People vs Systems

This episode begins with some further thoughts on department development plans - following on from episode 15 on that topic.   Matt and Femi talk about defining what processes will be running in the department rather than trying to describe a particular endpoint and also incorporating teacher’s career ambitions into departmental development plans.

They then posit that teachers are the most important resource that a school has and that results are largely determined by them, and not the systems and structures in a school.  Matt and Femi recognise that you do need systems and structures but conclude that the ambition should be to create systems that support less effective teachers while simultaneously not clipping the wings of more effective teachers.

They talk about the implication of this which is that the lion’s share of non-teaching time in schools should be spent discussing pedagogy and developing teachers rather than on the development and implementation of ever more systems and structures.

This is yet another episode which is not subject-specific and should be of interest to teachers from all backgrounds.