Ep 90: 9 Things We Would Implement In Every School Immediately: Marking, Dress Codes & Play

0:00 Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Teach Sleep Repeat. My name is Dylan. And my name is Hayden, OH. One SEC. Sorry. Phone's ringing. Hello. Here we go. Scam hotline. Oh, it is. It is. Yeah. No problem. You want Hayden? Yeah. And I was following up from your scam from this week. No problem here. You. Go. We'll take. Yeah, Sorry. Yeah, thanks. Sorry, guys. Yeah, hi there. Yeah, I did get scammed. Yes, Yes. At phishing link. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. No, I'm not 90. No, I'm actually a young person. Did it anyway. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Dylan. Thanks. For bringing that up guys, jokes aside, right, Hayden did actually get scammed this week and I just wanted to very quickly summarise what happened because genuinely right? I know I don't understand like ageist or anything, but we're not like old age pensioners. I'm not understanding how things work. We do think, Oh well, we'd be able to spot someone trying to scam us, but you did actually get scammed. So like what?

0:43 What? Come on. Long story short, had a package coming with DPD. Needed to change. Needed to change something right? Couldn't do it on the app so I I thought I'll just ring them. Googled this is this is the first thing I googled. DPD contact UK number or something like that and and normally with Google the first thing that comes up is the number. Right, so that now. So I was like, OK, I'm used to that being the right thing at the top anyway. Was it a number? Was it a link? It was a. It was a right. OK it was a link. This is where my brain just wasn't braining. So I clicked on the 1st and the second link was the same. It was just like paid for and. They were sponsored. Yeah, I. Didn't notice it was sponsored. I didn't notice someone's paying to put it. Sometimes, obviously, actual companies have. Sponsored post as well. I know, I felt like such an idiot so I clicked on this link. I was like oh there's the number. Rang that number, someone said, Oh yeah, I'll put you through to the right department, I've just got to give you a different number to ring. I was like, yeah, fine, standard stuff. Companies ready?

1:29 Get away with giving a premium number, like not having it online but just redirect. Yeah, literally. Yeah, literally. It was clever because then the second one I rang said oh, £2.50 per minute, that's cool. And there's me thinking I just need to get this done so it's fine. 6-7 minute, 8 minute call, whatever it was in the end. Was he stalling? He was stalling big time. And I just spent all like £25 on this stupid phone call for you, for you later in the day to be like Hayden. I think you've been scammed about when I was explaining some of this. Story And I thought Australia was like, oh good job it's Hayden because if it was anyone else I'd feel awkward. How do I bring up the fact that I think you've been completely scammed because it was you? I was like you, idiot. Yeah, literally scam. Such a such a mug. But the fact is, like you said, like with older people in my family and stuff, I'm constantly saying that be careful of that text, that's not real.

2:11 Be careful of that e-mail. It might not be real unless they mean you. It's not real. And there's me Googling a number and playing £2.50 a minute. What was the link like XYZLMNO p.co.uk forward slash DPD customer service dash customer, dash customer? It was literally like customer.service@dpd.com. So it was quite like, it was quite real looking. But yeah, so be careful. Be careful out there. Yeah, a lot of scammers. Your bill this month has just. Yeah, my phone bill went 799-790-9799 thirty 2 lbs this month and I was like brilliant, that's I've just given £25 to a scammer. Oh my gosh. So yeah, pretty annoyed about that for like. The time for the podcast, me just winding. Yeah, winding me up, making me feel like an idiot. Anyway, so yeah, that's my week. Got scammed.

2:52 Only thing that relevance anything, nothing else is important. To me, well, I want to talk about Spotify Rapt because obviously he's been Spotify Rapt this week or last week, depending when you're listening to this. And I love the memes that kind of technomic out of people who post Spotify Rapt. OK, I find them funny. It's just funny. Like there's one that really made me laugh and it was this like video of Messi when he just won the World Cup, like taking it in like, Oh my God, I just can't believe what's happened. The caption was when Spotify Rapt tells you the artist you listen to most this year was the artist used to most this year. Like it like it's information. Yeah. Oh my God. Taylor Swift was number one. It's like it's all used to all year. Finding out Dylan does like the killers. Yeah, every year the Killers are in there somewhere. And Lin Manuel Miranda with Hamilton every year always in there somewhere. But what?

3:37 You know, I do actually like seeing other people's Spotify rapt. It's interesting to me just to get into the head of, like, what they listen to. Yeah, sure. But as a creator now, because we upload this podcast through Spotify for Creators and we're under that umbrella, you get your own rapt information about people listening to your podcasts and stuff. And I just wanted to say it really does match up with what we've been like noticing from messages and stuff and people listening because last year our following went up by over 300%. Amazing. Yeah, our listeners went up by about 170 hundred, 80%. Yeah. And our streams went up by a similar amount because streams are just like people actually listen to whole episode, right? Right. But yeah, it always like close to 200%, a huge amount of following growth.

4:18 And it just wanted to say thank you basically to you guys who are listening right now. And, and thank you to those people who've reached out and messaged because you don't have to do that. And it's so I can't explain how lovely it is when I open Instagram and and sometimes they lost their requests. So I don't see him for a few days. Yeah, God, sorry. And you go in there and it's just someone, you know, who's just honestly written like a whole massive paragraph about how thank you for the podcast. Someone said it's part of their Tuesday routine when they go to the gym. Someone said they have a Monday evening dog walk. And it's like. That I'm really looking forward to an evening dog walk because I can listen to the podcast and and I'm just like, Oh my God, we are part of like thousands of people's. Like routine. Didn't someone say that they literally went and parked up because they just had to listen? To like, yeah, yeah, yeah, rather. Than go I just like.

5:00 That's so nice to me to think that it makes me feel good. I think went to the seaside and just listened and yeah. And what what's amazing for me constantly is the amount of people who say it's had a positive effect because like you said, and and today's episode, you've clicked on this. We're talking about things we change. When you talk about things you change or things you think you're are broken, it's so easy to kind of get into a spiral of people telling you you're being negative. I don't do that. But I think it helps us stay strong, doesn't it? To talk about these things when people say no, no, these need to be talked about. Do it in a positive way. Talk about how we can make it better. Yeah, yeah. Because we like something. Solutions genuinely. Yeah. So I I really appreciate it guys. Basically, if you're a listener, messages, even if you've already done it messages again, say hello. I love, I love talking. To you guys, how where do they message us still?

5:40 Live, you can go to Instagram at TCP podcast. I'll put a link down in the description to this episode, but one other thing I wanted to talk about before we moved on go on. It's from my week. We've been we did a bit of writing. We're doing Vajat Paul, my favourite book to do with the children. Such a good book and the children absolutely love it. And I always feel like there's really good opportunities for quality description, quality action, speech, dialogue between characters and things like that. And it's really perfect for Year 4 for that exact example, because that's what you want really from Year 4 writing. Yeah, of course, sentences that make sense, but a bit of action, a bit of dialogue with speech marks, some description, some, some ability to put some adverbs in there to move around, play with the sentence structure.

6:21 That's where we're at of Year 4 basically, and this week we just had a lesson where we've done a lot of itty bitty stuff and I guess it's what I want to try and talk about. I find it tricky sometimes with writing kind of bridging that gap between I've got to teach you how to use adverbs, how to use conjunctions, what they are, and and literally teach you the building blocks to build a sentence using these things. But I also want you to do writing as much as possible and when you, when the children aren't concentrating on how an adverb works and where it goes, or particularly speech, because there's so much to remember of speech, commas, punctuation marks at the end, capital letters, blah, blah, blah.

7:02 I really struggle with that like bridge. So I just thought, you know what, I, I want you just to do some independent writing today. And so I generated a picture online of Var Jack in the city with the cars whizzing past. The kids could immediately like put what we've been reading to it. So there's all the inspiration was there. That cognitive load was taken away. But I then felt like on the board, I just had like a checklist of stuff that we've done in the last two weeks. And I kind of just said to them, I want to see these things. And I really struggle because I don't know if that's good or bad. I don't want your opinion on this is because they did some writing and the children who did most of the stuff on the board, it was kind of incoherent when I read it. It didn't really flow. There was no there was no focus on the story. You feel like we've lost that they've. Just tried to so hard to put that thing in that you said. Exactly.

7:49 They're like they've done a they've done a sentence with an adverb. Yeah. And then the next one, they've just done a sentence and put as at the end as a conjunction, even though it doesn't necessarily make any sense to do that. Then then the next one down, they've just added a bit of speech randomly, even though I literally said to them, don't worry about speech today, but they've done it and they want to put it in. Yeah. And this, this whole, I really struggle with this attitude of I'm going to teach this thing and then I need to see it. You're independent writing, so I can take it off on an assessment and say you're great. Yeah. I think, I think the whole system sucks. I think since maybe 2014 I think is when people start complaining like with Gov and all that. I think that we have become like slowly obsessed with like grammar, grammar terms and like and and seeing specific grammar things in writing to make that and that means writing is good. That's what I mean. Because honestly, I read this. I'll be really honest, I read their writing and I thought I could probably take off most of this stuff in the mood because you're actually really good at it now, but the story was crap. The.

8:36 Writing was crap. It was, it was bad. Like, yeah, I love my kids and they did so well. And then do you know what they did? Exactly what I wanted them to do. And of course, I said, this is amazing because it's what I said. It's what I told them to do. Yeah. I'm giving them this structure and this scaffold of how to succeed, and they're doing it. But I know deep down in the back of my head is just like a person who reads stuff and knows writing. I'm just like, I find it gutting that they don't. I've not really fostered that imagination or the idea of how a story works or it being, like I said, coherent. And I really struggle, we're all teaching with writing because I feel like I'm quite good at teaching writing in terms of I'm going to teach you how to use this in your sentences. And it, and it's beautiful when you add information, it makes sense. But when it comes to a longer piece, I, I, I, I don't think it's very good.

9:18 Yeah, because. There's a whole part of it it's lost, isn't there? Like you said, I feel I feel the same. I feel like I'm good at teaching GPS. Honestly, I'm pretty good at teaching a punctuation lesson and getting the kids at the end of it to write sentences that have that piece of punctuation, punctuation in it correctly. But yeah, like you said, when it comes to bit of writing, but I feel like I'm starting to turn like change the way I teach now quite a lot. I'm really moving away from those sentence level lessons where it's like today we're doing noun phrases. I've really stopped using that language. And I'm starting to do just things like today we're looking at how how this author creates description in this paragraph. And then and then, and then all I'll be thinking is when I'm modelling it, I say I do this. I'm very much trying to do this. Yeah, I'm not quite there yet, but I'm really trying to do this right. I'm trying to honestly just stop using the grammar terms very much at all.

9:59 And then just we'll play the game when it comes to the GPS test, honestly, we'll mention those grammar times later, but the moment it's like, I just want a model writing that has the thing in it. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots. And now you write a paragraph and just hopefully, because we've been modelling that specific thing loads, they'll naturally kind of do in their writing, but it doesn't always work. Yeah, that works for some, but not for others. For example of noun phrases, right. I actually don't think you ever need to explicitly teach noun phrases in writing, because all noun phrases are. It's the script. Describing now just. Like you describe will naturally do that when you describe like that will happen. However, when it comes to like using a semi colon or when it comes to honestly putting an adverb at the front of a sentence and stuff like that. I get you could kind of take away the fact it's an adverb, but you have to really solidly teach the structure of building that sentence and when it comes to speech, right?

10:45 OK, cool. But I do need to teach you that the reporting clause is here, then the comma comes there, and then this. And I've got to really be bitty with the the mechanics of it. And I feel like that takes precedent across the board before actually, let's just write a really good piece of writing. What I'd like to see more of, and maybe some schools do this and I'd love to hear if you do, is just some right. This is what I tried to do, but this is the point I'm making. I tried to just give them a prompt and, and just say just write for me. I had them on the board. I wanted to see them because I feel like that's what I've got to do. But what I said to the kids was honestly, I want to see two things in this writing. I want to see action and description. And that's all I said to them. I said I want to see action and description. I want you to describe where he is, what he's, what's around him and I want you to, I want him to do something. So some of them had some cool ideas like Varjak jumped on top of a car because the idea is he wants to talk to a car. He thinks they're dogs and he needs to recruit a dog to help him at home, and he thinks the cars are dogs because they're monsters, They're loud, they growl and stuff like that. So there's some really cool ideas, but it's just lacking that flow.

11:42 And maybe it's because they're 9. Yeah, I'm going to say you've got you've got to come into the players. I do feel like we've lost touch with like age when it comes to writing. Like the end of year six objectives, the end of year 6 levels is like, oh, perfect writers. Yeah. Is that realistic? I'm a 10. What do? They care about really. Because I honestly like if I read some of that writing. My gut now as a teacher was, oh, oh God, I wouldn't be able to take anything off on that assessment sheet. They haven't quite done this in to an extent. And OK, even those who have, they've lost the story. Really, I should be able to as a teacher sometimes just look at writing and go, wow, that's, that's a cool idea. That's imaginative. And I understand that this this action led to this consequence led to this action actual building of a story without being obsessed with or by the end of year 4, I need to be able to. Preposition.

12:28 Yeah, I agree. I agree. I just really struggle with. It can I say the best, the best writing unit I've ever ever, ever taught with my kids was last year. It was planned by my job. Share Julie. It's planned by me. Yeah, it wasn't by me plan my job share Julie. It was it was like a whole weeks unit right and it went totally kind of off script what you normally do. It was really, really different out there. She actually spoke to she spent so much time on, she spoke to her friend who's a secondary school English teacher and was like, how did you guys do it? Because I feel like we're not nailing it in primary school. Basically what you were saying and her English and the English teacher really helped her and it was, and do you know what? We didn't do any of it in the week on grammar terms, None of it at all. We spent the whole week looking at loads of quality texts, reading them, unpicking them. Then we had sheets all around the room and we were picking out phrases and vocab, right.

13:11 We did a whole lesson on the structure and how it makes you feel as a reader. And they're like, why did the why did they do a one line paragraph there? What did it make you feel? Did you notice they repeated that word three times? Why did they do that? Do you think that should be writing? That's that's right. Best writing I've ever seen in my life. And and we didn't even mention now phrases we didn't mention. Because you're absolutely right. Because we had that training recently about writing. And the phrase that will stick with me really strongly is the text is the teacher. Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's where I think we fall down massively in writing is I'm stood at the front modelling how to use a front of the verb 4 times in a row. Then they do it and they just plunk one in because of the sake of plunk one in, or they plunk some parentheses in for the sake of just adding extra information. Yeah, it needs to be completely warped. And I might be preaching to the converted here. Maybe I'm, I'm behind on my writing teaching and this is very normal, but I feel like this is a widespread problem where the assessment comes before the actual process and enjoyment and the act of writing creativity almost. Because what should children do?

14:05 Of course they should. They should literally be magpie. How on earth can we expect children to come up with amazing stuff? They can't. They're children. What they should do is read fantastic texts. Like you said, the text is the teacher. So we're going to take from this, we're going to use this structure, we're going to change who the characters are, but you're going to build suspense because you've read suspense here. Exactly. And this is where my knowledge is floundered. Like I, if I wanted to build suspense, I would not have a clue where to start in terms of there'll be people out there right now who are going, Oh my God, you have to use this book for suspense in Chapter 7. I just don't have that. And I feel like there's a long way to go to build that back up. But I think what's holding us back is the the curriculum and the assessment profile of writing that's holding us back into being less good teachers at writing because we can get through a tick box at the end.

14:53 And it makes me sad. I think we're suppressing writers and I just don't like. I've been to enough writing moderations in year 6 to know how depressing it is that honestly the end game is there is no one cares about the creativity. Genuinely, no one cares. All it is you sit there with your tick list and you go through and you're just making sure you can evidence all of the grammar curriculum. Honestly, yeah. And the punctuation stuff and, and a little bit of flow. Like if it if it genuinely makes absolutely no sense and they'd start saying, OK, doesn't make any sense though. But on the whole, then no one, really, no one really cares about the flow. Do you ever sit down and read like a you've written in Essex an amazing like shriller piece where you're really building suspense because someone's, you know, walking along a creaky floorboard goes and it's dark and I've got to see something run across?

15:36 No one cares about that. No, it's just like, did you put semi colon in there to join 2 clauses that quite. Yeah, yeah, mate, I get that that's important to understand. I'm not degrading that. I quite like teaching that. Like you said, it's quite formulaic. It's like maths almost. I don't. I don't mind teaching it, but what do I actually want from the kids when I read their writing? Really interesting, imaginative writers who are making the reader feel something. Yeah, I agree. That's really all I care. About and if a kid who was maybe a bit lower ability in terms of like all the grammar terms wrote a little paragraph. But it was really good in terms of the structure of it and the way it made you feel. But every sentence started with the there weren't really many conjunctions in it. It was quite basic in its form, like in the structure. No, sentence structure varies. But it built tension because they forced some nice words to use.

16:17 They honestly, they they wouldn't in this current system. They just wouldn't get picked up as a good writer as much as someone who didn't, like you said, like Vajic, poor stuff didn't really have like much flow to it or like the tension didn't really build up. But they've got very sentence starters or they've used a range of conjunctions that we've taught recently and look at those adjectives that that's an expanded noun phrase. Well done. They've even tried to use brackets in that sentence. Take that off and it's like doesn't even didn't in warrant brackets in this. Does it make any sense to use brackets in this suspense paragraph? But that's the sad thing anyway. We'll talk about this forever. We should. I mean, I'm sure we'll come back around and do an episode on writing at some point. Absolutely. I'll be very excited, too. And. But, yeah, that was my point, basically, you know, as a teacher, sometimes you sit there and think, wow, we talk a lot about success and like, I know the right thing to do and this is what we should do.

16:57 We're going to talk about in a minute actually what we think the right thing is. But I think it's really, really important sometimes just to sit there and go, do you know what? I am struggling with this. I really don't think it's hitting the mark. I wish it was completely different. Yeah, we're giving our kids good curriculum, don't get me wrong, and they're learning how to write. We're doing lots of writing. I just feel like the scaffold around it, the structure, the purpose would be much better suited to just being a bit different. Yeah, definitely. Let's go on to our fixing, shall we? Or do you have a few things you wanted to show me first? Maybe we. Could do I do yes, I want to do a little session before we move on and it and it's inspired by last week when I mentioned that we used to do riling up riling you up back in the early days of the podcast.

17:37 I've got a couple of screenshots on my phone right have things on Internet. I'm not showing Dylan no, I thought contacts. I even said do you sure you don't want to see him just before He's like no live raw reactions. Yeah, well, you said, you said to me, do you want to know like Rafa so you can start thinking it's like no. So if there's a bit of silence here, guys, I'm regretting my this. Yeah. Now, there's three things, right? You've got a choice here. You've actually got a bit of a choice. Two of them are just like, I just saw them. I thought, I've got to tell Dylan this because he'll just write them up. One of them is. I read it on a forum, and I've seen this question loads of times, and I still just have no clue what the answer is. I want your opinion. Yeah. All right. OK, Let me find it first. You don't know what the answer is. No. I just don't know what. I don't know what to. I didn't comment on it because I was like, I actually don't know what. This. Wow. He didn't comment on it. I didn't. Comment on it. I didn't get people warrior. So here we are. Just basically in a nutshell, because you know, I'll keep it anonymous person said they got sick, that's cool. And they blamed it on their class. They said there's lots of sickness bugs going around. They ended up catching it as well and we're off for a couple of days and they missed their PPA day and then they were back in that week and they're basically just saying should I get my PPA back?

18:34 Because they still use the lesson planning that they did for that week and all the stuff they've still got to do all their planning, but they weren't in on the day that they get PPA. So should they get the PPA back? And I've seen that question loads of times and I genuinely, I'm like, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. But do you have, what was your opinion? Because you might not know either. Well, my, my, OK, my, my, my instincts, my gut instinct in my opinion, are slightly different. Yeah, my gut instinct is that is unfortunate, but tough like, like I, I'm what I'm saying is I think it's normal. If you're sick on your PPA day, it's normal to not have it moved around. Let's say you're off for a week, whatever it is. Like you said, the amount of planning you did hasn't changed but you were sick on that day. Sorry. Like that's what I think it is. I don't. I don't know if it should be that, but my opinion is right. If your workload genuinely literally hasn't changed, you are being penalised for being sick. And instead of it will go down as a sick day on Tuesday, let's say, right?

19:30 But really all it's done is it's moved that Tuesday work to Sunday when you're feeling a bit better because you don't need to get it done. For the PPA work. Yeah, the PPA work so and the work you would have done anyway at the weekend outside. So it's a really weird one because, you know, in the real world, if people are sick, depending on their job, they do have to catch up. Yeah. That's that is the reality of it. Like if you're sick, you have to catch up. If you're in an office and you've got to work through 100 different, like claims or something and you're off sick, you've still got your 100 claims. Someone else might be able to pick up and help you a bit. Yeah. Which is what happens anyway in a school. They help you have other ways that you don't have marking and stuff. But at the end of the day, you still need to get through your list. So you're gonna have to catch up a bit. Yeah. I feel like it's one of those things where it's like really unfortunate, but. The I don't know you have a leg standard. So it's quite funny you said that because I haven't got them on my phone, but I remember reading the top two comments where literally those two things you just said, the first person was like, no, just get like, you, you are sick, just go over it. You're back in school now.

20:18 You can't, you can't help being sick. No one could plan for that. It would be really chaotic. Yeah. If we had a system where it was like, now someone's got to suddenly find 10% PPA for you in the week when it's not remotely planned for. Yeah. Yeah. And the other person was like, no, you're absolutely, you're entitled to 10% your teaching time. So whatever your whatever your teaching time is, the rest of that week, 10% of that should now be your PPA. But if if you're off all week, do you not get any? Yeah, that doesn't work, does it? Whole week. Yeah, is that just cancel that? No, just only feel planning. So I don't know if that points the best point. No, my my opinion there is sick pay is just slightly different. You get paid to do nothing by the way. Yeah, like, I know, I know you're sick, but you are still getting paid so. I'd love to know what the actual like union advice is. So if anyone knows anyone knows, everyone's like, listen to this thinking. I know this answer because I've been there and I've done it like, well, yeah. Spread it because then we can say at the podcast more people know it and then it's out there. Yeah, genuinely, knowledge is power. Because some people, some people just don't know stuff. Yeah, we do.

21:03 Yeah. So I thought that was interesting, OK, Because normally I feel like I know such stuff, that one. Got me. Give me one other one and then we'll go into the. OK, one other one. Yeah, we can go for it. OK, this one's a good one. OK, this will write you up. In a staff meeting last night, I was chastised for not staying to help at the disco. Oh. For God's sake. I was told it was an expectation. I've got a young child at home. I literally just can't do it. Can anyone clarify? This is allowed. It's after 6:00 PM. No, obviously not right, unless unless you at the start of the year have a directed time calendar. You've all agreed that this is part of directed time because it's been taken from XYZI. Think they made it quite clear that was not was not the case. If it's not the case, you don't have to go. Let them chastise you. This is something I've learned in education, right?

21:43 There are always going to be people out there who do exist, by the way, because we did a post about martyrs and the amount of people who commented saying these people don't exist, they're just trying to get the job done. So I'm telling you, I've met these people that you've very clearly defined as a martyr. Yeah, they're martyrs at that point. Yeah. If if they're saying to you it's an expectation that you have to come to the school disco in the evening when you have a child at home for your job. Yeah, tell them to get stuffed. Don't do that. Just just just say to them, no, sorry, I can't do that. And then when they say it's an expectation, say, OK, well, when will I get this time back or how much overtime will I be paid for doing this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you won't be. It's it's a number. Section 8 of the Teacher standards. Don't let anyone ever say that to you. Section 8 of the Teacher Standards has nothing to do with doing extra work outside of school for free. It's not about that.

22:28 Section 8 of the Teacher Standards is about setting an example in the wider, wider school, presenting yourself in a certain way. And even if you want to go to Section 2 of the Teacher Standards about being outside of school, still being respectful and professional, read the Teacher Standards. There is absolutely nothing in there about having to do discos. Because I remember being a student teacher and then saying, why don't you do a school disco tonight? It'll take off teacher standard 8. And I'd be like, yeah, sure, I'll do that because they didn't think twice about it. No, no, read it. You absolutely do not have to do that. People will be annoyed at you. Here's something I've learned. Sorry. Here's something I'm getting riled up the. Session's working. Here's something I've learned as a teacher. OK, setting boundaries will rub some people up the wrong way, and you setting yourself boundaries is going to be difficult if you also really care what other people think about you.

23:16 And really caring what your colleagues and people think about you is completely normal. Don't feel like you're strange or bad or weird for having honesty, wanting that validation from your peers. That's completely normal human response. However, you at some point have to decide would you rather feel awkward because you don't? You get a bit chastised from your colleagues, but you have your evening with your son. Or does your colleagues opinion matter more than spending the hour with your child in the evening? Let's be honest, it's obvious which one is the best option for you. Let them chastise you. They're in the wrong. Don't let these people control your life just because you don't quite like that they think you're lazy. You're not lazy. Doing the bare minimum as a teacher is already someone who is not inherently lazy.

24:01 It's insane. I've heard people say this before. I've actually heard this before. This is real. A teacher saying to me that person doesn't like working. Yeah. And this is a teacher who also works in the school we work in work shy while their work shy. I'm like, OK, And I'm at the point now where I say, well, no, that's not true though, is it? Because they do come in half 7 till 5:00 every day. They're just saying no to the stuff on top. So let's not set the norm as this much work. It doesn't mean someone's work shy. It means someone sets boundaries for their personal life. Get over it. And as the person setting the boundaries, it's tough to set boundaries. You have to be able to accept there will be people, no matter how reasoned your arguments are or how fair it is that you're doing it, will not want to put up with that and will make you try and feel bad. Try and make you feel bad.

24:47 Can you imagine a whole school filled with people who actually did set boundaries? I wonder if that exists. I wonder, I wonder if there must be some schools in the UK, in the UK where everyone has our same, our opinions on genuine and it's like we are really just on it with our boundaries and this is how our school operates well. Someone, someone's response to this would be genuinely, well, how can they just go around if people don't do it? And, and honestly, honestly, it wouldn't probably. But do you know what? At what point? Honest. So yeah, do you honestly, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm not I, I, I love to do things for the kids outside of school and stuff like that. And do you know what? I might do it if it not, if it benefits me, but if it suits my timetable and I'm like, OK, yeah, of course I'll do a little something. I used to go to the cross countries on the weekends and stuff like that. And then we started doing tutoring and we couldn't go to cross country anymore because we weren't getting any kind of pay rise off the government.

25:34 So I thought, well, I'll bump my pay was and tutoring then yeah, that means I can't go to the cross country or who's gonna do the cross country? I don't know pay me properly? Someone else do it for free. I'm doing something else now, yeah. Exactly that. So just basically setting boundaries is not is. We're the first people to say set boundaries, but it's not easy. No, you that will happen. People will make you feel bad for saying boundaries. You have to try and ignore. It most famous. One last point on this is clubs, isn't it? How many people have we spoken to over the years, even recently where they're like, Oh yeah, my school, everyone is literally just peer pressured and bullied into doing a club. And if you don't, you're ostracised. Yeah, oh, don't do any work, you're lazy. And we, we all do clubs. We actually do clubs for the kids because we love the kids. We actually like the kids. And you really don't. You don't like the kids? We heard the story that we have someone, you know, they they go around the room and individually ask people, Yeah, making the person have to say no, I'm not doing a club.

26:21 And then kind of like, OK, well, you're not doing a club, even though, you know, it's not unacceptable. You're just bullying, bullying, intimidation. It's tough to say no. You've just got to do it. Do you know I really want to just be in AI want I wish I was omnipotent and I could just go to those places and then. That's a new quote for the podcast. I wish. I was omnipotent. I wish I was right. I want to be everywhere. I want to suddenly be in that star from when that's happening, appear like, you know, maybe some sort of genie and be like, oh, toxic, you're bullying, you're starving to doing this. Poof, I'm gone again. And they're all like, oh, it's awkward now for that head teacher. Yeah, I love the idea of of doing like staff meetings and stuff like running CPD, right, Yeah, yeah, maybe we'll do it at some point in our future where it's around like how to, you know, break down these barriers and help your staff, etcetera.

27:06 I love the idea of helping staff being efficient in school, being efficient in school, saying saying no, etcetera, and just completely calling out, like you said, toxic people in school. I I, I just stand at the front now be like, God, some of you I I bet, Can you imagine make. And I know this is what they do. I'd already get this off the teachers beforehand and I'd be like, yeah, it's like when schools make people do clubs and they don't have to. And you know what? Happens and I know what happens in that school and look at the head teach, but you would never do that right? You would never just disrespect someone's time and head teach like sweating. Yeah, I definitely would never do that. Problem is in a real world, they just those people are manipulative and they would never book in the training because I know in advance this is a risk of, you know, the power of control I have over these people such a same way. But yeah, people are going to be annoyed at you for setting boundaries. You know what? Put yourself first. Set boundaries. Thanks for your opinions there.

27:47 I enjoyed that. Maybe next week we'll do a bit more riling up for Dylan because I've still got some stuff to share with you. Enjoyed that move on to the main part of the episode. God, we've actually got an episode we plan. Yeah, yeah, quite often when you, like we just said, set boundaries and talk about how the systems broken or what's annoying you, The big thing people always say is, OK, well, what's your solution? And it you know, sometimes it it's annoying. People say it's like sometimes something can just be broken. OK, But do you know what? It is important to bring a solution to the table as well. So what Hayden and I have done is we've put together a list of policies that we would immediately introduce into a school for various reasons, but most of them being, you know, well-being, workload, children, even just just what we think would improve a school immediately and things that are kind of what we feel widespread and broken, how we think we can kind of help.

28:39 That this is my favourite thing by the way, because like how many times on the podcast have I said, oh, in my perfect school, in my made-up school, I'm always making up this school in my head. And now we get to like be like, this is what we'd actually do. So I'm really excited. So let's do it. And again, I would absolutely love feedback on this. I'd love people to say, guys, that's not realistic because of XYZ. Or maybe they say John. Yeah. And also this let me know what you would do if you were in just dropped in charge of a school. By the way, being a head teacher in SRT is incredibly stressful and there are some amazing people out there where like him really hard who feel like their hands are tied. They've got to get stuff done. Some of that's passed on to their staff. And you know what? It's not because they're a bad person or toxic, it's because the system is so horribly broken. So just a quick heads up, what we've done here, if we haven't said, oh, get more Tasmania in because that's impossible, You know, you need more money for that. Oh not don't do sounds more money. Yeah.

29:26 It's like these things aren't things we could actually change. Yeah, we've done 9 policies here that we genuinely think you could send this podcast to someone who you're close to an SLT or who you just know an SLT and they could genuinely listen to and think, well, maybe we'll do this this and. This. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, hey, don't wait to start us off, OK? First thing that we would do. This is huge for me. Yeah. OK. The dress policy? Scrap it. For children or for teachers? For teachers, that's an interesting point, actually, we'll talk about in a minute. But for teachers, get rid of this. I mean, if you saw your any of Dylan's Instagram posts where he gets annoyed about the clothes he's wearing, you'll know that we do not like the fact that we have to wear shirt and trousers and maybe even a tie in some schools, Blazers, maybe in some schools. Who knows how crazy it goes. Scrap the dress policy. Go on. You're more passionate about this. Talk about. It Yeah, no, it's it's really the reason I feel so strongly about this is because I think that the theme through this will be, and this is something I want to remind people of teachers are professionals.

30:16 We are literally professionals who have trained in this craft who know ourselves. We're not just some plebs who've just been picked off off the street to be teachers. Honestly, honestly, we're not. So when teachers feel a certain way, it is valid and it annoys when people from the top just go, Oh no, it's just what we've always done. We can't do that. So we can though, can't we? And this is the number one thing that comes to my head the most when it's APE day in school, where as teachers are allowed to come in in PE uniform or P kit, you know, just sportswear basically for the day so we don't have to get changed awkwardly halfway through in the toilet. Like we can just just come in your PE stuff. On those days where I can come in in my PE stuff, jogging bottoms that are still not, you know, not horribly informal.

30:56 Just like the nice sport jogging bottoms, trainers, a T-shirt. I teach better, comfy. I I am a better teacher. I'm comfy, I'm comfortable, I don't look rough, I don't look like some hooligan. I just look like a person. And what even is that brain? What do you mean? What do you even mean? Look like a hooligan. Yeah, exactly. Like what? Honestly, what can you wear that this? I'm teaching these children how to AA number. Does it matter? I'm wearing a shirt for goodness. Sake, do they behave differently on those days? No Of. Course no they don't. Maybe right. If initially we did this huge massive change and the whole staff suddenly are in comfortable wear, the kids might pick up on something subliminally.

31:37 Oh no, have the same expected, have the same. Do your behaviour the exact same. The kids do not behave worse and I teach better. I this sounds ridiculous. I feel more springy. I feel like I'm ready because I've got sportswear on. And my point here is I'm going to try and be as extreme as possible. In this case, my policy would be that there is genuinely no policy for what you. Wear what you want. I'm not going to question remotely what you wear. And the only asterisks on that is you're a professional. That's all I'd have to say to people. Wear what you want, but you're a professional, you know. Don't wear something horribly revealing. Are you telling me you'd trust your professional teachers to make a judgement on what clothes they can wear literally in public?

32:17 Literally. Yeah. Because they can't. Because on the weekend, obviously, they haven't. They have. No. They need that structure. They have no idea how to go out and be in the public world. And children absolutely can't possibly respect anyone not in a shirt and tie because they never ever do that. Ever do. They didn't Like we take the swimming on a Wednesday and everyone's. I couldn't possibly respect that person because they were wearing a polo that's not tucked in over it like we are creating that in school. Like that idea of. Well, no, you have to set an example for the kids. Yeah. No, I don't. No, I don't. I'm setting an example of what a teacher looks like because you've made me look like this as a teacher. Yeah. You know what? If I wore sports clothes or comfy wear, that would be the new expectation of a teacher. The kids respect wouldn't dwindle. The kids wouldn't suddenly not know how to behave around other adults. You'd still teach them how to do that. At what point do you ever teach your children to judge someone on how they look?

33:03 It's the complete antithesis of what we say is really important to model to the children that everyone's equal, treat them all the same. But not me. By the way, I'm wearing a shirt and tie. Should they immediately respect me? I'm Mr This don't care. OK, So what if then I'm trying to be devil's advocate here and think of like, the worst thing that can happen, right? You do this and genuinely, you're ahead, right? And your staff come in and you actually look at them, think, Oh my God, this is really bad that they're all wearing massive chains. Yeah, they've all got like, really long fake nails. It's like totally impractical. They're wearing 2 pairs of sunglasses. And because your policy is wear what you want. Yeah, sure. Do you know what it's it's number one. I just think it's so unrealistic. It's not going to happen. But that's my initial point. Genuinely, it's like this just won't happen. But let's say there are a couple because there might be a couple of people like, oh, actually, that isn't actually what I don't know. It's inappropriate.

33:47 It's inappropriate, right? I would just get them on one side and talk to them in the same way, right? There isn't a policy telling me exactly what script I have to say when I'm teaching. I'm trusted as a professional to deliver the English lesson. If I was to say something really inappropriate on a lesson, you wouldn't go, oh God, I need to give my teachers scripts on exactly what to say every single time they do anything. No, you would take that person to the side and talk to them about being professional. Say that's not acceptable, obviously because of XYZ in the same thing with the dress code. Yeah, sorry. Can I have a word quickly? I know we can obviously what we want, but this is inappropriate because of that. I hope you understand I'm not going to obviously do a new dress code because of it, but in the future actually trying to avoid. Doing well, actually, there's no policy in this. I'm going to take this to the unions. How dare you? How dare you tell me what I should? Yeah, OK, OK. Well, I could introduce a policy, couldn't I? And I might do that then, because it's very normal to do that.

34:32 It's not against union code. So join to introduce. Policy is just that person. This person must wear. But again, I just think that's such an unrealist that it's minute amount of people who would do that. I agree. Yeah, that's my get rid of. It yeah, I'm brought you know what, I wasn't on your level of this until we had this actual conversation. I was a bit more like now I think there needs to be a line and I think it should just be something loose like smart casual or. Something like that. That's so. Vague. Yeah. And I would leave it vague, just just vague enough because it, you know, people can interpret that how they want, but they're always going to interpret it some somewhere further than 00. I don't know. But you know, I think anyway, yeah, I probably would, but I actually think you're right. I think we trust teachers for loads of other things to do right. Like you said in the lesson, yeah, we don't live in our policies and everything single thing they do ever.

35:14 We trust them because, oh, you're a trained professional. You know what's appropriate and what's not appropriate. We trust. We trust teachers not to swear genuinely. We don't have a policy that says these are the exact words you can't say. Like, come on, no one has that. Yeah, we just go, oh, your teachers. Oh, you did three years of training with of course you know how you're supposed to speak to kids and how you're not. Supposed. And if you don't, we'll sort it out. Yeah, so you. Probably know how the dress as well. You know I'm not going to I'm not going to rock up in my hot pants. Do you know what I mean? Please do. That's just what the podcast maybe. Yeah, I'm not. I'm waiting right now. You don't know you're listening to this podcast. Hated this dress completely. Demerating yeah, likely you can't see waist down on the video, but yeah, no, good point. Really, really good point. I like it. Scrap scrap the dress policy. Stupid, stupid, archaic thing that every school does just because it's always been Yeah, new point next. Point #2 No formal observations.

36:00 Let me be really clear and say it one more time very clearly for you all, in case you're getting annoyed for me straight away. No formal observations. Let me describe what a formal observation is. Please do. A formal observation is when you're told 3 * a year that the assistant head or the head teacher and the subject lead will come in and sit down in the back of your lesson for 25 minutes and watch you teach and pick up on all the tiny little things that you do and it's completely pointless. It doesn't help at all. Same thing, the theme. We're professionals. Sometimes we get things wrong, sometimes we're not doing stuff based on school policy because sometimes our policy is wrong, but sometimes we need to do something we shouldn't be doing. We need feedback. Yes, we do formal observation, no undue pressure, undue stress, especially when they're rated. Some schools still do this. They still rate teachers.

36:42 Very rare now, but it used to happen a lot and it just creates this angst. It creates it. Do you know what formal observations do in the when they're done in the wrong way is they create a as in them with your teachers and your SLT, we're on the ground teaching everyday. I resent you coming in and telling me that I'm doing this thing wrong that I think is insignificant. But I can't argue with you because you're my superior, blah, blah, blah. We should we still should get feedback. And my point here is we still still should be able to have adults in our room. My point here is no formal observations, but drop insurance. Hello. How you doing? How can I help you? Support. Daily should be the norm. Yeah. And and when you see SLT walking into your room, you know, it's not a formal observation. What you know is.

37:27 Good morning. Yeah. Good morning. How are you? That might be it. One day walk for the classroom just like. Our school does this really well. I'm a big up school because you know what our SLT do walk in quite a lot. Even just thinking 2 days ago deputy head came in and I and I no single part of me thought always coming in to check on what I'm doing. I thought he's probably coming to see. And he might have been. It might have been which? I didn't think it which. Is fine, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I didn't. I didn't think it. I thought, I don't. He's probably just checking on the kid. Maybe there's been a concern. Maybe there's something's happened. Maybe it's maybe. Do you know what? Maybe he's just making himself known so the kids know all deputy head walks around and. I'll tell you what, our children have an amazing relationship with the head and the deputy head. Yeah. And it's because of that. It's because of that relationship that they build by being in the room a lot. You know, the children know who they are. They're not.

38:08 You know that. Yeah. They can be disciplined. Yeah, by them. But do you know what, 95% of the time it's them bigging them up and just build a relationship with them. And my point here is it should be just about support for the staff. There are some staff who need feedback and support and there are some staff, let's be honest, who are doing the wrong thing, or let's phrase it could be doing a better thing. The the answer to that is not sat down formally going for a tick list and saying, well, actually, you know, this person used this wrong colour pen and then this person didn't quite underline their date. And by the way, pointless, get in the bin. Don't care, don't don't talk to professor, get out. Do you think honestly that a professional, do you think, do you think I care that the kids have written in a slightly different pen? Maybe some professionals do and it's at the top of their priority list and they really are hot on that. For me, it's lower on my list.

38:53 I'm afraid you sat there telling me. I know you're. Oh, some of your kids do really wonky margins. I know. Yeah, I know. I know that. But do you know what? I'm not going to spend 5 minutes every day doing it myself. I'm not going to stop my learning because they're what? Their margins a bit wonky. I'm going to get on to how to AA number. OK. Did you see? They could double the number or I could, but then the line went through that number and now I can't. Yeah. No, they can Stop. Stop it. Yeah. Give me support. Give me help. Ask how I am. Give me feedback. Please do. Yeah, please give me support. We've had training. That's amazing. Cool, I want help. What I don't need is someone sat there with a clipboard judging and it and it just creating this oh God I've got an observation next week. I better spend 3 hours planning it and then Oh no, the rest of my week will be worse. But that's fine because the observation has to go. Well.

39:37 What a horrible outcome from an informal observation. When the observation I'm being observed on Thursday. I put all my time into making this lesson amazing. God, I'd just do 2 minutes on the other lessons though. That's not better for the kids. Who's that? Mental thought and and often ends in tears. Do you know what the amount of teachers I know of who ended up in tears based on this? This ridiculous feedback? Ridiculous system? Quick question before we move on to the next one, what would be your opinion on doing neither? As in no formal observations and no drop insurance either? It's just we just trust our teachers. Crack on. So what's your opinion? This to me is under the same bracket as when people say get rid of Ofsted, get rid of Ofsted, trust your teachers. I'm like, all of this sounds fantastic. It's not realistic. No, OK, it's not realistic.

40:19 I did not say don't give teachers feedback. Don't tell teachers what they need to improve. Don't tell teachers. By the way, this can involve just praising your teachers for the sake of it. This is a big thing I want to say. No formal observations. Go in and give feedback. Go in and say good morning. Go in and say isn't your teacher an amazing maths teacher? Yeah, yeah. Do you know what? I just want to big up again. I came, I came from a school that was unbelievably, horribly toxic that you know, that school we talked about where they just bullied staff out and people just got 30 year careers. Never, ever, ever got a. Compliment honestly horrendous school to work in, horrible environment, horrible SLT, genuinely horrible people and they would literally go out of their way to make you feel bad, make you cry. They've made so many staff cry like I've there's times where I felt like that, right. And then after, after coming from that environment to a normal place, right?

41:06 With actual nice human beings running the school. Yeah. Where I had my first observation right. Now, bear in mind, I was, but I was very angsty. I put so much work into the observation. I like left the plan on the side, didn't even pick it up. Blooms Taxonomy at the end. I literally did. I literally did. I had that at the end. I had Blooms Taxonomy. I'm not even joking. I had that. I think that's probably in your brain. From that time didn't. It didn't pick it up. I think he was a bit like, why have you done that? Like he didn't spend last night doing that, did you? And at the end, right, the feedback was when he was when I had teacher, he was going around because the caretaker was off. He was doing this and he came around like he was in his T-shirt and he had a bin over his shoulder and he went, oh, whilst you're there actually, yeah. Bloody good lesson today. He was, I was really, really, really good and just listed off just a couple of positive things. So yeah, thanks for that mate.

41:48 Thank you. You're brilliant, teacher. And then walked off. I'm sweating thinking OK, OK, cool. Now let's get to the bit where you tell me I'm terrible, you know, because obviously you got. You're buttering me up, you're back me up. You give me 7 things that I'm not doing. Properly so that you can justify not giving me a pay rise. There's much yet next year. And and I was like, Oh yeah, that that place I came from was horrible. And actually this is this should be normal. This this is what it should be like. Just you can't just give praise. You don't have to be like there's not always feedback anyway, so I went off on a rant, no. No, it's good. It's you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. Let's. Go to #3 OK #3 So this is, I guess you're passionate about this. Yeah, I didn't really explain to you when I was talking about this, but so rebalancing the curriculum, I would, I would just this is maybe a bit more wishy washy, but I am actually. Trying to be specific on what would. You do. I am getting a bit sick of maths and English taking up so much time of the week to the point where we're always like oh, how do we fit in all these other subjects? How do we fit in all these other subjects? Completely ignoring the fact that we spend so much time in maths English.

42:40 You know what? Cut maths in half then, right? Maybe not in half. Yeah. Cut a little bit of maths off. You know what? Do 4 maths lessons a week. I really genuinely believe that there is, there is space for doing that. I honestly, I'd love to just shake up the curriculum in the school and get rid of this norm, which is like 5 maths lessons, 5 English lessons. It takes up 70% of your week. Yeah. No. OK, do you know what? No, I'm scrapping an English lesson a week. Get over it. You know what? We'll do writing and reading in history. Yeah, and we're going to do it. We're going to get into some more. We're going to do, we're going to do something fun. I just feel like fun. Like I want kids to you know what, you know what everyone knows, what opinions on podcast about primary school is to get kids engaged with subjects honestly and then then go to secondary school and actually learn difficulties. Can I push back on it a bit? Go on. I completely agree with what you're saying about having fun in primary school and stuff, especially with the other, the, the core subjects on there, the foundation subjects. Sorry.

43:26 Yeah, I get, I completely, I, I agree with you completely. And I do think there is scope to reduce stuff, right? Yeah. But we, we, we frame this as realistic advice, realistic policy. I'm just going to say it now, there's only one reason that happens. It's because of SAS data and it's because of league tables and stuff. So my genuine question to you is, would you still do this? Yeah. OK, I really I I could because part of me also you. Think it wouldn't affect? It I don't think it'd affect right? I think it'd be positive, right. I think we are caught in such a trap in this country and it is it is government top down of more is better yeah. If you do more maths, they'll learn more and I just think there is a cap yes. I feel like this, I don't want to, I don't know the research. I feel like I've seen things that are pointed towards research before. That's like, oh actually there is a point where if you do any more it actually just overloads them and they don't remember all the other stuff.

44:12 You get a surface level knowledge of everything and they don't really learn anything. And it's like, you know what I reckon, I genuinely reckon I'm going to put myself out here right now. If you gave me 3 maths lessons a week rather than 5I reckon I could get my kids to the same point at the end of the year, the same point. I genuinely think the same. Kids to the same. Point same kids to the same point. I really really really think that. I honestly think we could have two 2 maths 2 lessons where we just don't do any more maths. And just for contact with anyone who might be a new listener. By the way, just so before we carry on, you, you are maths lead, yeah, You're not someone here like. Yeah, and I'm teaching you. I've taught me 6 for loads of you. I know what the Sats are like. I know what it's like prepping for kids for the Sats. I genuinely wholeheartedly believe that if I had three maths lessons instead of five per week, I'd reshuffle how I do things. I'd I'd rethink my long term plans. I meet them term plans. But I reckon I could get a kiss to the same point. Yeah, honestly, that's really interesting. I think so much, I think so much time is wasted. I really do.

44:58 And and and so much time is like, oh, the kids are completely exhausted and knackered. Let's do more of it then. Okay, well do you know what, I'm gonna move straight to the next one 'cause it's linked. Okay, okay, so we're still in the same discussion here. The next thing that we'd introduced cuz we're doing this as a force. You can tell probably some of us have stronger feelings about what? Yeah yeah, but I am 100% behind this next so am I is completely banning interventions during other lessons within lesson time. So context, what happens in a lot of schools completely normal, by the way, not digging anyone out who does this. It's. Normal. Yeah. I can't imagine any schools don't do that. Exactly that. But how many times have you as a teacher, been stood in the front of your car? You've spent hours planning this lesson. Oh my gosh, it's a really cool geography lesson for these.

45:39 Kids Geographies. Oh yeah, I was doing it. It's a lovely latitude lesson. I can't wait. I know, but you've got really engaged in it. You've got your kids. You want to teach them. It's the only time these kids might do ICT, let's say. Yeah. OK, let's say there's one time a week 1. I'm not a slot where they do ICT and there is this kid who loves ICT so much is their thing. So. Oh my God. I've done five hours of maths. I've earned this. 40 minutes of ICT. You can't wait to do it. Knock on the door. Knock, knock, knock. Hi. Yeah. Can I have this, this, this, this, this and this kid, please? I've got an English booster to do with them. Devastated. I've seen children crying, crying with sadness because I had to take them out of a group to do a group. I had to take them out of a lesson they loved because they had to come and do some maths with me. Again, Full disclosure, where maths leads. OK, I hate it.

46:23 Yeah, I hate it with a passion. And it's almost like the cap you're talking about it. There is there. There is room for intervention. I I know that. I know interventions. Same day. Particularly, I think it's quite. Good. I've done interventions before where there has been a tangible increase in the child's ability to do something. But you know what also happened to that child? They didn't get any ICT for that time, so their ICT dipped. OK, at what point did we say that's fine because it's maths? At what point do we say no guys, stop it, they're going to get to where they get to. It's OK. It's So what if their arithmetic score was 6 marks there? Honestly, So what? Who cares if an 8 year old on an arithmetic test get 28 or 36?

47:07 I don't care. And that's 8 marks, so you should be doing the intervention. No, I don't care. If, if the cost was that child didn't do ICT for the time, yeah. Or was pulled out of PE or didn't do any, any subject you can even think of because we'd never pull them out of maths to do maths. Yeah, we'd never put sorry. We'd never pull them out of English to do history. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Would we? Of course we would. We could be like no, of course not have to do history. They they have to do their history as well as whether. It's about the holistic approaches, and that's what we're talking about here. There's a holistic, we're losing the sense of holistic approach that primary school is about everything. It's about exposure to everything and getting kids inspired to learn. Right. And we don't do that when we, when we constantly take them out of subjects they love to do more subjects they hate. Because, by the way, most kids that aren't very good at stuff don't like the subject. That is the catch 22.

47:50 You generally don't like things as much if you don't feel like you're very good at them. So to be brought out after five hours of doing it in the week, we're going to do more of this. By the way, you know, you didn't get it in five hours of specific teaching. I'm going to take you out for 20 minutes and lose them more. It's like, oh, OK, brilliant. That's what I needed. Yeah. But it's it's like every week you get 5 hours of maths and 40 minutes of ICT or you get 5 hours and 40 minutes of mass and no ICT. Yeah, who are we on? Paper. Like, look at that now. Are you joking? Yeah, I agree. Are you joking? Can I give another perspective to this? Because that was very child centred and that's where it should be. I'm going to take a bit more of a bit more of a selfish. Perspective as well, not you. Shut up, shut up. I got scammed. Leave me alone.

48:31 Child got scam you. Can't be mean to me. Hi, Yeah, this is the mass booster hotline. You have to come out of ICT, I'm afraid. Yeah, it's a. God's sake. Ridiculous anyway, right? From a selfish point of view, I am, you know, I said, losing the world to live as a teacher if you ever. Go Yeah. I am losing the world to live as a teacher When I, when I, like you said, I've spent ages planning a lesson and it's two hours long. I've got to deliver it. I've got all the sheets ready. I've got everything ready. You know people can. Differentiate to the tempt. Differentiate so many different children. Yeah, exactly. So many children in my class. I've really put extra work in for those, those children at the kind of lowest ability in my class because I want, I want them to, yeah, absolutely 'cause I want them to enjoy the subject as well and achieve something. Oh, every single lesson, specifically during the input of it, they're gonna be taken out to do more maths, which they can't do as well.

49:13 Okay, are brilliant. When are they gonna come back in? Oh, just as you start the task also, they're not going to know anything. And then I have to work with them. OK, brilliant. So what do you know? I'm, I'm, I'm at the point where I said to a teacher every day. And then, and I know I'm just being like exaggerating. I literally said I'm going to stop teaching in the afternoon and we're just going to watch YouTube and have some fun because I am sick of teaching lessons and having kids pulled out every 3 seconds. Yeah, that that literally are the ones that need to be in there here the most. Sure. And it just drives me absolutely mental. That's that's the problem. It's the children who have to be in that. And you know what, I just want to say I don't blame the, I don't blame the. I take kids out for. I don't want to do the group. I take them out. I'm not blaming anyone at my school or any other school that has to do it. It's the top down pressure that I'm annoyed with that is forcing schools to be like, yeah, but even though we think ICT is important and on policy, we say it's an important office. Enough Ofsted came, we suddenly wouldn't do interventions that week.

50:02 We actually are going to be judged by this data. So we need to do something. I just. What you're saying is basically as a leader, you would take that first step to be like, guys, I know it's on me, it's my risk. Take the Flack. OK, I take the Flack. Gift of the gab. Talk to Ofsted, whatever, we'll work for it. I'm just not doing it. I'm not prepared to take kids out of all your age. Is bad you have them all. The kids do ICT every week. Yeah, yeah. Does that matter? No. OK, I guess I'll start doing that immediately. Bonded, but now I do it. Cool, next one. This is again extreme. I feel strongly about it. I think it doesn't matter. I've had discussions and I respect other people's opinion. Yep, I would love to know what you think this one is no written marking. None. Wow 0. OK, zilch.

50:44 My first question to you is nada. Nothing. Nothing at all. I think I understand that bit. Oh, none. 0. How much written marking? No, no. I really want to was zero, yeah. That's really good. You got more than I would think. I said Sup but everyone ZAP something that starts with AZ Sounds like it means 0 zello. Zello, Zello sounds like you're doing with some strange accents. Anyway, this is going crazy. So Zinc, my first. You put me off so bad here. My first question to you, Dylan. Thank you. This is a podcast for a serious podcast for professionals. Is is OK? What? What feedback do children get in? Oh, none. They're getting no feedback. Oh, sorry, that's what people hear when they say no written marking.

51:26 They don't think about it for more than two seconds. I'm not. This is very much like when I say no formal observations. I'm not saying don't give feedback to your staff. I'm saying no formal motivations. I'm I when I say no written feed every time you go no written marking. I'm not saying let's not give children feedback on what they need to do better or what they've done well. All right, so let's get that through everyone's head who's annoyed at me immediately for saying this. No written marking means don't spend an hour after school when the kids aren't in the building writing something down they can't even read or understand, and then they'll have absolutely no impact on their ability to do anything in the next lesson. Anything. There is 0 room for it. Genuinely no. Absolutely nothing. I think you could very much justify doing some something, but I think this job is a bottomless pit where you could justify doing almost anything more.

52:08 You could justify looking at your planning for next week and spending an extra half an hour adding some stuff in. Don't do it, though. Yeah, you could. You could justify it. Same for writing. You could justify if you want. You could. You could write something in the book that says really encouraging for the child. OK, do you know what I think is more powerful? Just say that to them. Just literally say that with words to the children, like say, or you've written it down on the piece of paper. You've done a very. I like the one sheet thing. That's like a middle ground to me. Yeah, where you might flick through the book. Jot down some notes. Jot down some notes and then just give some verbal feedback. That's like a really nice. Whole class feedback. Exactly, because that's what that's doing. Is basically to me that's that's again, it's not really written feedback. Don't sit with the size 2 books writing something in every book. What that does is it at least, you know, has some kind of policy in place that ensures the feedback's happening again.

52:53 I trust teachers to do feedback, but I think that's AI think that's a nice middle ground where it's going to save a lot of teachers time. You're still getting the feedback in terms of you, you've written it down at least. So tomorrow you'll be like, oh, do you know what? I no matter how good we think we are at doing it, there are definitely kids we miss on verbal feedback because we just forget like tomorrow. Like oh God, yeah, no, I did want to talk to them about that. The one sheet things are nice middle ground to me, that still counts as no written marking. Sure. So what I'm saying is. Not writing in their books. Yeah, there should be 0 expectation to sit through 96 books every day and then someone picks up a book for a book look and goes, excuse me, where is the positive feedback on the next step for every single lesson? I can't see it. You must not give them anything. Oh, sorry, no, you've got VF written in the book, so you must have talked to them.

53:37 Yeah, I'll get nothing. Nothing should have to be in the book 0. It's pointless. Again, it's just pressure. You're giving your leaders jobs they don't have to do. Oh, this week I'm doing a maths book. Look, could I please have 3 maths books? And I'm just going to take these names off the People premium list, which is completely arbitrary because they need to make sure they're getting the written feedback, which doesn't help them at all. Yeah. Nothing. It's an optic. It's an optic, isn't it? Most of the time I find it where I struggle with this, right, Genuinely, maybe you can help me with this is I think again, with maths going back to, you know, I put a bold statement out there that I could do it in three lessons rather than five. I also think I could never, ever, ever look at a maths book and I'd still make a really good progress with the kids. Sure. And honestly, there might be a dip, but it would be so negligible compared to the amount of time saved that was worth it.

54:18 I'll plan a bit lesson. But I like looking at the maths. Book. I will still look at them, do you know? But what I'm trying to exaggerate here is the idea that I don't need to mark maths books. Honestly, by the time I've finished the lesson, I know exactly where they are because I've been with them for an hour. Yeah, an hour. And I was with them for an hour yesterday when I taught the previous. I know exactly where they all are, like for. Christ's sake, yeah. What do you think we're doing in that time? Yeah. I don't need to mark their books. Genuinely. We self mark every single day. And I'll flick, I'll flick through them. Like you said. I'm kind of looking for whole class feedback. I'm flicking through thinking, yeah, is there a massive misconception here being made? Because if there is, I'll address it. If there's not, you know what? OK, that's fine. We're doing right then. Yeah, well. This is no, I'm gonna this. Is yeah, I'll come back to this later anyway. But with English, I really struggle. I really struggle with this concept of no written marking because maybe it's because I'm in year 6 and I, and I've often worked with like quite able writers as well, where I'll write them some feedback and they really genuinely understand it and they implement it. And I, and I, and I just can't imagine a system where I can speak to all 32 of those kids daily and give them verbal feedback.

55:14 I, I just don't, I can't see that happening. I can't see a system that's that's good. Yeah. So isn't me writing in that book? I guess, yeah, I I think you make a really good point about the more the older the children get. I mean, that's a really good point because you're absolutely right that does that does impact their understanding of marking stuff. Honestly, with a lot of children, you're 3 and 4, if you write down in their book use conjunctions, it honestly does nothing. It does nothing that that it doesn't matter. Do you know? What the proof is, it does nothing. It's because before that, before you spent 10 seconds writing that book, you spent one hour on a lesson that was all about conjunctions, telling them 5060 times what conjunctions are, modelling it, and that task was doing and they didn't do.

55:55 It yeah. So all all I think that has to come from that is OK. Let's say most of the class can't do conjunctions. I'm going to do again, let's say two of the class can't do conjunctions. Next time you do conjunctions, make sure they're your focus. I don't think it needs to be in the kids book. So even when I'm thinking about year 6, maybe you could set me straight here, You don't. They've done a piece of writing the kids really take into account. OK, my next step was use semicolons right? Do you mean tomorrow? Do you mean go back and do it in your work now? Do you mean next time you literally do semi colon anyway? Like in what way is that doing something for the children that wouldn't be happening anyway for your planning? Yeah. OK. I'm going to flip this a bit because I think you're focusing on hilariously. The thing that we're going to English earlier, right?

56:37 I think those things is absolutely fine to keep a whole class sheet genuinely like a spreadsheet if you want of kids that still can't do stuff that you talk and then you can just feedback to them as when you, if you have a good teacher, has a good understanding of what the kids need, right? It's more powerful. That's way more powerful. Agree that doesn't need to be in their books all the time. You could just have that separately and you know, as a teacher, this is what I. Need to work with. When it comes to when it comes to you want to have it, you want to write a paragraph, you want to have an actual conversation with the kids of why this structure of that paragraph doesn't quite flow properly. I, I feel like you need to have a proper conversation with them, right? I think that's better. I do think that's better, but I, but I don't want to do nothing. And I'm like, it's hard to, I couldn't write on a whole class feedback. I just want, I want to give them something. So I'll at least write them a sentence of. Maybe I'll underline these. These two sentences don't really flow very well. I don't know.

57:19 I don't. Know I just, you know what I don't, I'm going to say that I don't think that's bad. No, but do you think I could get rid of that and not have much impact? That's what you're saying. Could I? Because that will take, It takes me at the moment like 2-3 hours honestly, to mark one English. Exactly. It takes me so long to mark it there. Has to be, we talked about this before the scale, the time in and the impact out and too many people just look at the impact out and go, well, if there's something in the impact out, then it's worth doing. That's not true. If the impact out is I'm going to make up a unit 5 and the F in is 100, it doesn't matter that yeah, I know it's not just 50, it's 5% better. No, no, you put in so much effort, remove it. Don't do it. My point there is I don't think you need to do that. Yeah, sure.

58:01 I don't, I think through your teaching, right. You for example saying 2 sentences don't quite work together. That's going to be covered when you look at new texts. When you look at stuff. And you're exposed to it. Then having it written in their book, I just don't think. Honestly has I didn't impact last point on this one move on to next one. But I I saw some research recently. I watched a video, some guy, I think he did the research and he summarising what he did about marking right. And he had three control groups. One was the, the children received like a score, you know, like classic, like out of 10 score or like a a grade for their work. And that's all they got any, any other feedback. And another group only got like only got feedback. I think it was written, but it could have been verbal as well. But the point was there's no score or grade attached to it. It was just how to improve. And then there's a middle control group that had both. And really, really, really interestingly, this, the study showed that children that just got a grade, that process of marking, given their grade did not help them make progress in any way.

58:54 Like it was as good. There's another one to be fair, that didn't have anything at all. It was as good as that, right? And then the ones that just got feedback and no grade, it was proven to have a significant impact on their progress because they actually knew what to improve and they weren't caught up in the yeah, but you're rubbish, you got. 6 out of 10. Yeah, you got, you got an F in this, you know, grading system. And the one of the middle ones I'm really interested in because I feel like schools do this because obviously we're all martyrs and we do the absolute worst possible option where we do all of the work. We give them grades quite often for lessons, like, you know, our school might highlight other schools do stickers other schools will do like another different colour or something. That means they did well. Yeah. They got a grade and they got the feedback and it had the exact same impact as just the grade or doing nothing at all. So it had less impact than just feedback.

59:36 Yeah. So. So giving feedback to a child. Yeah. Had more impact than giving feedback and the score. Yeah. It made it worse. Yeah. Yeah. And the idea I think they were getting at was the the point, the grade, it just no one cares about the rest of them, right? Yeah. They just want to get into this culture of I just want to know if I got oh, am I green? Am I? Did it get this pass? Did I get did I pass? Did I not? OK, but I didn't pass. Don't care. I'm rubbish then. So another thing that just clearly, but we've always given grades to the child. Yeah, I don't think they're useful. I think they useful for us. We can keep assessments of them for our own understanding. They don't need to know. You don't need to tell the kid, oh you're rubbish. A mouse, by the way, you've got 10 out of 50. It doesn't help them. Right. I completely agree. Anyway, separate point, right?

1:00:16 Next thing we would introduce straight away. For me, I'm very passionate about this. It's about director time. Firstly, I think director time is just a broken system. I really do. It's just, it's this imaginary amount of hours that we've all got to be directed to do. But by the way, you've got to do everything else crazy we've talked about a million times. My point here is when when I come into a school, director time is obviously still going to exist, but it will not, it will absolutely not impact what I feel like I've got to make my teachers do. So my point being, there are lots of schools out there who'll say we've got to have an hour long meeting after school every single week because it's part of director time and we'll fill it with something, we'll have something there. My point is, unless it is actually genuinely impacting something that must be improved in your school or something where you have to be there in person to be there with the person training, you either don't have a meeting that week, it's OK because by the way, no one's going home early. They're going to set a mark and do all the other stuff that's part of the job, or B Basically that people want. People want training when it's helpful. Doing this will just give something back to your staff. No one sat here going oh, I hate training, but what people are saying is I hate pointless training. So don't just think just because of you've got these hours to hear.

1:01:33 Yeah, don't worry about it's OK. Your staff are going over these hours anyway. Yeah, you could do nothing extra. You could do nothing extra and direct your time doing nothing more. They're going over the hours anyway, so just check that. Don't force it. I would not have every single week we have to be together to do this. Yeah. Send an e-mail. Do you want me an e-mail? Send an e-mail. I'd ignore, like, I think that's what you're getting at. I'd ignore the directed time hours for the year. I wouldn't be sat there thinking in a positive way. Yeah, in a positive, Yeah. Oh, I'm scrolling the finger. Oh, we've still got 20 hours left to use up with the staff and we've not done the whole thing. You know what? I wouldn't be thinking that. I'd only be checking. Make sure we haven't gone over it. Sure. Anything under it doesn't. It doesn't. Matter, I think a lot of I think a lot of SRT do that, but my point is I still think it gets I do still think it gets trapped into yeah well, we do this every week because it's direct time yeah, we don't have. My thoughts are on this.

1:02:20 Just honestly scrapped scrap directed time. Not in a bad way. This what someone said and it was like I saw this online. Someone wrote a letter dent to an MP. I'll maybe share it. We'll share another time. It was really interesting but I've had this thought before, just just just make our hours the same as any other job, how it all works genuinely and it would be longer because we have more time off in like half terms. Right. So wait, then we go ahead around this. So you're saying make it contracted that we have hours we work? Yep. So that in the entire year it's equivalent to just working. Yeah, just a normal public, normal holidays, exactly that. So what normal what? What does normal work for seven hours? Something like that. Isn't it so it couldn't be that for teachers because we do just have more weeks off, so it wouldn't be fair. So to average out is something it works out at something like 44 1/2 hours a week, right. And I genuinely, I would love to just be like, cool, these are our working hours of the day, even roughly like banned. What it is this chunk is for is your teaching time. You have this at two hours after school. That is administrative time in in, you know, you could get your marking done and things like that. And you have this hour before school. This is administrative time as well, getting ready for your lessons.

1:03:17 And because it's like 9 hours a day isn't. It it works out, yeah, quite a long day, 9 hours a day, which is a suitable amount of time. 7 till 4. Is that right? Yeah. 7:00 till 4. So even that sounds like Peach is doing longer than that anyway. The minute. Oh yeah, it's a good match. Check the math. I was like, hang on, check. Or 8 till 5. Yeah, 8 till five, yeah, that's probably or half 7 till half four, genuinely, that's probably quite common and I'd still give a bit of flexibility of. You saying sorry very quickly. Doing that every week would be equivalent to just doing a normal full time job with normal holidays. Yes, and nothing extra. And then and then build in an overtime system like every other job does. If we want to start taking teachers time seriously and solve this crisis of retention, we need to do something drastic like that. It sounds mental, doesn't it? And and I'll tell you why it sounds mental because we've all been gas lit into thinking that teachers have to be martyrs and, and wear shirts and ties and wear shirts and ties.

1:04:00 The fact that it sounds mental to do a normal working hour job as a teacher which just just 44. Hours a week. Just says something, doesn't it? The fact that it sounds weird, it's like, what do you mean it sounds weird? It doesn't sound weird. In any other job ever, you get paid over time, leisure hours. And genuinely, like I said before, you look at it, if someone goes over those hours regularly, nothing, and they're doing extra work, you pull them in. Like what's going on or why something's gone wrong? Like why are you doing all this extra stuff? This isn't right. Can you imagine? I just I, you know, I think what gives us honestly room to say about this is that we literally run a business as well and we, we pay people, for example, to make resources and stuff, right? So let's say we're, we're, we're coming, we're working with someone saying, right, we need X amount of resources, please. All these sheets, we'll come up with an even hourly rate or a rate for the job that we think is really fair. And we work with the person we really mindful of, like we really value your time.

1:04:48 So let's agree something together. Yeah, it is honestly like I was then going, oh, by the way, can you do 10 more? Because it just got to get done. It's just got to get done. That would never, ever. Have you like, OK, pay me for that then be ridiculous. So I think I like the idea of get rid of the whole directed time system, basically the normal public sector working hour job, just start time, finish time, overtime. Yeah, done. Brilliant. OK, how about next one? I want you to talk about PPA. So you're, you're a staff leader. You, you come in and this is another policy article. Let's let's perform PPA. But what? What would you like to see? That's not a quick fix, no, but I would do a massive review on it. I would look at, I'd talk to the staff in my school. I think there's not probably 1 system that works everywhere. I talk to my staff in my school, find out what they do in their PPA, find out whether they like it, whether it works, whether it's not enough time, what kind of task they need more time to do, and genuinely come up with a better system.

1:05:35 I think even like the basics, right? The bare minimum a leader should do is make sure they're even getting 10% because so many schools don't even actually give that staff 10%. It works out like 8.5% because an afternoon, by the way, yeah, is not 10%, yeah, depending on your timetable, but almost certainly, yeah, most because like if you actually look at it, the afternoon it, it's basically you need half of a day. Yeah. Well, that's weird because we do English and maths in the morning and an afternoon lesson, yeah. It doesn't quite work out does it's always yeah. So I'd review it and then and you know, I think you've you've thought of some nice. I'm trying to think of some of your ideas. You've thought some nice like alternatives to just doing the classic one afternoon out a week, right. So so. Firstly, like you said, I think it's really important to talk to your staff and individualise your PPM the way it works, because it doesn't work the same for everyone. I really, really agree with that. I would offer at least half the option for everyone to take it from home.

1:06:20 Yeah, sure, absolutely. From the start. Oh, but it doesn't quite work because of this. Make it work then. Yeah, make honestly make it. It's their time. Move something. It's their time. Exactly that. And do you know what? I'm a teacher. If I was given the opportunity to go home, I'd probably stay half the time. Yeah. Because. Because it's more beneficial for me. I've got stuff in school I need to do or I've got people I need to talk. To then you. Also, I'm a professional. Some weeks I'd be like, oh, I'm going and you know, some weeks I'd go and I'd do my like Christmas shopping because I can do more work later and it's less busy, right? Do you know what? I'm professional, leave my own. So that's the first thing straight away. The other thing, I think, I can't remember where I saw this. I think this might have been from a real Mr P talked about where he went to do some training in a school. And it hit me as this is such a nice way of doing stuff, which is so quite often in a school. Everyone leads a subject.

1:07:02 Very, very normal. We've talked about a million times how it's a ridiculous thing that should part of the school. OK, cool, all right, fine. That's annoying. Can't really fix that, can we? Can't come in and be like, no, we can't. We need a geography lead. So this episode isn't for talking about what the government should do, etcetera. We do need a geography lead. So what I thought was an amazing solution this school did was everyone needs a subject. So every single week you get a day off. And, and the point is this isn't a day off like people here. They're out of class, a day out of class where they can do it from home if they want. They don't have to come to the building or they can come into the building and do whatever. And the point is half of it is PPA. So you're absolutely getting your 10% because it doesn't matter that it's half for English, you're not doing half. Yeah, half it's your PPA. The other half is subject leader. It's OK.

1:07:43 You, you will do your subject leadership stuff in this time. Yeah. So actually giving people time to do their subjects, it's a great solution and and it's so much effective. Imagine this is like it's so it would help retention so much. Yeah. Because A, it's solving the issue that you don't get time to do your subject leadership, you've just got to do it at the weekend. B, it's giving you proper PPA and C, it's giving you a three day weekend. Yeah, yeah. And I know your day might be on a Wednesday. Yeah, but it's just giving you that time to go and do your admin stuff if you need to. Yeah. Yeah. But when you get your work done, people, teachers are used to work in an evening at the weekend. They might still do that, but on a Wednesday they can go to the gym at 9, carry on working at 11. It would increase that well-being so much, I think. But then we're not maximising that. They're not working all day and then we're not getting there. They should be in school because then we can.

1:08:24 If they're going to the gym, they might not then do as much. Work. It's such an insane view on this profession. That's just because we care about kids, right? We've got to sacrifice our lives for it, No? There can be perks to the job. This can be one of them. Get over it. I mean, the biggest barrier there is probably being realistic again, probably is government, isn't it? It's budget, it's funding for schools. I'm sure some schools would love to do that. They just, they're just not a big enough school, they don't get enough funding, they don't have enough Tasmania or whoever cover supervisors. I really work hard to try and do it, I guess is what I'm saying. I'd look at it and be like, at the very least PPA can be done from home. I'm not going to force you to stay in. There's stuff you can do straight away. I'd really look at that. And even if it was like every other week you get a subject release time, we can't afford to do every week, sure, but you get something, sure. And we'll rework our budgets and we'll. Do it in that PPA day so you can have the day off, yeah.

1:09:05 Exactly. Yeah, yeah, That's really cool. That's really cool. This is a long old Listen there a couple more things to finish up with a big episode today. Next one, just a quick one. Actually, it's just have a policy because every school of policies, a managing change policy actually really strict. So it would be literally a policy. Changing your clothes. From where do you change into your PE stuff At home because you can come in every day. Brilliant. Love this policy. Managing change policy would literally be how we change stuff in this school that's going to impact your workload. It's kind of like a workload policy. So it's tied I guess to it. But I'd have a really strict policy of if we want to change anything in this school, it has to go through these steps. And these steps are all really thoughtful and mindful of the teacher and the Tasmania and the office stuff.

1:09:47 Whoever it is who have to do this work, it has to go through this. If it doesn't go through this, we don't do it like we because it's very classic for school to be like after to come in next year, we're going to change absolutely everything in the entire school. You've got to do 8 years of work in one. You've got to do it though, haven't you? That. That's the big one. But you know what I see a lot as well? Someone's just passionate about their subject, which is amazing. They're leading DT, they love DT, and they want to implement this really cool change and it's awesome. Yeah. But not now, please. Yeah, because you know why? The arts, art leaders also really passionate and so is the maths 1 and they all want to do these changes at once. The school needs a managing change policy. I'd be really strict on it. I think a lot of schools have it as a tick. Box. But why? Why is the reason for this? Is it directly the well-being and workload? Well-being and workload and I need to be held. I'm, you know, if I'm a school leader, I've got the highest count, I'm being paid the most, mate. I need to, I need to be as just as accountable as anyone else, if not more accountable, genuinely. And that is like you should need to, you should be more accountable, absolutely should be more accountable. I'm being paid twice as much as some of the teachers in that school.

1:10:42 Of course I am. So they need to be able to hold me accountable for their workload and their stress and their well-being. And this policy will do that. And I think it is important for leaders to recognise that they should do that, even if it means, oh, this is only going to scrutinise me. Yes, yeah, that is your job. So and part of this managing chain policy I assume would be something like, yeah, of course the well-being the workload of the teacher, we need to manage that so we can only do X amount of subjects now and the rest in the future. Yeah. But also, I would love to see a big part of the policy being how much impact is it going to have for the children? Yeah, because so often things are brought in because they're trendy, because other schools are doing it, because they've had good outcomes. How many times have you put so much effort into a massive change and seem a little to no actual proper progress difference in the children? Because you know, and you usually because it's been rushed, there's not been adequate training before and there's not been adequate research before this. So my policy would be like if you want a little flow diagram, if you want to implement change, right, is a massive change in the school already happening?

1:11:36 Yes. K you can't do it honestly ends there simple as that has to be OK put on the school plan for later then next one if it is something we can do now. Brilliant. OK first step research stage needs needs to be some time on that need to complete a thing whatever the task is The thing is there needs complete tangible evidence. Yeah, next one, you know the impact, what impacts is going to have, try it in your own school of a couple of staff or whatever, you know, to have some sort of trial process and and then get the training, give them time or even before that, get the training and training, training, training, training, training, make sure everyone's really, really secure the training. And then it's right now we've got to actually implement all of this workload. Start not thinking of, OK, you're going to start getting extra time out. You know what, not doing staff meetings for the whole year, every single staff meeting time we were going to do. You're now going to have that time.

1:12:16 And that comes back to the whole director time thing. Yeah, doesn't listen. Listen, if you're doing this massive implementing of change this time, scrap your scrap your staff meeting. Yeah, it's, we've had this sometimes in our school where it said no staff meeting this week because we're changing RE. Yeah. So now you've got time to you got time to go. I appreciate that. Yes, every single time, Yeah. Absolutely. But but you can appreciate it and say that's how it should be. Yeah, because it's how it should be. And thank you for doing it right. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, managing change, that's a big thing I'd do as a leader. I'd get that written up. I'd get that implemented and make it really impactful. OK. So last one we're going to talk about, I guess we spent a lot of time talking about policies, obviously the head teacher policies on, on impacting the teachers because we do feel left behind sometimes. Let's be realistic. You've talked about it, you you did it put it really nicely last week about how putting the teachers first will actually put the kids first as a result.

1:13:01 I really agree with that. But the last one I'm going to talk is very much child centred and I am, I could not be more passionate about this. It is. I would absolutely ring fence as the most important part of my timetable, the amount of time children get to play. OK, that break times. Lunch time, I'm talking, I'm talking play. Just play. This can be structured play. It could be play where they just got free play, IE their break times, their lunch times. If your assembly is, let's say your assembly is before break time and assembly overruns, that's fine. That's gonna happen because your children might have got in late because they're less than over. It's normal. That's normal. But the answer isn't to say, oh, we'll catch that up, we'll get them at the same time.

1:13:46 They've lost 7 minutes of their break time. They've only been out for 8 minutes or. So yeah, no, no, no, no break time protected. Break time should be honest, honestly as important, if not more important than the time we look at for maths. We'd always go, Oh no, gosh, we can't miss 5 minutes of mass is awful. You're late by 5 minutes of mass every day that's you'll have a huge impact and we all agree that's that's true. It's going to have an impact if you're late every day to mass. It's going to have an impact if every single day you're having 5 minutes. Cut off your lunchtime, cut off your break time. Not only for the kids and this is really child centred. I think it's so important the kids get time to play and be social and not sit at their desk and just do work constantly because we can manufact social interactions in the classroom. There's nothing like the real thing when they're outside playing and getting annoyed at each other.

1:14:26 I want my kids to get annoyed at each other on the playground. That's part of growing up. Yeah, that's part you're going to fall out of social interaction. Only way you can do it if it's manufactured so that that's minimal time they're in the classroom. Guys, talk to your partner, please. Oh, no, no, no. Don't disagree with each other. No, don't shout at each other. Just talk to my please talk to talk about conjunctions. Give me some conjunction. There's no, there's no room for that in the classroom because it's so structured and behaviour has to be perfect because you have to do all your learning behaviours. And that's fine. Yeah, but the kids aren't getting the chance to fall out if they aren't understanding this is an all part of being a human and having interaction where you're going to you're going to not like people. You're going to when are. You going to? Give and take, you know, like when they I want to play this game, they want to play that game. Do you know what? We'll play your game today.

1:15:07 Yeah. Losing that self. Yeah. I agree. Social interactions should be completely protected. I couldn't agree more. Totally, totally important. They shouldn't be given up for anything. And this links and this policy would link to teachers as well. So like break time, Golden. OK, Golden. And I know you might choose to mark your maths, but I'm not going to ask you to do something ever in your it's your time, it's your time. Because I know you're doing more than director time anyway. Lunchtime. OK, OK. Get started with lunchtime in a school. It's such a facade, isn't it? A lunchtime doesn't exist. But you know what? The reason for me, it doesn't necessarily exist is because I'm choosing to mark something in that time. Yeah, that's my choice. Because then I can go home half an hour earlier. Yeah, that's fine. Never, ever, ever as a leader, would I ever ask any of my teachers to do anything at lunchtime unless it was a dramatic emergency. Fine.

1:15:52 Yeah, of course. Of course. I'm a normal human being. I'm going to do that. But it's never, ever expected. It's not like, oh, yeah, we do one lunchtime duty a week schedule. Sorry. What? I hears teachers say that like, Oh yeah, we do 1A week. Like it's like. Yeah, yeah, you don't get. Sorry, what? What do you mean you do what? And then you teach? Yeah, teaching Nothing. No, that's not OK. Yeah, that's not OK. I know school should. Be part of the furniture. Should it? Yeah, I know school, like literally someone I know personally who they have, they do breakdown duty every day, five days a week. Wow, Genuinely there's like there's quite a small school five days a week, but they never, they never get a break and it's not built in for them afterwards either. They can kind of have a break in literally as if they're lucky they've got TA around, they can just pop to the toilet whilst I take them. It's mental. Five days a week. Yeah, I think as a teacher, the point the some people might sit there and go, yeah, of course you can work from half eight to half 12.

1:16:35 Everyone does that in a job, fine teaching. I don't think people understand how mentally exhausting it is and you just need 10 minutes sometimes. But also I think what people don't realise is so many, we're not using it as a break. No one's actually going and having a sit down cup of tea. 15 minutes, yeah, No, no, the break is setting up the next lesson. Yeah, is maybe getting up with your bit of marking or it is sat down. Reflected You know what, some people probably do have a tea and that. Should be OK. Some people too probably just spend 3 minutes on it just going to make the tea and then bring back to classroom cracking on, but it gives them that chance. I agree and lunchtime. Do you know what the sad thing is of lunchtime? I also spend it marking, but I quite regularly still end up going home at 5 half 5. And I think if I didn't sacrifice my lunch willingly, I wouldn't even have been able to get this job done because the school closes at 5:45. I would have been here till 6:30.

1:17:15 That's mad. That shouldn't be. It should be a sacrifice because I then get to go home at like really early. If I get if I go home at 3:45 because I spent an hour at lunchtime rather than going home at 4:45. OK, fair enough. That's my choice. But yeah, it's, you know, it goes so far, doesn't it becomes an expectation. Of course you'll mark a lunch because then you can do all the best of your market after school for three hours. What? Yeah. Protect it. Protect breaks. I love it. Dylan, that was a really long list. It was a really long episode, but I did enjoy it. Loved it. So are we going to be school leaders soon? No. No. OK. Sounds like a lot of effort. And maybe we can finish with that. Huge respect for school leaders. Yeah, I honestly really do. And again, sometimes we talk about bad school leaders. Yeah, for a number of reasons, OK. In the past, we've witnessed it. We see it so much online.

1:17:56 I see stories I can't fathom. And I think that's testament to the leaders we work with, who I do genuinely think have our interests at heart and still have these unbelievable pressures where they've got to get stuff done as well. It's such a hard balance to strike. I think it's really hard. And it is not a job for the faint hearted. But you know what? These things, send them to your SRT, send them to someone in your school. Do you think they're realistic? Are they just complete poppycock? I don't know. I don't know where that word came from either. I don't think I've ever said that word in my life. You've never said that. Has come out there, but I'm really interested because I truly think these could be implemented. Yeah, me too. Yeah. I agree. How did you want to end this episode? Just. What I'm thinking of doing is I'm gonna make a really, really impactful point and just cut it halfway for it.

1:18:39 So the one, the last thing we want to mention is that it's a, it's a must for all primary schools. We have to.