I attended a conference recently on AI and teacher workload, and a few things really stayed with me. First, progress is slower than many of us expected. AI marking tools are improving, but most still focus on literacy subjects. Maths remains a difficult problem for developers to crack. There are plenty of platforms that offer auto-marking, but the amount of admin involved, such as photographing and uploading work, often reduces the practical benefit. Cost is another real challenge for schools...

Over the past few years, we have learned a great deal about what helps pupils remember the knowledge that really matters. Research, such as Evidence-Based Education’s  Target Memory,  shows that pupils learn more effectively when we clearly identify substantive knowledge  and revisit it deliberately through short, regular retrieval. Our Memory Key Objectives (MKOs) are built with exactly that intention. MKOs highlight the specific facts and ideas pupils need to recall with confidence so they...

A few years ago, our KS5 value-added was below national. We didn’t reach for gimmicks. We got serious about precision, challenge, and consistency, and it worked. Our six-point plan:  1. Raise the bar and show it. We rebuilt courses for proper challenge and made progress transparent through DPR. Everyone could see what “good” looked like, in real time.  2. Test what matters, cumulatively. We brought in Total Knowledge Recall so students were held to everything they should know, not just last...