Gill Weston

Learning to Learn Together: What Senge Can Still Teach Schools and Trusts There’s something quietly powerful about the idea that organisations can learn. That they are not static machines or faceless systems, but living, breathing collectives of people thinking, reflecti…

📢 New Post 📢

How can we ensure that schools and trusts remain "learning organisations" ?

Peter Senge's "The Fifth Discipline" may have something to offer.

cc: @olicav.bsky.social

What Senge Can Still Teach Schools and Trusts? have a read below. 👇🏽

researcherteacher.home.blog/2025/07/30/l...

Let’s see how this goes: for every like, I’ll recommend a piece of music by a living composers.

Last month we released training materials developed with Chiltern Learning Trust and Department for Education to help teachers and leaders understand and use AI tools safely and effectively, exploring both opportunities and ethical considerations. 🤖📚

:https://chartered.pulse.ly/nu6bdbuikb

System Leadership at Scale: Leading With, Not Over Still in draft; always learning. As the role of educational leaders continues to evolve, particularly within Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs), we find ourselves navigating a fundamentally different prop…

Some reflections on leading across a MAT:

researcherteacher.home.blog/2025/06/27/s...

NEW POST on AI, learning and why knowing stuff still matters. carlhendrick.substack.com/p/the-most-i...

I have 10 days left available for the academic year 2025/2026. I can work face to face or online. Details of my work are available on my website. Ruthswailes.com . Do get in touch if you’d like to find out more.

Watching Jamie Vardy I got a Leicester men’s season ticket in 2014, when the club returned to the Premier League under Nigel Pearson.

Latest Substack, in response to Vardy’s imminent departure. #LCFC

The Four Pillars of Assessment resource guide.

The guide will provide you with a strong understanding of what underpins each pillar and how it supports great assessment.

What's your biggest challenge when it comes to designing assessments?

Download it here 👇
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#EduSky

Powerpoint and IWBs – It’s time to reclaim analogue teaching When was the last time you taught an individual lesson without using an interactive whiteboard, without PowerPoint, without pre prepared digital resources? When was the last time you did this for a…

Powerpoint and IWBs - time to reclaim analogue teaching. My latest blog.
thinkingflexibly.com/2025/04/19/p...

What is 'good' behaviour and how can teachers encourage it?

This eBook offers a definition for good behaviour and what it entails, as well a strategy that any teacher can consider to encourage good behaviour in their students.

Download your free copy 👇
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#EduSky #UKEd

Precision. Because hopeful vagueness isn’t (good) enough. I’m coming back to blogging after a big hiatus and finding several times that an idea for a blog post has struck me – only to find I’d written about it already! Teaching issues do…

Precision. Because hopeful vagueness isn't (good) enough. teacherhead.com/2025/04/05/p...

The quiet revolution in school improvement ‘Collaboration’ is a buzzword of the moment. Confederation of School Trusts deputy chief executive Steve Rollett says it’s good to see the policymakers catching up with practice

The quiet revolution in school improvement. Absolutely brilliant from @steverollett.bsky.social @cstvoice.bsky.social #Collaboration #SystemLeadership

www.tes.com/magazine/ana...

Two core ideas underpin effective inclusive teaching:

1. Cognitive similarity
2. Instructional sensitivity

Let’s dig into both…

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SEND: call for evidence on inclusive practice DfE’s inclusion group chair Tom Rees will lead programme calling for examples of schools running resource provision and SEN units, and using specialist learning assistants

Please to launch @inclusioninpractice.org.uk today at #ASCL2025.

www.tes.com/magazine/new...

Steve Munby: ‘You can never fully prepare for how it feels to lead’ Our How I Lead series asks education leaders to reflect on their career and experience. This month, we talk to Steve Munby, former CEO of the National College

'Leadership is about service. If it’s not about service, then it ends up being just about you, and you will lose moral purpose…'

@stevemunby.bsky.social shares his leadership philosophy in this month's How I Lead ⬇️

Who should read aloud in class? There are fewer more important acts in all of education than reading in the classroom. From what is read, to the specifics of when, why, and by whom, the how of reading in the classroom can prove a vi...

‘Why should we read aloud in class?’

“The teacher reading aloud and expertly modelling fluency (pace, expression, volume etc.) is likely a better bet than selecting underpractised pupils to read.”

alexquigley.co.uk/who-should-r...

🧵An important part of the primary experience is having a lovely time- adults ringfencing the unique state of childhood and ensuring that primary is a glorious place to be little. Playful and joyful are not the antonyms of high standards and aspiration.

Awayday Regular readers will know that my football writing on this Substack is mostly aimed at trying to understand this strange interest of mine: why do I (and thousands of others) keep going to games even w...

Awayday: thoughts on a trip to Goodison.
#LCFC #EFC

Inclusion at the Heart of the School System – Tom Rees - Schools North East Keynote at Schools North East Academies Conference 2025 – Thursday 23rd January 2025,  With sections taken from ‘5 Principles for Inclusion’ (Newmark/Rees 2023): https://cstuk.org.uk/knowledge/discuss...

Great to be at @schoolsnortheast.bsky.social last week to introduce the Inclusion Expert Advisory Group, which I'm pleased to be chairing.

Reforming the SEND system is the most important area of focus for us in the next 5-10 years.

Here's what I said in full.

schoolsnortheast.org/news/inclusi...

And with the carpet made of browning green we sweep the last of laughter, pack away the silent singers, dull the colours seen in sparkling, candled nights, and back to grey. While time was strangely paused, allowing small reflections back and on, new mem’ries burned and coiled around the lights, which now are all re-tangled, boxed, until the world’s re-turned. The year’s still young, and new-made winter’s light shows tables laid ahead for feasts unmade and friends unmet; we sense the change this sight inspires, but know such feelings quickly fade; until, from tangled hallways, Christmas sings again, and colours laugh at what time brings. (January 2022)

Twelfth Night: a sonnet.

The Great Teaching Toolkit Raise the quality of teaching at your school or college with an evidence-based curriculum for teacher learning

The Great Teaching Toolkit’s resource library puts hundreds of resources at your teachers’ fingertips.

It includes more than 500 blogs, videos, books, podcasts & documents, curated and mapped to the Dimensions & Elements of the Model for Great Teaching.
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#EduSky #UKEd

Proud to congratulate @nataliepacker.bsky.social and @davidbartram.bsky.social on the publication of #BeyondBoundaries: leading great #SEND provision across a trust this evening. Brilliant piece of work bringing together examples of excellent & innovative practice - for everyone’s benefit. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

a cartoon of two people shaking hands with each other ALT: a cartoon of two people shaking hands with each other

Let’s continue to grow this platform in the manner it has started - a wonderfully collegiate, informative, interesting space for educators everywhere. Hurrah! @collegeofteaching.bsky.social @ascl-uk.bsky.social

I play the Tom and Jerry theme in the style of the Russian classics.

It’s been that kind of week.

A #Leicestershire towns thread.

Ashby-de-la-Zouch, NW Leicestershire. The Castle was developed from a Manor House in the C15th; during the Civil War it was held for the King. It was the setting for a tournament in Scott’s novel ‘Ivanhoe’. The C19th Baths used spring water from nearby Moira.
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An Unwelcome Divide: Curriculum and Teaching I remember a time, not so very long ago, when it would have been highly unusual in most English schools for a lesson observer to pay much attention at all to the content being taught. It was very r…

New blog post
Why Ofsted should not separate teaching from curriculum
occamshairdryer.wordpress.com/2024/11/16/a...

Over the last 2 days my follower numbers have doubled on here, I'm looking forward to discussions and conversations about things that interest me. Education, child development, play, family, dogs, holidays, going out etc. If you've enjoyed my rants about inappropriate practice in Early Years, you

Autumn glory 🍁

Taking curriculum seriously Curriculum is all about power. Decisions about what knowledge to teach are an exercise of power and therefore a weighty ethical responsibility. What we choose to teach confers or denies power. To say ...

I wrote this partly in response to a tendency of some SLT to read classrooms in generic ways, & so not to notice when generic pedagogies weigh so heavily on a subject that its curriculum can't breathe. 6 yrs on, it's still an issue #CurriculumandAssessmentReview my.chartered.college/impact_artic...