Lots on the role of planning, that it is a dying art and teachers MUST plan.....

My thoughts...........

Planning is most effective when co-planning takes place

Multiple sets of eyes are better than one set

Time needs to be given to planning and a lot of the white noise we expect staff to do needs to go

Suggesting teachers should plan alone isn’t helpful and increases workload

Handing nothing to NQTs is poor practice

Why should NQTs and RQTs have to plan from scratch? What are we actually seeking to achieve.

If we want real consistency why not co-plan. The highest performing schools used subject community produced workbooks.

The skill of being a teacher is in the enacted curriculum. We need teachers to focus on this. Subject knowledge and the ability to question are critical.

If we want to teach to the top then we cannot leave things to chance.

How likely is it that an NQT is going to plan consistently high quality lessons when planning alone. What are they learning?

Some of the top performing trusts bring in members of their central teams to help deal with planning, training teachers to deliver the enacted curriculum with precision and skill. This is the art.

When ten members of a dept. go home and plan the same yr9 lesson as islands what are we achieving in the name of the teacher must plan? What’s the opportunity cost here?

If we want to haemorrhage more teachers let’s keep on exhausting them

Would we expect a teacher teaching 4 different subjects at gcse to plan everything from scratch? It happens. It isn’t sustainable. I’ve seen it.

I think we are in danger of harping far too much to the “good old days” with the candle burning til 1am.

Subject communities are a far more powerful vehicle.

The real danger of operating alone is sinking....
Not surfing..... not swimming.........

Musings, view and potential rant over