This piece is co-authored by Kath Roe and Pat Cavanagh, who work as School Development Leads for primary schools and secondary schools respectively. This is the second blog piece in a series that shines a light on the Thrive Teacher Workload Charter. Along with our headteacher team, we have devised 11 statements that will help manage workload so that great teachers still have the energy be great family members and great friends.
Our entry enquiry question is: Who do we plan our lessons for? For pupils? For teachers? For managers? For external scrutiny? Our straightforward answer is that the focus of our lesson planning must be for pupils and teachers. Gone are the days when Ofsted want to see lesson planning. School managers will only review planning in a supportive way, as part of staff development. Gone are the days when all lesson planning needed to be signed off ahead of delivery.
We all know that lesson planning can significantly contribute to teacher workload. Time is the most valuable of all resources in schools and in life. Research shows (DfE 2024, Edurio 2024) that workload can be closely linked to teacher anxiety, teacher well-being and thereby teacher retention. But planning does need to happen, and it is time consuming, and so we need to support our colleagues to manage it. Here is our learning from what has been achieved to boost productivity and efficiency across Thrive schools. We have made significant steps forward across our 7 primary schools and it’s time to bring more of this thinking to our 3 secondary schools.
Put planning in the cloud and use AI with HI
Across an ecosystem of 10 schools, it is increasingly important to base planning online, this enables collaboration across all of the teachers teaching our 5500 pupils. Let’s stop sticking stuff on school-based servers. Of course, this demands scrupulous and super-logical organisation - but hey, we are teachers. We also encourage using AI with human intelligence (HI) looking on. (Just put ‘Write a report for a family visit to Bridlington, and give it a reading age of 10’ into Gemini - why wouldn’t you encourage this in lesson and resource preparation?) - as long as you apply HI.
Knowing what content to teach - collaboration shares the burden
Increasingly, we have created a shared curriculum across, with progressive substantive and disciplinary knowledge created as a group and used by all. This planning means that, by and large, teachers will be delivering agreed content in a similar manner. Curriculum Leaders have a metaview of the sufficiency of the entire school curriculum.
Knowing how to teach the subject - collaboration shares the burden
Subject leaders meet to share ideas and oversee the quality of the curriculum in their subject specialism; they also work within their school to review their subject and generate action planning. At this level, the appropriate amount of time to be spent on the subject, and the sequencing of lessons is agreed upon.
Knowing how to plan relevant lessons - collaboration shares the burden
Year group teams get together to discuss the learning to be planned and can then share the lesson planning burden in a way they find helpful and that saves vast amounts of time. It makes no sense for each teacher to create their own lessons from scratch. By collaborating, much of the heavy lifting is achieved with lessons created for all to tweak and take forward. In effect, some areas of the curriculum are identical across the piece and there is lesson planning in place that everyone shares. Staff can then concentrate on how they will bring the learning alive for their children in their classrooms, and how to put adaptations in place for individuals and groups. Teachers across schools now know each other well and when they are stuck they have a colleague or two, or twenty-two, to talk to!
Lesson planning like this results in delivery that prioritises the needs of pupils rather than merely delivering content, or simply preparing for assessments starting with the end in mind. Rather, true collaboration establishes a path to expertise, builds on prior knowledge, chooses the shortest route, and links learning to future goals.
So when would lesson planning be routinely looked at?
Our short answer to this is when staff need support, especially in their earliest days in the job, or when moving from another school, or when returning from a long absence, or when performance dips. But beyond these, we don’t expect managers to routinely check lesson planning - that would be a waste of everyone’s time. Planning may also be reviewed as part of periodic curriculum reviews to check that planned delivery is happening. The aim here is to support all staff to develop their practice, as well as checking that the agreed curriculum is being delivered.
What are the downsides?
Clearly there is an opportunity for a mistake in one place to be suddenly replicated across many places - and this may have happened! But our processes build in multiple QA opportunities, notably from teachers themselves, but also Year Group Leaders, Subject Leaders and Curriculum Leaders - and the odd headteacher along the way! Bugs are quickly spotted and dealt with. Lessons from inspection are quickly learned across all schools. We are more responsive and adaptive now than we have ever been.
Every teacher is autonomous in their delivery, every lesson is different even if the source planning is the same. Teachers are creative and they will be creative in their delivery. Our experience is that teacher autonomy in curriculum planning and lesson planning isn’t such an issue when teachers have been involved in this throughout, and they feel the amount of time it saves.
In summary:
Put planning in the cloud and use AI with HI
Maximise opportunities for collaboration at multiple layers
Trust Curriculum Designers, trust Subject Leaders, trust teachers
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