Stuart Rowntree

Yes - iteration beats discrete tasks, most of the time.

Tasks matter, but mainly as evidence that "informs" the next teaching move.

I’m wary of routines that optimise task success while leaving my model of the pupil unchanged.

YouTube video by Sue Cowley Getting your Class to Behave: Episode Seven - Being Flexible

I've published the next episode in my YouTube series on Getting your Class to Behave. This time I explore the idea of being flexible. Consistent standards - flexible ways of getting to them! I hope you find it useful.
youtu.be/JpFYRHuaPp8

• Do they like those Frube things anymore or should I just get the Munch Bunch yoghurts?

• They're settling down now. Although he's just got up for a wee. Start the chicken and I should be down in time to do the veg.

That’s such a telling example. When a label becomes more important than the thinking underneath it, everyone starts performing for the label - pupils included.

LOs could help, but only when they served decisions in the moment, not judgement after the fact...

It still feels like the institution’s reflex is protection-first. We don’t even have transparency on where the settlement money came from, and that absence fuels mistrust.

The late Queen's role may be taboo to discuss, but it's very dubious to me.

The most useful professional language is the kind that changes what we do at 10:15 on a Tuesday, not what we write at 8pm on a Sunday.

But metaphors and models do leak into practice - sometimes they illuminate, sometimes they flatten.

What language have you found both precise and human?

My rough test (which is very rough btw) : does the routine change what I do next, or just generate something to admire?

If I can’t name the decision it informs - or the pupil it helps tomorrow - it’s probably ‘prouder of the lens’.

Impact leaves a trail in teaching moves, not artefacts. I hope.

Yes - and in complex contexts the temptation is to standardise everything because it feels safer. But a required retrieval opener can become noise.

I’d rather see retrieval used selectively: to surface gaps, cue prior knowledge, and then move into modelling, practice and application.

That’s exactly it.

When a routine becomes a proxy for accountability, it turns into performative theatre - time spent proving we’re doing the work, rather than doing it. I actively despise this.

The best checks give you new information and a clear next step. If not, it’s just friction.

Love this - the “discarded rock” line is very real.

For me, the tell is when a routine stops sharpening judgement and starts producing artefacts.

When it’s more polishing the lens than seeing through it, it’s noise.

I think by all parties, retrieval gets caricatured as “fact bingo”, but it doesn’t have to be.

Done well, it’s a check for the building blocks that make thinking possible.

Metacognition in learning is gold dust.

The goal isn’t disconnected facts - it’s usable, connected knowledge.

What’s a routine you’ve stopped doing because it was noise, not impact?

That does sound heavy.

Seeing families arrive at that point in the year is hard, especially knowing how much has already gone wrong for them to get there.

I’m doing alright, thank you, but very aware of how stretched things feel across the system - and how stretched we all feel because of it.

And it would be unfair to expect any one person to carry the blame when intentions are clearly sound.

This is the conflation we’re often too quick to make with each other.

We need to hold our principles firmly, but extend a little more forgiveness as we work within imperfect systems.

That’s a really fair distinction. I appreciate you naming both the strength and the tension so clearly.

The umbrella term SEND often undersells complexity, but it’s a blunt statutory tool in a very complex system.

An emerging theme is navigating that carefully - it's not a failure of intent.

Precision matters, both for pedagogy and for protecting pupils from assumptions.

Precision in SEND work is difficult because every label risks flattening a child, yet without precision we risk giving support that’s well-meant but mismatched to what that pupil actually needs.

I recognise that tension too, Alex.

Distinguishing specific literacy difficulties from broader cognitive needs is something I’ve had to work hard at.

How are you doing, Isabelle?

Thank you for sharing that.

It really underlines the danger of crude labels being mistaken for learning limits.

Precision matters - for entitlement, protection & dignity. Pedagogically, it’s why we need to be explicit about the barrier we’re supporting, not assume SEND tells us how pupils learn.

SEND as a statutory umbrella rather than a learning profile.

The real work is being precise about the barrier in play, matching scaffolds to that need, and removing them deliberately. That’s how support builds access without becoming dependency.

It's definitely a fine balance.

Appreciate that these shared reading strategies show how to build access without lowering ambition.

Their real power in high-SEND contexts is when those supports are deliberately faded, so pupils practise holding meaning independently rather than relying on permanent scaffolds.

a man in a brown shirt is making a funny face while sitting at a table . ALT: a man in a brown shirt is making a funny face while sitting at a table .

I can't forget one pupil telling me how Jesus was comparable to Peter Pan because they both had eternal life...

Actual footage of my reaction:

Unfortunately, it is about "the things that they say that they'll do..."

Nothing says “fresh start” like promoting the same ecosystem.

We keep treating overload as a delivery problem.

It isn’t.

When everything is prioritised, nothing is learned deeply. Curriculum quality isn’t about coverage – it’s about what we deliberately choose not to include.

This isn’t ideology. It’s a capacity issue.

Citizenship matters. But the issue isn’t fitting it in – it’s that the primary curriculum is already bloated.

Adding more content without removing anything just stretches attention thinner.

If it’s a bolt-on, it fails. If it replaces something, we should say what.

3)
It’s the same principle I keep coming back to in education and public life: when conditions are calmer and clearer, people don’t need to perform competence.

They can actually exercise it.

2)
In practice, that looks very ordinary: quieter colours, predictable routines, fewer competing demands, time to think before reacting.

Less stimulation, more coherence.

Nothing aspirational – just workable.

1)
I’ve learned I function best with fewer signals and clearer edges.

For my autism, that isn’t an aesthetic preference so much as regulation – reducing noise so thinking and judgement can settle.

Increasingly, our public arguments aren’t about policy or pedagogy so much as trust – who we think is acting in good faith.

We personalise failure, even when people are carrying complexity without the conditions to sustain it.

The harder work is rebuilding those conditions.