SecEd Podcast

Shanti Shahal is an ITT tutor focusing on wellbeing and EDI, Tom Fisher is a senior ITT mentor from Orchard School Bristol, and Elizabeth Jobling leads early careers at Five Dimensions Trust. They delve into the new Initial Teacher Training and Early Career Framework, emphasizing the importance of SEND and inclusive practices. The panel shares practical advice for new teachers, including job application tips and strategies for managing transition from trainee to ECT. They also discuss essential mentor qualities and how to effectively support newcomers in the school environment.

To celebrate the 100th edition of the SecEd Podcast this episode counts down our top 10 most popular podcasts of all time. Have you listened to them all? Launched in early 2020, the SecEd Podcast has been on air for five years and to mark episode 100 podcast co-hosts Pete Henshaw and Matt Bromley reveal our top 10 most listened to episodes – interspersed with clips and highlights from each one. Without giving the game away, themes include oracy education, senior and middle leadership, quality first teaching, classroom management, Pupil Premium, inclusion and SEN, and much, much more. Matt and Pete also pick out their own favourite episodes from the last five years. All these episodes and indeed all of our 100 episodes are available to listen back to via the SecEd website – www.sec-ed.co.uk/podcast – or via your streaming service of choice. Our thanks to you – the teachers and educators of the UK – for listening. Here's to the next 100 episodes!

This episode looks at the opportunities and risks presented by the development of artificial intelligence (AI) in education. We speak to three experts who are working in schools to develop AI in effective and safe ways. We kick off the discussion by asking our panel to list what they consider to be the three biggest benefits of AI in schools and the three biggest risks/threats. We then look at whole-school AI strategy and policy. What does a good AI strategy look like and what elements need to be included in a school's AI policy? What does effective staff training look like? How should education around AI be fed into the curriculum? What kind of "rules" need to be in place? And what does Ofsted have to say about AI? We also talk AI in the classroom. How might teachers use AI in their lesson-planning and resource-creation? We discuss a number of ideas for using AI to create resources/plan lessons. Also, what risks should teachers be aware of when using AI? What pitfalls do teachers need to avoid? We talk about diversity in resource-creation, the pitfalls of prompt engineering, and data protection. We name drop a few resources that our panel are using with success, and we end the podcast with their biggest "lessons learned" so far and their final reflections.

Sean Harris, a doctoral researcher focused on educational inequality, Andrew Jones, an assistant head teacher exploring novice teachers' perspectives, and Stacey Jordan, a leadership coach and former head teacher, discuss research-informed schools. They debate the types of research schools should engage with and emphasize the importance of balancing external studies with local evidence. Practical strategies for teachers to connect with research, the significance of qualitative insights, and professional development pathways are highlighted, alongside advice for fostering research curiosity within school improvement.

This episode offers practical advice and examples for how we can protect the wellbeing of our teaching staff – with ideas for teachers and schools. The episode has been inspired by the recent publication of Education Support UK's Teacher Wellbeing Index 2024, which has once again painted a worrying picture about the wellbeing of those who give so much to educate our children and young people in schools. As such, we hear from Education Support about the findings of this year's Index research findings and speak to our guests about the wellbeing challenges that teaching staff face. Our expert panel offers practical ideas, discussing what schools can do to develop healthy working cultures, including promoting good working practices, building positive working relationships, and preventing staff burn-out. We discuss preventative action including coaching/mentoring, wellbeing audits, and more. We also consider how teachers can maintain a healthy work/life balance and discuss what individuals can do, including setting boundaries, saying 'no' effectively, safeguarding personal time, and good habits at home. We touch upon diversity and inclusion too, including the wellbeing challenges faced by staff from minority backgrounds and how schools can ensure they are supporting all colleagues.

In this episode we discuss ideas for how we can build a positive and inspiring whole-school culture which is inclusive of all, drives high standards, and sustainable in the long-term. We ask what we mean by "school culture" – the way we do things here – and consider how a school culture intersect with its vision, ethos and values, rules, attitudes, and social norms. We speak with three school leaders about how they have developed the culture in their institutions and offer a range of practical ideas and "lessons learned". We ask how a school leader can go about creating and establishing the right culture in their school – what questions should we ask ourselves? We consider how to communicate your school culture and make it consistent and concrete. How can you sustain your school culture over the long-term and how can you handle any challenges to your culture? We also consider behaviours that can help establish culture – and how we can "nudge" students to adopt these behaviours.

In this episode, we discuss practical actions that secondary school leaders and teachers can take to reduce workload and working hours. The Department for Education's Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders research shows that secondary teachers are working almost 50 hours a week on average while secondary leaders work more than 58 hours a week. This episode features two experienced school leaders who have both undertaken a range of initiatives in their schools to bring workload down for all staff. We discuss some of the most common workload challenges before hearing about some of their approaches, offering tips and ideas, and identifying a number of areas where schools might be able to reduce workload and working hours. Specifically, we cover topics including strategies for assessment and marking, timetable and calendar planning, internal communications and meetings, behaviour management, additional duties, and more. We also touch upon the various forms of flexible working and how some of these can be made to work in the secondary school environment – including touching upon the government's plans to allow teachers' PPA time to be taken at home.

This episode looks at how we can best teach and prepare our examination classes in the secondary school, especially our GCSE groups. A panel of experienced teachers considers what specific challenges come with teaching exam clases and exam course content and discuss how we can best prepare our students for the exam hall experience itself, including how we can build good exam habits alongside teaching course content. We discuss how teachers can support their students' wellbeing during their examination years – especially in years 10 and 11 – and how we can build their resilience, thus helping them to manage stress and exam anxiety as the pressure mounts. We focus specifically on how we can build exam technique, including the dos and don'ts for using past exam papers as learning tools. We look at other teaching techniques too, including modelling good answers. And how and when should we teach and model these exam techniques to ensure they are embedded while avoiding student burn-out? Finally to what extent should we be helping students to plan their exam revision? We ask what self-study and revision skills we should be teaching and how? Our experts even suggest a few particular techniques that they like to use, such as mnemonics and revision games.

This episode offers practical advice for the effective use of teaching assistants (TAs) in the secondary school classroom. Packed full of practical ideas and examples, the episode features three experienced educators, including teachers and TAs. We ask why we need TAs in the modern secondary classroom and the kinds of skills, training and CPD that our TAs need to have in order to be effective. From there, we move on to discussing effective deployment and how teachers can work effectively with their TAs to support teaching and learning in the classroom. We discuss a number of ideas and approaches, including flipping the traditional model of TAs providing one-to-one support. We also discuss what role TAs should have when delivering additional interventions. And, crucially, we discuss what effective communication between teachers and TAs looks like. We also touch upon the role of TAs in supporting the social and emotional development of our young people.

In this episode we offer practical advice and tips for teaching staff to help you manage behaviour effectively in your classrooms. Focusing on the secondary school classroom, our experts discuss why school culture is vital to promoting positive behaviour and what this looks like in practice. We discuss where the line lies between overarching principles of whole-school behaviour and how that manifests itself in different classrooms and different subjects? We offer concrete, tangible classroom strategies, ideas and tips for your "in the moment" behaviour toolkit. We consider the role and use of rewards and sanctions/consequences, clear expectations, as well as tips for how teachers can remain consistent and encourage students' intrinsic good behaviour. We discuss the rule of "what we permit, we promote" and ask what that looks like in practice, we look too at how we can "teach" and model good behaviours. We chat about how we can "rebuild" relationships after a behaviour incident and talk about working with parents.