Beyond Good

In this episode Femi and  Matt speak to Aparna about her experience of education as a mother of two exceptional children.  The conversation shines a light on some of the challenges students, their families, teachers and schools face when the children don’t fall into that broad middle 99% that we are accustomed to working with.   Hopefully the conversation provides some awareness and stimulates thi...

Matt and Femi turn their attention to the subject of Departmental development plans and, as you will hear, this is a topic that they come at from quite different perspectives.   They discuss the issues with development plans in the way they all too often appear in schools, vision and ambition for the department, auditing the current state of affairs, and the importance of pricing in the available...

The central theme of the discussion in this episode is ‘teaching low ability students’.  In a fairly wide-ranging discussion, Femi and Matt touch on expectations, setting and sink groups, profiling, behaviour, avoiding conflict, and some common pitfalls they have seen, amongst other things.  Although they do cite a few maths-specific examples, on the whole this is another episode that is largely n...

In this week's episode, Femi and Matt mull over a topic which seems to get a disproportionate amount of air time on social media, which is teachers’ thoughts and feelings about their SLT.    As always, the Beyond Good team would love to hear your thoughts and responses to the episode: @BeyondGoodPod 

In this episode of The Beyond Good Podcast, Matt and Femi discuss resilience.  There is an old adage that students should be working harder than the teacher, and they explore this, discuss what they each think is right at the core of good teaching, talk about engineering success, what that looks like in the classroom and how it evolves over time, metacognitive understanding and touch on teacher re...

The theme of Femi and Matt's discussion in this episode is “things that schools could get rid of - or at least do less of”.   While it is rarely the case that these ‘things’ are totally ineffective, more likely they are effective to some degree, but in the cost-benefit analysis do they meet the threshold of being effective enough to justify our time?  Could they be culled in order to allow us...

In this episode Femi and Matt discuss what they were each doing at the beginning of their teaching careers that they felt was very effective, and as importantly what they were not doing, and then what other aspects came in later when more bandwidth came online as they developed automaticity (unconscious competence). This is a discussion about low hanging fruit / first order effects / climbing the...

This week Femi and Matt discuss ‘making the most of your training year’ – in response to listener demand!  Much of what is covered will be useful for trainees and ECTs, as well as mentors and anyone thinking of taking on a mentoring role.  Indeed,  some of the conversation is ever-green as they do cover areas such as planning, resources and feedback.  

In this episode the seemingly mundane topic of 'meetings' comes under Femi and Matt's scrutiny.  Both have sat in meetings, like so many of us, with utter dismay at the terribly ineffective  use of time and frankly sometimes callous disrespect for colleagues' time as lengthy agendas are gradually ticked off with a series of mainly one to one discussions... In this conversation...

In this episode Matt and Femi speak with Sam Roberts.  Sam Roberts is best known for his work in sports broadcasting - particularly as a rugby commentator.  However Sam is also a teacher, and so is able to speak from the intersection of a fairly unique Venn diagram – bridging the worlds of teaching and elite-level sports performance. As you will hear, Sam speaks passionately about performance mind...

Join Femi and Matt as they share their thoughts and experiences of running professional development for teachers in their departments.  Mentioned in this episode is the EEF - the Education Endowment Foundation and if you are not familiar with their work, we highly recommend spending some time on their website, and in relation to this episode, reading their guidance report on 'Effective Profes...

This week on the podcast Matt and Femi talk to special guest Mike Stuart about his many years of experience as a head of year.  They discuss relationships, 'the first assembly',  taking assemblies, tutor times - and being a visible presence amongst the year group,  fierce conversations, "not just the naughties", role clarity and looking after yourself, amongst other topics.

In this episode Femi and Matt discuss Robert Pondiscio's AEI Op-Ed titled 'Confronting 5 Damaging Educational Myths'.  The discussion elicits some interesting and useful points with the following 6 myths coming under fire from the duo: “I don’t teach facts. I teach critical thinking.” “Reading is a skill.” “This is too hard/inappropriate/irrelevant for my students.” “Children have d...

In this episode Femi and Matt explore high quality science teaching with Rob Newman.  They discuss the importance of identifying and then observing established good teachers, having quality conversations about teaching, filtering the noise of ‘advice’ coming from all corners and crucially; ignoring the feedback that was not helpful.  Rob talks about where time is wasted in lessons and what good te...

In this episode Matt and Femi discuss how they approach cover lessons.  They cover etiquette for leaving cover, running cover lessons in your own subject and running cover lessons outside of your specialism.  What emerges are a wide variety of useful tips and tricks that teachers can use to take the pain out of cover lessons and achieve better outcomes for all involved!

Femi and Matt are excited to be back after the summer break and kicking off season 2 with an interview with Phil Naylor.   Phil was the long-standing host of the most excellent Naylor’s Natter podcast and he has recently relinquished his seat behind the microphone in order to make time to pursue his writing and his work – he is a full time deputy head in blackpool.  His first book, also called Nay...

In the final episode of season 1 of the podcast, Femi and Matt interview Patrick Ottley-O’Connor.  At the time of recording Patrick was just a few days into his retirement from a fascinating and diverse career in education spanning over 35 years, and including roles from classroom teacher all the way to head and CEO.  His experience encompasses primary, secondary and special educational settings a...

This is part 2 of Matt and Femi's interview with Amelia, in which she gives a student perspective on school.  If you haven’t yet listened to the previous episode it is recommended that you start there.  In this episode the trio discuss meta-cognitive strategies, the nature of revision as an individualised process, resilience, fear of failure, making mistakes, paired work and partnering, how t...

In this episode Matt and Femi speak to former pupil Amelia.  Although Amelia has just finished her A-levels, they mainly discuss secondary school, and are broadly inclusive of all subjects and not just maths.  As you will hear, Amelia is extremely qualified for this role – in addition to being incredibly intelligent, both her parents are in education and so she enjoys, and is well versed in, discu...

With thoughts inevitably turning to September and planning the return to the classroom, Femi and Matt discuss some of the key aims for the first few lessons of a new academic year and delve into the approaches one might use in order to achieve them.   In particular, thinking of the first week or two with a new group as being all about creating the classroom culture that you want for the rest of th...

In this episode of the podcast Matt and Femi speak with Sam Strickland.  Sam has had a long and interesting teaching career – he is currently the principal of Duston school where GCSE results have gone from the bottom 20% nationally to the top 20% under his tenure.  Sam is also the author of 3 fantastic books: education exposed, education exposed 2 and his latest work “The behaviour manual”.   In...

On this episode of Beyond Good Matt and Femi talk to Sonia Gill - author of the books ‘Journey to outstanding’ and ‘successful difficult conversations in school’, the latter of which is the primary focus of this episode. Topics covered in this episode include attitudes towards difficult conversations, why we should have them and who loses out when we don’t, structuring the conversation, scripting...

In this episode Femi and Matt pick up where they left off last week with the theme of taking on a new leadership role.  In a more discursive conversation than last time they cover the importance of getting out and about, introducing yourself to students and contacting parents, carefully planning initial team meetings, understanding SLT and working with and not against your line manager.  Femi give...

With the summer nearly upon us, many colleagues will be turning their attention from teaching students towards planning and organising for the next academic year.  That will especially be the case for anyone who has taken on a role with increased responsibility for next year, whether within their current school, or pastures new, and so in this episode Femi and Matt reflect on what that process is...

In this episode Femi and Matt dive into assessment – specifically how they use short but frequent class tests to inform planning and teaching, and to maximally support student progress.   They compare their different approaches and see how these arise from having slightly different objectives.  They discuss some guiding principles of testing – what they consider to be good and bad practise, includ...