We’re approaching that time of year when attention turns to timetables.
Deciding what to prioritise involves integrating our values with considerations of effectiveness and logistical constraints. Effectiveness, however, could mean multiple things: are we maximising attainment, minimising workload or simply ensuring no one is too unhappy?
Research on this is relatively limited, but there are three insights that could inform our practice going forward.
Give the strongest teachers to the pupils with the greatest needs
Multiple strands of research evidence find that pupils with the greatest needs do best with the strongest teachers.
One widely cited study is by Helen Slater, who was at the Treasury at the time, and colleagues who analysed data for more than 7,000 pupils in England and found striking differences in the impact that teachers had on pupils’ learning after accounting for other factors.
And in May this year, a study led by Professor Simon Burgess at Bristol University found that lower-attaining students gained more from having highly effective teachers than did higher-attaining students.
However, this rarely happens in our schools. The Education Endowment Foundation highlights that pupils with special educational needs often spend more time with teaching assistants, who are typically less effective than teachers, and secondary schools often give the lowest sets to less experienced or non-specialist teachers. This needs to change.
Give teachers some repetition
Teachers get better when they repeat things. At primary, this can be done by keeping teachers in the same year group rather than moving them. Dr Ben Ost used data from North Carolina between 1995 and 2012 to explore the benefits of teaching the same year group and concluded that it helps.
Secondaries can achieve repetition by giving teachers multiple classes studying the same curriculum. In my first year of teaching, I valued having two Year 10 physics classes because I got to have another go each week, which helped me to improve.
This kind of repetition allows teachers to master their curriculum and it can reduce workload. Using the same data source, Ost also found that early career teachers were 20 per cent less likely to leave their schools if they stayed with the same year group for two years.
More teaching and learning:
Keep teachers and pupils together
Pupils learn more when they have the same teacher for another year. In a new working paper, Dr Leigh Wedenoja and colleagues analysed data covering more than 50,000 teachers in Tennessee, and used detailed data linking pupils in Grades 3 to 11 with their teachers in Tennessee between 2007 and 2015.
They found learning and behaviour improved when pupils had another year with a teacher who previously taught them. The researchers argue that this is down to relationships, and that teachers and pupils adapt to each other.
Repetitions can happen when teachers move up a year with their class in primary. The researchers note that these repetitions happen more by chance than by design, suggesting that schools may be able to use this approach deliberately.
It is worth noting a few things about all of these research studies: none is a randomised controlled trial. They instead used methods, such as fixed-effects models, which are less rigorous. They also took place in the US, where schools, and teachers’ working lives, are different to ours.
There are also key moderators to consider, such as teachers’ levels of subject and curriculum knowledge. Teachers who struggle with these are more likely to benefit from repetition, while others might benefit more from the opportunity to build relationships with pupils, particularly if behaviour is poor.
We therefore need to carefully consider to what extent these findings apply to us. We should also consider how they apply across phases, subjects and individuals.
That doesn’t mean there is nothing helpful here, though. And the only way for schools to learn more about how these findings apply in their own contexts is for them to try them out and see for themselves.
Thomas Martell is the director of the NELT Institute, part of the North East Learning Trust
