Evidence Based Education

The Model for Great Teaching offers a curriculum for teachers’ professional learning. It provides a common professional language and a shared structure for enabling Great Teaching. "Having words for important concepts enables community members to talk about them, think together and agree on their meaning, interrogate them for deeper understanding and gain collective clarity around related action and impact." Language for learning leadership Stoll (2020) Which Element will you focus on first? Let us know in the comments below! 👇

What was the experience of using the Great Teaching Toolkit student surveys like? Chantelle Potts, Head of Science at Cumbria Future’s Federation, part of the @WELLPartnership tells us their experience with using the student surveys tool within the GTT for the first time. Watch it here hubs.la/Q04zKR1F0

The current education policy picture in England now places everyday inclusive teaching, sustained professional learning and collective expertise firmly within school improvement. The Great Teaching Toolkit (GTT) gives schools practical infrastructure to act on that direction provided it is actively used as a process for professional learning, not simply held as a library of resources. In this blog we provide a summary of the policy direction and how the GTT can help. To make the process easier, we’ve created an editable Inclusion Strategy Statement template to help you get started and see how the Great Teaching Toolkit can support your school’s inclusion strategy. You'll find it at the end of the blog. hubs.la/Q04z0xJH0

How has the culture at your school supported successful use of the Great Teaching Toolkit? Jane Marinovich, Year 3 Class Teacher and Victoria Musgrave, Deputy head Teacher at Haverigg Primary School, part of the @WELLPartnership Partnership talked to us how the leadership team supported teachers in using the Great Teaching Toolkit. Watch the video here: hubs.la/Q04zqTk_0

How have you used the Great Teaching Toolkit's student surveys to develop your practice? We asked Chantelle Potts, Head of Science at Cumbria Future’s Federation, part of the @WELLPartnership, about their experience using the student surveys within the Great Teaching Toolkit to develop their practice. Watch the video here hubs.la/Q04zqS-X0

Inclusive teaching is great teaching "Teachers want every learner – not just some – to succeed. But learners don’t all experience the same lesson in the same way. An explanation that is clear to one student may leave another unsure; a routine that feels predictable to most may be difficult for some to navigate; a question intended to make students think hard may inadvertently prevent some from participating at all. This is why framing inclusive teaching as great teaching matters. It is a direct response to the view that sees inclusion as a separate set of strategies, something additional to everyday teaching, something only used for particular pupils with additional identified needs. This separation is unhelpful, and we don’t need a new category. Inclusive teaching is great teaching." Blog by @ProfKime hubs.la/Q04BGY530

What attracted you to using the Great Teaching Toolkit this year? We asked Dr Michelle Henley, Senior Deputy Headteacher at Cockermouth School, part of the @WELLPartnership, why they started using the GTT to improve their teaching practices. Find out more about the platform here hubs.la/Q04zg6Jm0

What does inclusion in a classroom really look like?  In our recent webinar on inclusion in education Dr Haili Hughes Associate Professor at La Trobe University, joined Stuart Kime to discuss what inclusion can look like in everyday classroom practice and how teachers can think more carefully about the choices they make. In this clip, Haili uses cold calling as an example. Rather than asking whether a teaching technique is simply “inclusive” or “not inclusive”, she suggests asking more useful questions: What is the purpose of the technique? Which pupils might be disadvantaged by it, and why? How can we reduce unnecessary barriers while preserving the part that supports learning? It’s a helpful shift away from thinking about inclusion as a list of strategies to use or avoid, and towards making thoughtful, purposeful adaptations based on the pupils, the content and the learning goal. Catch the full webinar here: hubs.la/Q04z0xrH0 Also available as a podcast.

How have you used the feedback tools in the Great Teaching Toolkit this year? We asked Ruth Stead, Assistant Head at Netherhall School part of the @WELLPartnership, how they have used the feedback tools in the Toolkit to develop their teaching practice. Find out more about the platform here hubs.la/Q04zg1rl0

What have been the positives of using the Great Teaching Toolkit at your school? Jordan Gale, Headteacher and Chloe Evans, Deputy Headteacher at Fairfield Primary School part of the @WELLPartnership share their experience of using the Toolkit within an academic year. Find out more about the platform here hubs.la/Q04zg5Y90

What was the reason you chose the Great Teaching Toolkit? We asked Dr Michelle Henley, Senior Deputy Headteacher at Cockermouth School, part of the @WELLPartnership, what prompted them to use the Toolkit to develop their teaching practices. Find more about the platform here hubs.la/Q04zg63m0

We Need a Revolution in Professional Learning   Not because teachers need more to do, but because professional learning deserves to be treated as the core work of improvement.   In this new paper by Professors @ProfKime and @ProfCoe they make the case for a different approach: one that protects time, builds expertise and looks carefully at whether professional learning is improving practice.   Download your copy  hubs.la/Q04zrzt80

What we can learn from the Great Teaching Toolkit’s Survey Data "We know schools have been particularly interested recently in exploring inclusion and belonging so this summer I took a look at response data from inclusion-related GTT survey items from over 127,000 student surveys, nearly 600 peer surveys, and some 2,000 teacher self-reflections" In this blog Rachel Conlon-Bose Research Statistician here at Evidence Based Education, analyses GTT survey data and reveals what we've learned about belonging and inclusion hubs.la/Q04z0v3W0

By 31 December 2026, mainstream schools in England receiving the Inclusive Mainstream Fund must publish an Inclusion Strategy Statement. But what should this strategy include, and how can schools make it a plan that delivers long-term value and benefits the greatest number of learners? In this webinar with @ProfKime and Victoria Gardiner-Earl, Deputy Director at @NcleRSN they explored this new strategy requirement and explained what an Inclusion Strategy Statement is, what schools are expected to include in it, and how it connects to the seven principles of inclusion set out by the Department for Education. We also focused on one of the most powerful ways schools can use the Inclusive Mainstream Fund: sustained, evidence-informed professional learning that strengthens high-quality, adaptive teaching. The DfE explicitly identifies professional development focused on improving classroom teaching as an appropriate use of the fund, so we'll look at how schools can connect their pupils' needs and barriers to learning to high quality professional learning, and how they can make that case clearly and defensibly within their strategy. Watch the full webinar here hubs.la/Q04zKYY30

We Need a Revolution in Professional Learning   "...A profession built around learning should be much more serious about the learning of its own professionals. We would not accept a model of student learning that was occasional, one-size-fits-all, poorly sequenced and barely assessed. Yet that is too often what we offer teachers." In this new paper by Professors @ProfKime and @ProfCoe they make the case for a different approach: one that protects time, builds expertise and looks carefully at whether professional learning is improving practice. Download the paper here 👇 hubs.la/Q04zrz4s0

How have you and your colleagues been using the Great Teaching Toolkit this year? Laura Todhunter, Head of School at Braithwaite C of E School which is part of the @WELLPartnership, gives us an overview of how the they have been using the GTT this year. Find out more about the platform here hubs.la/Q04zg4VV0

We are building a classroom observation tool "Have you sat at the back of a colleague’s lesson and formed a judgement about how good it was? It feels valid. Experienced teachers surely know good teaching when they see it. The evidence says otherwise, and it is worth exploring. When trained observers using rigorously developed protocols watch the same lessons, their agreement is often only modest..." Read what's coming here hubs.la/Q04z70mz0

What do we mean by inclusive teaching? @ProfKime explains in this short video, taken from the first Chapter of our new Inclusive Education course: Same ambition, better access. Our new Inclusion course, available within the Great Teaching Toolkit, explores how teachers can maintain ambitious goals for every learner while noticing, reducing and removing barriers to learning and participation. It’s part of our wider approach to inclusive teaching, grounded in a simple belief: Great teaching is inclusive teaching. Explore the course, feedback tools and practical support for inclusive teaching 👇 hubs.la/Q04z70tP0

We Need a Revolution in Professional Learning   "For many teachers, school leaders and college leaders, professional learning is still far from what it could be. It is often treated as an extra thing: fitted into INSET days, twilight sessions, one-off workshops, or whatever time remains after the urgent business of school and college life has taken its share. It is too often generic, episodic, weakly connected to teachers’ real work, and rarely evaluated in ways that tell us whether it has changed teacher expertise, classroom practice or student learning. That should trouble us...." In this new paper by Professors @ProfKime and @ProfCoe they make the case for a different approach: one that protects time, builds expertise and looks carefully at whether professional learning is improving practice. Download the paper here 👇 hubs.la/Q04z0srd0

Speaker applications are now open for the Festival of Education 2027! This is a chance to share an idea, experience or piece of practice that others could learn from, whether that’s from your classroom, your school or your professional learning. As strand partners we will have a dedicated Great Teaching Strand at the Festival. You can add a note in the additional information section to say you’d like to be considered for the strand. If your application is successful, you may be selected to join us! And if presenting feels like a new step for you, don’t let that put you off. We’re pleased to be joining BAMEed and the Festival of Education Advisory Board to offer mentoring support to successful applicants who would value some help developing their session. 📅 Deadline: 1 November 2026 Find out more and apply here: hubs.la/Q04wRtfM0

Professors @ProfCoe and @ProfKime joined The Community Connection podcast with Eric Worcester, Nathaniel Provencio and guest co-host @S_Oberle to discuss why we need a revolution in professional learning based on our newly released paper. They make the case for a different approach: one that protects time, builds expertise and looks carefully at whether professional learning is improving practice. Watch the whole conversation here youtube.com/watch?v=prM0gBVk…