Alongside my usual Christmas wishes for world peace and goodwill to all men, I would like to add another: can school leaders and consultants please stop ruining good educational ideas?

In Terry Pratchett’s book Small Gods, the Great God Om manifests in his church in the form of a tortoise, only to find that no one really believes in him anymore. Instead, they believe in the structures, routines and buildings that have grown up around him. They have built a shell around the idea and the idea has died.

I was reminded of this when discussing Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction with a group of teachers in a school I was visiting. Like many schools, their leadership team were very excited about this paper on the research behind effective teaching. Unfortunately, it had led to them turning the paper into a series of “non-negotiables” they expected to see in every lesson.

Rosenshine teaching advice

“We have to include a retrieval quiz at the start of every lesson because Rosenshine says it works best,” they told me.

I wracked by brains. I am very familiar with this paper and was fairly sure he says no such thing. He urges us to “begin the lesson with a short review of previous learning”, but this need not take the form of a quiz.

As I have written before, there are many ways of reviewing previous learning. While I might argue that a quiz is a great way of doing it, Rosenshine has nothing to say about this being the best method. Rather than engaging with an excellent idea on the importance of reflecting on prior learning, and why it works, teachers were going through the motions to demonstrate something to others.

A layer goes around the idea and the idea dies.

Knowledge organisers

We can see the same thing happening with knowledge organisers. Once again, I have written about this idea before for Tes, and a good idea it is. Spending time as a department thinking about what you expect pupils to learn from a unit and how best to organise this information is great. Giving pupils this information in a clear format so that they can revise from it and use it for self-quizzing is wonderful.

However, once again, the idea is being killed by poor leadership. I am hearing from teachers in a number of schools who have been instructed to create knowledge organisers so that pupils can use them in cover lessons. How they will be used is not discussed.

It is hardly surprising, then, that these teachers look to simply borrow knowledge organisers from other schools to save them the work of creating them themselves. This rather misses the point of them: they need to be tied to your exact curriculum. Again, a good idea is killed off by the things around it.

Whole-class feedback

The same thing is happening to whole-class feedback. This is a beautifully simple idea. Instead of writing “You need to add more detail” in 30 books, you write it on the board and then show them how. If almost everyone needs the same feedback, it may as well be given to the whole class. There may be a number of slightly different errors; these too can be addressed to the whole class and they can look for the mistakes in their own work, helping them to develop their ability to review their work.

However, there are schools where teachers have been told that this kind of whole-class feedback is now school policy and comes with a sheet that must be filled in stating the feedback being given, and then glued in the pupil’s book as evidence. A good idea for giving feedback in an effective and efficient manner is being killed off through the need to impose a structure on it.

Sadly, this list could just continue on and on. At the heart of all of them is the same problem: a focus from school leaders and consultants on telling teachers what to do rather than why they should do it.

What works best?

Instead, talk to teachers about why it helps to plan out the exact things you want pupils to recall and why they should share this with pupils, and then leave it up to them to implement this. Share with teachers Rosenshine’s work and why it is good to start with a review of previous learning, and leave them to find the best way to apply this in their classroom. Tell teachers why some forms of feedback are more effective than others and then set them free to do it in the way that works.

That is my wish for 2019: that we stop killing off great ideas and start trusting teachers to teach.

Mark Enser is head of geography and research lead at Heathfield Community College, and author of Making Every Geography Lesson Count