Teacher autonomy is back in the news. I find this debate a challenge because we always seem to look at it through the wrong end of the telescope.

“Should teachers in my school have more or less autonomy?” is like asking “Should the pupils in my class have more or less scaffolding?”. The answer is “it depends”.

In the case of pupils, it’s about the content being taught and how they are getting on with it. For teachers, it’s about their expertise and the culture the school is trying to build.

Let’s consider each of those in turn:

1. Developing expertise

Experts are able to efficiently and effectively solve the persistent problems of their role. They use their mental model - what they know and how that knowledge is organised - to guide their decisions.

This mental model is built over time as they make deliberate efforts to learn and gain experience. Developing this expertise is the best bet we have for improving outcomes and closing attainment gaps.

When teachers are novices, or in a new role, the learning needs to be more structured and scaffolded. Lots of direct instruction, lots of deliberate practice, lots of seeing and interrogating models.

As they become more expert, the type of learning changes. More problem solving, experimentation and even creating models for others.

2. Building a great culture

A school’s culture is a collection of norms about “how things are done around here”. Done well, schools are able to define it clearly and point to it running through everything they do.

There is power in a great culture as everyone pulls in the same direction towards a common goal. Pupils experience a predictable environment, we have shared language to describe and discuss teaching, we avoid duplication and manage workload.

But building a great culture requires us all to act in our collective, rather than individual, interests.

To draw on a term from the Brexit debate - we have to pool sovereignty. Do we need to pool all of it? No. But it’s not a culture if we don’t pool any.

So, how much autonomy?

How much autonomy is therefore a second, not first, order question. It depends on the expertise of each teacher and the importance of alignment in each aspect of the culture we’re trying to build.

One-size-fits-all professional development, regardless of expertise, isn’t going to work and neither is a model of slavish prescription of minutiae dressed up as culture. We should call that out when we see it. But the opposite of this isn’t a complete free-for-all.

Oak National Academy tries to walk this important line. We’re mid-way through replacing our pandemic materials with a new set of comprehensive high-quality in-class resources and curriculum plans. They are built by enlisting expert teachers from across the system. These models will always remain optional and adaptable. This balance seems to be working.

Adaptation and inspiration

We know from our fourth independent evaluation published this week that over 190,000 teachers used Oak’s resources in the six months to July 2024, up 115 per cent from the same period in 2023. That’s one in three of the workforce. The figures have continued to rise this school year and are now 158 per cent up on the same time last year.

Three in four (73 per cent) said using Oak had saved them time - five hours per week on average. Most said that meant reducing hours worked, while others said it freed them up for other activities with pupils. Oak users had higher wellbeing and were more likely to see themselves staying in teaching.

And how they use our models is pertinent too. Two-thirds of users said they had changed their school or subject curriculum after exploring Oak’s, but they did this by building on or modifying their own work, for example swapping topics or changing the sequence.

It’s a similar story with lesson planning - teachers adopting Oak’s lesson approaches, such as structure or checks for understanding, rather than downloading them wholesale.

So, let’s move the debate on. Let’s ask ourselves whether or not we’ve got the right approach to developing expertise and the right approach to building a culture. And let the right amount of autonomy be determined by context and nuance again.

Matt Hood is chief executive of Oak National Academy

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