Videos

"What's the biggest thing you two actually disagree on?" One listener has clocked the I agree, I agree tic and wants a proper scrap, so Dylan and Hayden dig into the teaching vs non-teaching divide and find it's spikier than either expected. Then a brave question lands. Should politics be explicitly taught in KS2? The boys weigh up whether ten year olds can handle it, who gets to decide what counts as balanced, and what happens when a kid asks the question you really didn't want them to ask. Next, draconian behaviour policies. Listeners have sent in the ones that humiliated children or just made no sense, and some of these are hard to hear without wincing. A one form entry teacher wants to know how on earth setting could work in her school, and the lads have a proper crack at it rather than dodging. Plus the SATs week ask that will make every Year 6 teacher's eye twitch. Revising all afternoon for the next day's test, every day. Reasonable prep or completely ridiculous? And …

🔢 Sign up for a free Maths Zoo demo right now and start using it in your school before the end of term. Boost maths fluency and arithmetic across every year group, completely free trial, no strings attached. Book it at www.mathszoo.org Another Q&A and this batch is properly varied. From genuine ethical dilemmas to a zombie apocalypse plan, Dylan and Hayden cover it all. In this episode: 🍪 The biscuit question -- is it acceptable for teachers to eat biscuits and drink sugary drinks in front of children? Are we supposed to be role models with our lunch, or can your packed lunch be whatever you want it to be? Dylan and Hayden land somewhere honest. ⚖️ Is teaching the most ethically dubious job in the world? -- a listener has been sending this question in for ages. Photocopying copyright violations, Disney Plus streamed in classrooms when the licence is for personal use only, and a long list of things teachers do every day without thinking about it. Dylan and Hayden actually engage with …

🔢 Sign up for a free Maths Zoo demo right now and get your school using it before the end of term. Boost maths fluency and arithmetic across every year group, completely free trial, no strings. Book it at www.mathszoo.org (http://www.mathszoo.org) A teacher writes in asking if it is genuinely acceptable to eat biscuits and drink sugary drinks in front of children. Are teachers supposed to be role models when it comes to lunch, or can you have whatever you want in your packed lunch and not feel bad about it? Dylan and Hayden have thoughts. Then a listener has been trying to get Dylan and Hayden to answer this for ages. Is teaching the most ethically dubious job in the world? Photocopying copyright violations, Disney Plus being streamed in classrooms when the licence says not for public use, the list goes on. Are teachers all walking around breaking rules constantly without realising? What is the quickest you have seen someone start teaching and then quit? A listener once knew an…

There's a bowl of fruit in the staffroom. Someone's put up a shoutout wall near the printer. Wellbeing Wednesday is in the calendar. And yet teachers are still staying until six every night redoing planning because the format changed again. This clip is taken from the Q&A section of Episode 194 of Teach Sleep Repeat, and it's Dylan's honest response to a question about why wellbeing initiatives in schools so often fall flat. His answer is direct: because most of them aren't designed to actually help anyone. They're designed to look like someone is trying. Dylan's argument is that free fruit and appreciation walls aren't inherently bad, but when they exist alongside workload policies that haven't been reviewed in years, they stop being gestures of care and start being something else entirely. A tick box. A way of saying "we take wellbeing seriously" without having to do the difficult, structural work that would actually make a difference to how teachers feel on a Monday morning. The …

Teach Sleep Repeat A major new EEF study has just produced the strongest evidence to date on ability grouping in English schools. Dylan and Hayden break down what it found, what it means for teachers, and whether it actually settles one of education's longest-running arguments. In this episode: 📊 What the study actually found -- 97 schools, around 9,000 pupils followed through Years 7 and 8. Pupils in mixed attainment classes made one month less progress in maths. High prior attainers made two months less. Low attainers and disadvantaged pupils saw similar outcomes in either model. And lesson observations found mixed attainment teaching looked closer to what bottom sets get than what top sets get. 🔄 Why the source matters -- the researchers behind this study are the same team that produced much of the evidence against setting for the last decade. This is not a pro-setting think tank finding what it wanted to find. That makes the result harder to dismiss. 📚 The orthodoxy we were traine…

For about twenty-five years, the dominant message in teacher training has been clear. The research says mixed attainment is better. Setting damages confidence, harms low attainers, and widens the gap. Then in April 2026, the EEF published a study that complicates all of that. Nine thousand pupils, 97 schools, two years of data. The finding: pupils in mixed attainment classes made roughly one month less progress in maths than pupils in sets. High prior attainers made two months less progress. And the team that produced this result is the same team that gave us most of the evidence against setting in the first place. Dylan and Hayden get into what the study actually found and what it did not find, what they were both taught during training and whether they still believe it, and the honest classroom experience that the academic literature tends not to capture. They also make the strongest possible case for both sides before landing somewhere honest. The mixed attainment argument do…

Another Q&A and this one has a bit of everything. A boundary question, an observation culture rant, a genuinely interesting debate about SATs, and a follow-up on memory and facts that takes the conversation somewhere unexpected. In this episode: 📧 The parent emailing at 10pm expecting a reply before school -- SLT say just manage the relationship. But what does that actually mean in practice? Dylan and Hayden talk through what they would genuinely do, why this is a leadership failure as much as a parent problem, and where the line sits on out-of-hours communication. 👀 Unannounced learning walks and two-line feedback emails -- working walls too busy one week, not enough evidence of learning the next. No conversation, no context, no right of reply. Dylan and Hayden on why this brand of school observation culture is one of the most demoralising things a leader can do, and what good feedback actually looks like. ✅ Defending SATs -- a listener thinks scrapping them entirely is an overreach …

A teacher is getting emails from a parent at 10pm most nights with an expectation of a reply before school the next morning. Their SLT's advice? Just manage the relationship. Dylan and Hayden have slightly stronger thoughts on that. Then unannounced learning walks, two-line feedback emails with no right of reply, and the working wall that was too busy one week and lacking evidence of learning the next. How is anyone supposed to win? Dylan and Hayden get into why this kind of observation culture does more damage to staff than it does good for children. A listener writes in to defend SATs, and wants to know if they are in the minority. Every other year group does end of year tests. It narrows focus. It prepares children for formal assessment later in life. It can be done badly but that does not mean scrapping it entirely is the answer. Dylan and Hayden take this one seriously rather than just nodding along. And following on from a recent video arguing that memorising specific fact…

Most schools have a reading for pleasure strategy. It usually looks like this: children get a book, the timer starts, the room goes quiet. Independent reading slot, ticked off. Except Hayden's argument in this clip is that what just happened there has almost nothing to do with reading for pleasure. This is a clip taken from the Q&A section of Episode 194 of Teach Sleep Repeat, and it tackles one of the most misunderstood areas in primary and secondary education. Independent reading time is not the same as reading for pleasure. Schools treat them as interchangeable, and it's costing children the thing we actually want them to have. Hayden breaks down why sitting children down with a book doesn't build readers, and why the solution isn't a better reading scheme or a new display in the corridor. Reading for pleasure is a whole school ethos, not a slot on the timetable. That means every teacher, every TA, every adult in the building contributes to it or quietly undermines it, whether th…

The government has just announced it is making the school phone ban statutory, turning existing guidance into legal obligation. Dylan and Hayden break down what that actually means, who it affects, and whether the people celebrating it are right to. In this episode: 📱 What the new law actually says -- and why most schools will wake up on day one and notice absolutely nothing different, because 99.8% of primaries and 90% of secondaries already had phone policies in place. ⚖️ How enforcement actually works -- the law does not criminalise pupils. It puts the legal duty on schools. The real teeth are Ofsted, who started assessing phone policies at every inspection from April 2026. A school without a policy, or one that has a policy and ignores it, risks its grade. 👩‍🏫 Why teachers actually want this -- not the "phones are evil" argument, but the real one. The daily low-level grind of policing devices. The bullying that follows children into lessons in real time. The playgrounds that came…

Another Q&A and this one has some genuine heat in it. From tokenistic wellbeing initiatives to a behaviour incident that left an entire class questioning whether anything actually matters, Dylan and Hayden do not hold back. In this episode: 🍌 The free fruit and shout-out wall problem -- a wellbeing lead is rolling out initiatives that everyone knows are not addressing the actual issues. Is it ungrateful to say so out loud? Dylan and Hayden think not, and explain why performative wellbeing can actually make things worse. 🤬 Told to f* off, back in class within thirty minutes** -- a Year 8 student swears directly at a teacher, gets sent to inclusion, and returns grinning half an hour later. What message does that send to every other student in the room? And why are so many schools pretending this approach is working? 🏛️ If you were education secretary, what changes first? -- both Dylan and Hayden take a proper shot at this. No vague answers, no sitting on the fence. 👨‍👩‍👧 The parent…

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The government has announced the first major update to school food standards since 2015. No more deep-frying. No more ice cream. No more fruit juice. Vegetables with every single meal. Dylan and Hayden break it all down. In this episode: 🍽️ What has actually changed -- a full before and after of the new standards, from desserts being capped at once a week to chips only being allowed oven-cooked, twice a week, as part of a meal. 🍦 Ice cream and juice gone -- the headline changes and what kids are actually going to think about them. 🥗 Veg with everything -- every main meal now requires vegetables or salad. Baked beans, pureed veg and potatoes do not count. Yes, really. 🍎 Free school meals for everyone? -- the Green Party has called for universal free meals for all primary and secondary pupils. London already funds this for primaries. Should the rest of England follow, or is targeted support better? 🏫 The postcode lottery -- the Soil Association estimates 60% of English schools were no…

Another Q&A and this batch of questions hit differently. From sick day guilt to financial reality checks, this one covers a lot of ground that will feel very familiar to anyone in primary teaching right now. In this episode: 🤒 Why sick days in teaching are genuinely impossible -- a teacher had to be convinced by her partner to stay home. She still felt like she should be working. Dylan and Hayden talk through the guilt, the cover folder question, and why this culture is so hard to shake. 📋 Being told you are moving year groups with zero consultation -- a headteacher has announced all staff are being shuffled in September. Nobody wants it, nobody was asked, and the deadline conveniently lands the day before teachers have to hand in their resignation if they want to leave. Is that acceptable? 🏫 What secondary schools could learn from primary -- studies show children's happiness in school drops sharply at secondary transition. What is it about the way primary works that secondary could …