Episode 202: How to save hours of time for teachers

Welcome back everyone to a super other exciting episode of the school school podcast with our regular hosts. We've got Robin Potter and Adam Gifford say hi guys.

Hi guys! We're so good at this now. So well trained.

We got Matt Bland with us today. So Matt, listen, just tell us who are you? What do you do? Where do you work? Tell our audience.

My name is Matt Bland. I'm a teacher and assistant head and I suppose maths lead at Our Lady's Bishop Eaten in Liverpool. So we are in, I suppose, a lovely area of Liverpool and quite an affluent school. sorry, start that again. We're quite in a leafy suburbs of Liverpool, I would say. And it's a great school and we've been doing maths no problem for...

about 10 years now. We started in 2014. myself, yeah, I myself am not from Liverpool. was, in fact, my dad was a teacher for the army. So I spent most of my life in Germany and going to services education and going through that one. And then I was educated out in Germany at service schools. And then I went back to university in Brighton and I taught near Brighton and around Brighton for a little while. And then I went back and taught

army children as well out in Cyprus for a couple of years where I met my wife and well I lost the argument and I came to Liverpool really she said let's move back and the rest is really history and that's it really.

Fantastic. Well, that's interesting. I, I, you know, one of the things I'd love to talk to you about is, so obviously we have a lot of guests and we've done a lot of episodes on the school school podcast, but one of things we don't often talk about is, you know, when, when schools go through these transformations or 2014, you guys, you know, pushed by the new curriculum, coming out of this idea of where there were levels and math was taught differently. And, and there was this idea that like, Hey, we, need to up our game.

So the government put out this new curriculum. It was quite transformational for a lot of schools. Tough for a lot of schools to change because they didn't really know what it meant and how it was supposed to be different. Then now, reflecting back 10 years, what did the school get out of it? And what did the teachers and the administration and the leadership in schools get out of this change? Because we know what the benefits are for the pupils and we've seen it and we've heard about it. And certainly your school stands out as one of, you know

some stories that you've told us before about, you know, how children have gone on and followed maths now, or maybe previously they wouldn't have. But what about the teachers? What about the school? What's in it for them?

I think it's twofold. The first part of it is I think all that research that has been done has been collected together. And once you start collecting together that research and putting that on staff, they do go off and start to look at that a little bit deeper. And learning something new or going back and learning is never a bad thing. For whatever age and whatever

stage of career you're at, learning something new or a new way of doing it, or even reflecting back on old practice that you were taught when you went through university or college and kind of reflect back on good things that we were doing back in the 70s and all those things before and even before with some of the reflection stuff. So that is never a bad thing and that does have a benefit for all staff because then they start to...

that starts to infect the other subjects. How can I bring that good knowledge and that good teaching research into other subjects and how can I use that within my teaching? And whenever you get staff to reflect on that research, that stuff, really, I think it just adds to a lot. Staff just like it, I think, and I think people like that. It's exciting.

it starts to fire up and you start to see that. And once that process starts, there's that little spark comes in and you can see people wanting to do it more. So I remember when we started this, people could start to relate that back or, yeah, we've got that kind of part to it and they could see that going.

The second part of that one, I think is workload. And I think it's your, that mental health. When I talk to other schools that are not doing it.

and I asked, I posed that question because I've had now a couple of head teachers say, but it's really expensive or it's expensive and there's an expense to this. I don't have to do that.

And then I start to say, this, how much is your time worth? How much would you pay for someone to plan your maths? If I said to all your teachers and when I talk to them, who are doing it using other schemes, say, well, I spend two hours a week planning my maths through or getting my resources through and making sure it's all in line.

And when I ask them, how much would you pay for that? What is that worth to you? And it's hard because, you know, it's, it's unquantifiable, isn't it? But there's that little element of it. And then there's the fact that all that hard work has been done for you. So it's all put in place there. There is still time that you do still have to think about it. And you do still have to look at your planning and you do still have to think more importantly about what questions am I going to ask?

How am going to pose that? What's the order that's going to be? Or how will I reveal parts of that? Or what will I put out? But that's the enjoyable part of planning. That's the, okay, this is how my lesson will work. But that structure is all given to you. Because that structure is given to you, you can spend more time in other areas for yourself. that's sometimes invaluable, isn't it? That taking away that stress for your staff.

and for your school, it's hard to put a value on that one. So that's the answer I always give when head teachers or other teachers ask, but you what about this? It's what's your time worth as well? That is an important consideration within this.

on average, teachers spend seven to eight hours a week searching for content online.

Now, what if they spent those seven or eight hours doing something more productive, like planning how to teach the lesson as opposed to scouring the internet looking for stuff? So that's quite profound, actually. I think it's, you're right. Now you can think about, your planning can be not where am going to find a bunch of questions for tomorrow's lesson, but it's sort of like, I know these are good questions. How am I going

to how am I going to maximize the time, that one hour that I have to teach this lesson with the pupils, right? So that I can address everybody in the class, those who are struggling a little bit, those who already know it, those who are right at that proper level of struggle right now. How do I address that?

Yeah, and it's keeping that intelligent practice going as well. So you know that once you've gone from the original problem and then you've you've drilled it in some way when it comes to that guided practice, you know that there's that little twist each time. You do sometimes have to get used to the workbooks and you have to maybe explain them, but you know, you can see where the objective thread is. Where is that going each time? What's that moving on to and what are we trying to test those children?

And what's quite interesting is you get to, you see where the children are at within that journey of the lesson. And I know as a school, we're very transparent about that, I think, because unlike other schools, we send our books home. So at the end of the week, and I know people will not want to do that, but what we do is we send our books home on a Friday and they go home with the children and parents and that is their homework.

They have a look at the book and they can see what they've done, what they've not done and they know exactly where their child is at. And I think that's really good. I've got to know what your child can do and where they're at and what their next stage is.

It's so transparent and used correctly it's really powerful because parents can then pick up and go, okay, I know I need to pick that up. I know I need to do that as well. So it's got two benefits. I know we're talking about staff there, but it kind of, we've used that to go home as well to empower parents as well.

I remember you mentioned this to us when we visited your school. And I think Andy was like, okay, let's keep that on the down low. I'm glad you've announced it now to everybody.

Matt Bland (09:19)

As a school it has worked, I can understand why other schools don't do it. I think it came from when I looked at Singapore. I just asked that question, what do you do in Singapore? What happens in Singapore? And I know that the children keep their books with you, they take them home. Then I posed it to our head teacher, why couldn't we? They bring back a reading book every day.

Yeah. Well, what happens in Singapore is the children have to buy the books, right? The parents buy the books. The school tells them, okay, you've got to go buy these books. And then they go to the bookstore and they buy them. And then, of course, the books belong to the children. And the school doesn't want them in the school. They're like, no, you've got to take these books home, right? So the kids got to carry the books back and forth, you know? And it works over there. I know it's a different system. But.

I think it works for us because you know what the children have done. You know that the homework is specific to what they've done and you know that they've had, you know that they've been taught it. So as long as they go back over a worksheet that they've done, it's not new content. It's just a reflection of what they've done. And then any work they do with parents is that going back over.

and recapping over something they've done. that's the aim. That was our aim in why we were doing that. So that it was always a reflection. Yeah.

What do the parents think, Matt?

I think like with lots of homework, some parents love it, some parents hate it. But what I will say is that the thing that you probably are thinking as teachers listening to this is that, they'll just lose it. They won't care about it. It'll just get lost. I'll never see it again. And I do a training session with all parents at the beginning of the year. I bring them, bring, I started with year two and

I've much trained every year before that. So they've all had access to that. And we only did it from year two to year six. And what's quite nice is that you invest in the parents and then they start to see it like the children start to see that it's valuable. if something is valued, it becomes valuable. I've got, you've probably got the photos behind you of your family and if there was a fire right now the one thing you would get is some of those little photos or something that's a keepsake of your family.

Now that to me is nothing, it's a piece of paper, it's got no value but to you it's probably everything, it's something that's really valuable and it's like those books, once you start to really value it, it becomes valuable and I get about three or four a year lose them if that. In fact last year I didn't have any.

They don't lose them, they bring them in. If you put value in it and stock in it, people will see that as valuable and then they'll know that it can work.

Andy Psarianos (12:07)

Yeah, and I think it's a great lesson for kids too, you know, to say, hey, here is something I'm entrusting you with this. You're worth it and I trust you and I'm giving you this. I often we forget how powerful that is to, to young children, right? You know, that's really powerful.

Matt Bland (12:23)

Yeah, yeah, and parents see that as well. They buy into that, I think.

So you mentioned at the beginning, you said there were two things that you could really think of how this impacts your teachers for the long term. And the one I always hear from our most successful schools, obviously including yours, is what you first mentioned about how this learning this concept and the way of teaching and explaining this has poured over into other subjects.

And I hear that again and again from our teachers. And I think that is so valuable because there could be a point in time where they're not teaching maths, they're teaching another subject. But the fact that they already have those skills, have gained those skills through teaching maths, no problem, I think is so beneficial. mean, and it's something I would think they never think about when first starting on that journey.

Would that be the case or do you think that they actually are already thinking, yeah, I could use this in for other subjects.

No, definitely, definitely. When we, like I said, when we looked at our foundation curriculum and we started to look at all the other curriculums, we wanted to echo lots of the traits that Maths — No Problem! had. And we used that echo and tried to get that into all our other lessons. Because if you know one thing's good, you can start to copy that through. You can start to say, well, actually, I really like this part about it.

I want to see that in other lessons as well. want to that in science lessons. Or can I see that in a history lesson? Or can I see that in some of our foundation lessons so that we have that practice or we have that problem and look into that way of thinking and then you echo it out through all those other foundation subjects. It's powerful.

And it definitely drove our curriculum development from 2019, certainly on which when that changed. But also kind of led us to go, well, what is good geography teaching look like? You if you're saying this is what good maths teaching is, what is good geography teaching? What is good art teaching? What does that look like? And how, you know, just that I think, I don't think before, before I started Maths — No Problem! I definitely remember staff meetings in other schools where I was told, look, this is good, just do this.

And it was kind of done to me and I kind of thought, right, well, let's just go along with it. This is a school policy, this is how we're doing it. This is good, let's do this. But I never asked that question of, well, how do children learn times tables? How do you learn that? How has that gone in? And it's the same for, what does that look like? What is a good lesson on this look like? And it's the same for art and geography and history.

And music, what does that look like if we've set out a good curriculum for them to best learn it? What does the research say? Once you start to look at that, it drives other things.

Absolutely. just, you know, for a lot of people, it might be hard to imagine like, well, how do you involve, let's say problem solving in a history lesson? Well, it's actually not that difficult. It's, really at the heart is kind of the Socratic method. It's like present a problem first. Right. So, you know, I don't know, just think of history. You might say these people over here, they had this point of view and this is what they wanted.

And these people over here had this point of view and this is what they wanted just ask the children what would you do right you know yeah exactly

Well, every archaeologist has had that same question asked to them. found, you know, and you think 150 years ago, we didn't have dinosaurs, people didn't know about them. But you find a big bone, and then you go, what is this? What animal did that come from? Where did that go? And then that's the problems that they had to solve.

So but when you give that out to children, look at this artifacts from you know, the Great Fire of London, look at this from there. What is that? Why is that like that? What did that mean? What does that mean? What technology did they have if they've got metalwork and leather skills? What industry is around that? And when we started to look at that within our history curriculum, you start to pose the problems. if you must have tanners, you must have farmers, you must have all those other things. It starts to push out. I suppose that's where that's where we went with it.

And that's where we started to ask those questions and then we started to develop our own things from it. And it's kind of infectious really. Once you start that process, it infects other things in a very positive way.