme where it's all different objectives and you've got to plan it from scratch. It gives you some task ideas, but you've got to do it because that way I can ensure then that you, you now know exactly what's in that and you're planning it for your class.

46:47 It's not the right way. And, and do you know what the similarity when you're talking then it just reminded me. I think we've done this analogy 2 times in episodes in the past where we've gone back to this whole mindset, right? Of it's very political. It's like there's like the Tory Labour when we, when we was in like vote time and we were talking all politics, it was that whole mindset of like having, having schemes and across the country, the benefit people like literally like the benefit system where it's like, OK, some people, some people might be taking the mic and abusing the system. So is it worth scrapping the whole system to spite those few people that are abusing it, but then punishing the 9599% of people that actually it was benefiting? Or do you just keep the benefits isn't there? And, and knowing that actually there's a there's a few little problems we can, we can try and tackle That to me is the same thing.

47:33 It's like, yes, go with the scheme that gives your teachers everything and just be aware that there is a possibility that some teachers might abuse it and then not actually deliver very good lessons at all and try and tackle that issue. Don't do it the other way around of I'll get rid of that that issue, I'll get rid of that issue, full stop. Punish everybody else. We're going back to planning from scratch, guys, because some people are taking the mic out of this white roast slide, Yeah. Yeah, it's like, no. So I think I agree that that I think schemes should should provide lesson slides and tasks that you can adapt and choose to use or not, but it should be there. If it's a scheme that doesn't have that, it's not a very good scheme. And I think what winds me up slightly is I've seen previously people who run these schemes toe that line of, well, we don't want to do a plug, you know, we talked about it, but OK, stop. Come on, be real.

48:27 Be real. You're you're a teacher or have been, I assume if you're doing a scheme, be realistic for one second. Would you have just done plug and play? No, probably not, because you're probably a good teacher. If you're thinking about building a scheme and you have all these ideas in place, you're probably a good teacher. You wouldn't have just done plug and play, just just just when you've got a scheme like White Rose. Okay. And I've seen White Rose as a scheme and I've seen other schemes. It just pales in comparison and it makes me frustrated at other schemes. And it is a dual edged sword. Like you said, the people are in charge. If we here's what I wanted to say as well, I'll talk about how good White Rose is. OK? I'd also don't necessarily think just if a scheme is detailed and has lots of stuff, I I don't necessarily think it's automatically good as well.

49:09 The reason I think White Rose is good is because it's planned by experts. It's got so much variety, it's rich in its explanations. And it is literally good. It is really good. Think about think about Oak Academy, the national thing where there's lots of resources online lesson videos, very detailed, a huge breadth of stuff. I don't think that's as good. I don't think that you could see it and just play a video and have a nice progression. I don't think it has everything, no. I think White Rose has everything and that's why it works for a. Lot of people don't like White Rose though. No, I see online a lot, Yeah, in teacher groups, but they don't like white. Rose, do you find, and I find this. Maybe I'm wrong. And I'd love to hear what people think if they've got legitimate concerns about stuff like this. I find with White Rose, people's frustration is they'll say that they're annoyed that they can't plug in and play. Yeah.

49:53 So that they're frustrated that, oh, well, this sheet isn't suitable for my class. They can't do all of these questions. And I'm just like, exactly this is this is where it needs to be the onus on the teacher. They've given you something, they've given you ideas of the like. Quite often when I plan from White Rose and I have done in the last God knows how long, long time I will look at their, I will use their PowerPoint slides, right. And I might take bits from it that I think I'm going to show my kid to that because that because I've got maybe a high group this year and I don't really some of this other stuff. I'm going to take this part though, because that saves me some time. I'll look at the worksheet that comes with it as well. And again, I'll and what I'll mainly do from it is get ideas of how to present questions in different ways. And I might like I might be like, I love number 4-5 and six and I kind of just want my class to do a lot of that.

50:34 So I'm going to take 4-5 and six. I'm just going to write a couple more like it and it's going to take me no time because a lot of the time in mass, it's thinking of the question idea, like how to present the question. That's the that's the problem. And I'm like, cool, I'm just going to take 4-5 and six. I'm going to snip them onto a thing and I'm just going to write a few more like that. And that's going to be my little task for today because that's kind of where I want them to go. So I've adapted it, but it's saved me so much thinking time and also done some of the groundwork for me. And the best case scenario, I'll look at an objective and be like, this is spot on. This is pitched bang on for my class this year. I'm going to use it as it is, right? Now, Yep, and and you've hit a nail on the head. That's exactly what I wanted to say basically was do you know what that last 5% is on the teachers?

51:16 And and I would love to hear someone speaking about especially White Rose, because I do love White Rose. I'm a big advocate for White Rose. I think it's fantastic as maths needs. I'd love to hear someone talking about it in a way where I couldn't convince them of in 10 minutes that it's then down to you as the teacher. If you want a plug in and play curriculum, you're going to have to put up with the negative sides of that. Which is exactly what you just said. Your kids will not be able to access some questions. There be some children stuck, other children whizzing through. That's where your skill as the teacher comes in. That's where, like we said earlier, we're not afraid of doing work. That's a bit of work that we obviously have to do to be good teachers. You know, the irony of this whole thing is though, because I've I know you'll have heard of this as well. I have heard of so many schools, right where they're so afraid of teachers doing things the wrong way, right, that they buy in a scheme that is kind of plug and play. And then they're extremely strict and say you need to follow the scheme exactly as it is because they're afraid that people don't follow the scheme.

52:11 They're going to go off and start doing things that are a bit crap. And then the irony is schemes like White Rose then become not that effective because you've got all these teachers following it exactly as it because they've been told no, my school will get crossed at me if I don't do the if I don't do the true or false slide. Because what they decided if I have to do the true or false slide, then I have to do the PowerPoints flashback, then I have to give them this thing. And then at the end I do the flashback floor as a floor as a plenary. If I don't do that, I get marked down at my score. So I have to follow that. And I don't think it works very well. And they're starting to then say White Rose is rubbish. I'm like, whoa, no, you've missed the point there. And White Rose themselves say don't do that. I know I've been to their training. I've been in the room. I went to training in London and we talked about adapting.

52:51 The whole thing was about adapting tasks. And it was the theme was we would never expect you just to use this, but you know, we've given you all of this stuff. It can be overwhelming. But what would you rather? Would you rather be slightly overwhelmed, have some training and get better at doing something, or have nothing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just go off the curriculum and maybe some glorified Medium templates. I suppose to finish off with this discussion, the point, the point I suppose I'm making here is are we really genuinely serious about trying to solve the teaching crisis at the minute? Do we actually want to stop teachers leaving in droves? Because it's so easy to look at these big ideas, these huge institutions that we have where where, where basically from the top down, they're saying, yeah, yeah, you can't do this, You can't do that.

53:34 These, these ideas that are entrenched in our brains that you are a bad teacher if and then that if means you're not going above and beyond doing hours and hours of stuff. The only way we're actually going to solve this teacher crisis is if we completely uproot that from the ground up. These little things quite clearly that coming out, these reduction workload reduction task force stuff, this little stuff over the years that we've heard, it's clearly not having an effect. It's clearly not having an effect to say you don't need to do displays. How many thousands of people do we still get messages saying we've been asked to do display because governors are coming around later since we've even told them that they don't have to do it anymore. It's not being implemented properly. And you know what? It's small or fry because even if that person didn't have to spend 20 minutes doing that display, which they shouldn't have to do, you know what, they're actually at a place where they've got to go home and plan from scratch.

54:21 And that's the big thing. It's. Going to take time. I think the culture is in a really bad place. You know the cult, the teaching culture is very is a very strong culture, very well known culture in education. You know, you know what the the meta culture is at the time. Do you know what I mean? And I just think it's going to take a really, really long time because it's not changing and all these things are coming out and it doesn't feel any different yet. I think it will just take some time. But the problem is with with teaching and the way it works is it's got to be a top down approach. It has to be. And you can, you can be at the bottom like we are. You know, we're just class teachers. We can be there screaming as much as we want, but until SLT get on board. As a whole. And as a whole and, and really trickle down that that that trickle it down, whatever it is the, you know, the change the culture.

55:05 And actively go to someone and say do not do this. Don't just kind of skim past. Like no, I know these guys are known as six hours at the weekend. But if I don't mention it and they don't mention it, it's all good. No, be active, be active about it. Tell them they don't have to do this thing. Tell them they don't have to worry. Because then next week I've had horror stories, right of honesty maths planning from a from a scheme. So teachers are planning from a scheme that was brought in, not White Rose, different scheme. They've got to plan for their mixed ability classes and they're in a school where there's more than one form entry. So there's 234 classes they can share between. And they have been directly told they are not allowed to share planning.

55:49 They are not allowed to pick, look at this scheme, pick it up, plan for it from scratch, by the way, because there's no slides. And then they're not allowed to share that with their colleagues who could then just tweak it. No, no, no, no. You've got to do your own planning because it's for your own kids. It's mixed it, guys. It's rounding to 10. Get over it. OK, get over it. There are 95% of objectives that do not need you to plan from scratch. You can just adapt and tweak. Things that already exist, yeah. Hayden I run on play a quick game with you to finish off. So we're going to play the Jingle love a game one last Jingle. We're going to play a game. I want people who are listening to play along. See if you can beat Hayden. My my thoughts you will be able to beat Hayden quick game. Then before we finish everyone, I want you to play along at home.

56:38 Context. I've been obsessed with Only Connect. Okay, it's a BBC Two game show, used to be on BBC Four hosted by Victoria Cora Mitchell, and the idea is it's groups of four things that are connected. That's what it's called, Only Connect, Connect 4, Not quite Connect Four now, but the show itself is incredibly hard. It's one of them shows where if you get like 2 questions in the whole episode, you're pleased to yourself. It sounds like a bit of you. Yeah, but I've shipped it back for you, Mr Quickest Thing. Thank you. So I'm going to give you 2 rounds. OK. The first round is connection. So in this first round, I'm going to read to you one at a time something, and you have to find out what the connection is, OK? If you get it after one clue, you get 5 points. So you get one clue and be like, oh, I think I know what this connection is.

57:24 That's mad. And have a prediction. It's really hard to get five points. After 2 you get 3 points. After three you get 2 points and then if you have to have all four and you get the connection, you get a point. The only issue is you can't just randomly guess and then keep guessing. I get one. You get one guess and you got to decide whether you want the next clue or if you want to have a guess. And if you want to have a guess, you lock it in with me and then write it down, keep it in your head, and then we'll carry on with the people at home. So I need to write this. Down. No. You can do it yet, but write it down for people listening who can't see that you don't have a pen to pretend you've written it down. But you won't lie. Yes. OK, OK, so here we go, right. And, and by the way, this is, I have like fostered it. So it's like education. So I'm not going to shout out the. Answer no, no, no, no. You're going to say next clue or lock in and I'll keep going for people at home anyway.

58:07 I will write it down. I've got a. Pen. No, it's fine. Let's go. Anyway. Ready. Yeah. What's the link between these four apparently random clues? Here's the first one, P. Next clue? OK, now for three points, Musk. So you've got P Musk. Next clue? 3rd 1 mats mats mats. You've got P Musk mats. 2 points if you get the connection now.

58:50 Is it people at home? Might be might be shouting. Education related, you say? I told you everything before. P Musk mats next clue. OK, 4th and final clue. Hi, Tory. Hi Tory, I have no clue what you are talking about. One last time, all four. What's the connection? P Musk, Mats. Hi, Tory. No clue. You'll never guess. All I can think the problem is with my brain. Wrong. You said Musk. So all I can think of is Elon Musk. OK. And I can't think of anything. I've not told you the spelling.

59:32 If it's this is a real, by the way, you'll have the spelling. I've not told you the spelling. No, but there's. Of Musk, No. Yeah, OK, but that's what you think. Given up. Yep, 0 points. Well done at home if you've got this. The link is they are all subjects with one letter. Remove PE is PE, Musk is music, maths is maths. Hi Tori is history. Oh, my days. That's a good. That's a really good game. That's good with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's one of those things where I felt like if I saw them written down. Yeah, you would have. I obviously didn't. And I was like, I'm not going to tell you because if I say, if I say, oh, by the way, the spelling of this, you automatically think of that as important. So I left it. But even they say yeah, that. Was a really cool question. OK, next one. This one is now what would be round two in the show and it's the same thing. So there's a there's a connection here. There's a connection here between these four things. But I'm not going to tell you the 4th 1. You need to tell me what the 4th one would be because this is a sequence now.

1:00:23 So you have to figure out, yeah, they're linked, but what's the sequence? They're coming in order of something. So for this one, five points, you get it after one, three points, you get it after 2, two points, you get it after three. And then there is no chance for one point because you are going to tell me the last one. So I don't want to hear the link anymore. I want to hear what would come forth in this sequence, the first one. James Cleverly. OK, next clue. Second kit Malthouse next clue I. Think you're going to get it now? Everyone at home we haven't already #3 Jillian Keegan. Oh, and I've got to get the next one right. At any point, you've got to tell me what would come fourth in this sequence.

1:01:04 What's that name? Is it Bridget Fuller? Yes, do what? Was the sequence. It was education secretary. Education secretary in order and you know. I didn't recognise. The second one, well, because honestly if you look at the like graph, yeah, you had like four in a row. Who honestly did it for like 2 months? Nadeem Zahawi was James was before James Cleverly. Oh OK. And they did it for so long. Do you know when like Boris resigned and then trust came in and then trust resigned? Nobody they had different. Because I recognised James, I couldn't think who he was. I was like James Cleverly. I know that name is. He, I think he, he was the foreign secretary before when the Tories his name. So he's done a lot of big jobs. He's currently going for the leadership. Who was the second person? Kit Malthouse.

1:01:45 Kit Malthouse. Do you know what? I didn't know that. You contribute a lot. I don't know if it's he or she. Imagine if I don't know if you did. Maybe, but it was tiny. It was like weeks or months, like no time at all. So I thought that was a good one. And then when Gillian came up, I was like, yeah. Come on, you got it. That's a good game. That is a really good game. I think that is such a you game. It's so your brain. It's crazy. It's like you, it's like quiz, but also links and like, oh, what comes next? Anyway, well done at home. If you beat Hayden, let me know how many points you got. You did Hayden, you got two points. I got two points. I have a possible 10 That's not bad, but I don't know if anyone would have got any of them are. Supervised to 1/5. Well done. Right. We're gonna finish up there. Yeah. Hayden, anything else to say before we? No, let's run again next week. Should. We well, I was hoping you would say something about maybe giving us a review or following. Us. Oh, hang on.

1:02:25 That's what you normally do. Really. Hang on. I'll say it. Just try again. I don't know yet. OK, Go on, ask me. Again, Hayden, you wanna For the first time ever, I'm asking you just in this episode. Anything else you wanted to say? Perhaps before the end of the episode? I'm. Looking forward to a. Random week guys, follow us on Instagram, join the crew at Teach Sleep Repeat podcast. We're doing that thing where we lean forward. Yeah, This Is Us towards the camera because we know the episode is ending. Give us a review. We're nearly 100 on Spotify. We might already be there, I don't know. But help us out, guys. It really does go a long way. See you next time. Next time.