So, Rob, it's wonderful to have you here.

Thank you very much for joining us again.

Thank you lots of.

Our listeners, I think two years ago was the last time you were on a party about this time two years ago.

And when you sat down with Chris and I for a double partner on sort of supporting pupils with English as an additional language.

And I know that you've done a lot of work since then to almost develop a more robust and codified system that might be really useful for for schools.

So I thought that you're going to be really interesting to explore those as part of this episode.

And I was wondering if you could begin by explaining what the what I call the heddle system is.

That's a good thing.

And why you felt it was needed to bring your EAL work together as a as a whole school approach.

Yeah, absolutely.

Look, for anyone who hasn't heard of Heddle, it's worth clearing up what we mean by that term.

Heddle is a company we put together.

It's a spin out of the University Co, owned by the University of Bristol.

And it it exists really to be able to make Yale resources and support available to as many schools as possible.

You know, when you're in academic, you can write stuff, you can give a few talks, but you know, the scale of need and the number of people who want to improve that provision for binary learners is so much greater.

So we're very lucky that the, the university has supported us to do this.

And, and for the past, gosh, year or so now we've been working with schools around the country and internationally to get really good provision in place.

The problem is that it, you know, there's so much that you need to do when you're trying to put together provision for a busy school.

You know, you, you have to think about what should these colleagues be doing in their classroom?

How do I win these people over?

What does my teacher and leadership team need to know?

How should I be assessing the, the head of system?

If you call it, I like that I might pinch that is, is really, it's a framework or a road map.

What do you need to do first?

What comes next?

What comes after that?

Just to bring a bit of, of calmness and order.

A lot of it's built on our own work, our own research, but it's been Rd.

tested and frankly, you know, greatly improved in the dozens and dozens of schools that we've trialled in.

And I think that more than anything is our our big contribution this year.

It's going to be available to everyone and it'll just show you wherever you are in the ER provision you have in school, whether you've got something really, really strong and you're ready to share it with others, whether you're just getting to grips with maybe new bilingual pupils.

It'll just give you a sense of right, this is what we're doing, these are our priorities.

This we can leave for now, and this is what we do next.

Yeah, I mean, and that makes a whole lot of sense because we, we spoke last time, we spent a lot of time talking about making sure students felt safe, you know, particularly.

When they came from.

They would arrive through vulnerable circumstances, that kind of thing.

You know, it's almost facing the natural evolution where actually hands on what are we going to do.

And I think your point about teachers taking it and road testing it and making it better is a really strong one.

I was imagining like no plan survives first contact with the the enemy.

But in this instance, actually, it's always for the betterment, you know, because teachers who are living it day in, day out, they imagine these scenarios and then ways of use which exceed your wildest imagination.

I think.

I'm sure that's what you find.

You know, I wish I could claim credit.

We've got this kind of mythical creature in in universities called Reviewer 2.

And it's this idea that whenever you submit a paper for review, the first reviewer comes in and goes, It's amazing.

Oh, it's wonderful.

Publish immediately and Reviewer 2 comes in and just shreds you.

And I think this journey has been, it's been like living with Reviewer 2 on my shoulder in a really good way for a year or two.

You know, we spoke, gosh, it was a couple of years ago because you reminded me just before we started that I had COVID at a time for recording and was in my spare room isolating and, and, you know, talking to you online.

In that time, I think we've broken apart everything that I thought was true and refashioned it from the ground up.

So Heddle Heddle's my baby.

But it's, it's really, it's a team of people and all the resources we put out there, you know, they're created by teachers.

You know, we, we pay teachers to take these ideas, to contribute new ideas, to make sure they work in the classroom, to test them and refine them.

So, you know, when you see something with Headdel's name on it, I think it's important to know that it, it has been through quite a process.

Like it, it, it, whether it works in your classroom, like I sincerely hope it will, it definitely works in a lot of other people's classroom as well.

And it's that elective experience.

This is why I think, and I'm so keen on the idea of universities being more involved in the sort of commercial world.

Because when you're when you're, when you create a work pack for someone and you just put it out there in the world and it just probably sits on the Google Drive for 100 years and no one ever uses it.

Whereas now, you know, the team that we employ, the work that we do, if it's not valuable to people, they stop chipping in and that puts a certain rigor and pressure into your life that that's raised our game hugely.

So yeah, this idea that let me give you an example actually, right.

So there's lots of people have got some kind of tiered provision.

So this is what early stage learners need.

This is what you need next.

This is what you need after that.

And I thought that was a really good idea and we set out to create our own one.

The problem is it doesn't really work.

So if you, if you have that model of this is our, you could call it tier one or our vision for everybody, all that's Tier 3, which is really specialist for pupils who need a lot of support.

It doesn't change the fundamental fact that the Yale team are still having to do all of that work.

And if you if you organize it in a way that only makes sense that Yale lead, then no one else has space to get on board.

So one of the ways in which my own thinking was really turned around was actually working with multi Academy trust leaders who looked at what we do and said that's great, but make it make sense to other people as well.

So in this pedal system, we don't really have a title for it yet, but in this road map we have a very simple kind of provision diagram and we talk about the core provision, we talk about the enhanced provision, then we talk about the specialist.

That is to say, what should every teacher in school be confident doing?

What can that teacher do to keep a child in their classroom with a bit of enhanced support?

And that could be a corridor chat.

It could be a little bit of an opportunity to shadow or Co plan or, you know, maybe having ATA in the room and then, you know, with the best intention.

But what's not reasonable for someone to to deal with in their classroom?

We might be talking about pupils with really complex needs, for example, that might need specialist provision.

But what we've done is we've taken it out of focusing on the pupils needs and we've started focusing on the teachers needs.

And that means you've got a a structure there that works across the whole school that everybody can get involved in.

We've stopped talking about this idea, every teacher a language teacher and started talking about subject language being part of subject teaching.

Because when we talk about every teacher, a language teacher, all the El specialists in the room say yes and everyone else says what?

Whereas if you flip it around, it means you're going to where people are and, and you're, you're framing things, you're, you're organising ideas in a way that makes sense to people's existing expertise.

That's really, if I'm honest, without being too high fluting about it, I think that's a sort of a culture of service to others.

And that's been the thing that you just, you just keep learning every time you take ideas out to other people and it works better for them.

If you do it slightly differently, you sort of have to put your ego in check a little bit and think, right, how how can we serve you better?

So yeah, it's been a, it's been a wild couple of years.

It's been great fun though.

Yeah, it signs it and the fact that it's see where you are now after two years must be must be a really don't have rewarding just yet, but really, really good feeling to see how things have evolved and and grown over over time.

You know, because ultimately what you're moving closer and closer to is something that's extremely useful for teachers in, in a, in a really stretched system.

Yeah, well, we, we have this kind of wonderful free community that we we relaunched in September and I think 600 schools have joined it in the last couple of months and it's, it's going great guns and completely free.

Just go to herald-el.com and there's a there's a paid tier where people can chip in little of their school and and get all the resources.

But you know, we priced on being what would one day's training cost elsewhere and we'll make the whole year for that cost.

So hopefully it's, it's very reasonable.

I think if you, if you look at where that is that we're able to get these resources out to people at a reasonable scale.

I think that where we need to be, which is so that every school and every teacher is just bored with this whole concept of yeah, because it's so much in their stride already, but there's really not worth not much point talking about it anymore.

I think we've got something good already.

It's nowhere near what we want it to be, but if everyday we keep adding value to it then I think we'll be OK.

I'm, I'm really interested to see how your attempt to redefine the space in which teachers interact shapes up because we're, we're in a bit of a void.

Because it was very clear, say five years ago, the major conversations were taking place on Twitter, you know, and there were different types of conversations taking place on Facebook, but you had your two, the, the homes of of sort of informal discourse.

And now you've got sporadic diaspora too far to describe it that way.

You know, some people on LinkedIn, some people are on remain on X, some people are on Blue sky and, and various places where you've got them.

You've got this community where you're trying to almost build a place where you can have conversations specifically about, about the use of, about ways to support students with things.

Is this a language?

I mean, how's that going so far?

Yeah, there there's this risk of fragmentation, isn't there, as as the kind of the social media landscape especially evolves.

I think what we've tried to do with the head of community is create a home for people.

So it's not exclusive in that way.

We we put a lot on LinkedIn, kind of a really positive community there, try to contribute occasionally on Facebook, but we if honest, you know, we're a small team funded entirely by our members.

So we've, you know, there's a limit how many platforms we can be in at once, and I hope that will grow.

So you can you know, people will be in all these places and hopefully also get value from being passive head.

All the other thing is we, you know, it's not like the header will be the only thing you use.

So people will use and if I'm allowed to, it's not a BBC, is it?

So people will have a Twinkle subscription, right.

And Twinkle have got loads of great El content, loads of great worksheets and other thing you can use.

But I think we offer something slightly different.

So you might, for example, have a a Twinkle subscription and be part of the the header community.

We invite other people come to come and talk about their work on us.

We run a monthly master class.

And you know, we've had consultants, we've had academics, we've had all sorts.

But anyone who's doing really good work, we want to create that space.

Because I mean, this is what we talked about two years ago.

One of the big problems with 15 years of policy neglect of Yale, certainly in England, is it's just, it's broken apart for Commons, right?

We used to have spaces where we would talk about stuff.

A lot of it ran through local authorities, but we don't.

So at the very least, you know that there is a space where people are talking about EAL day in, day out, where there's resources available, where there's, you know, EA experts to support you.

And we build that out then to make those boundaries more permeable.

So the conversations might start on X and move on to head all and then finish up on LinkedIn or Facebook.

It's a challenge, but I I like this kind of challenge.

Keeps us fresh.

And that's a.

That's a very positive way to interpret it.

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

Well, we've not talked about the sort of AI elephant in the room yet, but that's definitely going to encourage us to involve again.

Yeah.

I mean, I mean, that that might be interesting to talk about now because, I mean, we were in a restaurant last Week, 2 weeks ago maybe.

And rather than fight his way through the menu, a colleague of mine decided to use an app that translated the full menu for him.

I mean, is that the kind of use of artificial intelligence that you you're imagining in ours or something slightly different?

Yeah, I think the head of Bistro is definitely sort of, I don't know, I I had some trouble.

So I was in China about a year ago working with some schools there and one part of the trip was in was in the South of China, obviously, and dim sum.

And I was really looking forward to it.

So I, I found my way to basically I've been recommended to called the best dim sum restaurant.

Of course, everyone asked for directions, just gave me the directions to their favorite, their personal best.

So eventually I found my way and I, I used DPL.

I used the translation on my phone, used a few things to try and translate the menu and I was so impressed.

You take a photo and I'll tell you what it says.

And it had just names like your mother says your mouth is too fat.

And I'm like, great, I've translated the name of this dish.

I've got no idea what it is.

And I think there are, you know, the contextual limits to these things are really important.

So for us, we can see huge, huge potential in AI.

We obviously use, I think so everyone does.

We use AI in the back office for kind of routine tasks.

And we've not unleashed AI apps on our community yet.

So people may know that we're building an assessment system that will do a number of things that will accurate assess people's fault, you know, funding if they're in England, because that's been really under reported.

And it will give you a really clear progress measure of how people's are developing in their language.

And we said to our development team, can we can we automatically assess speaking and writing?

And they came back with these plans to do it, but it it all fell foul of that quality threshold that if we're putting something out there under the head or name, it's got to just work.

And I've not seen anything that uses AI to assess pupils.

It's really reliable enough.

So we've took a different approach for the first version of our tools.

We've actually cut speaking and writing out of the assessment because you can get a really robust view of the people's language level based on other measures, particularly if you have a, what's sometimes called a use of English.

So grammar, vocabulary, activities, and a bit of reading and even listening, you can get almost all the insight you need without using tools that aren't quite there yet.

So we'll bring them in as they're ready.

And I think AI is going to do a huge amount and obviously organization like Magic School making these huge strides.

But for us, it's just going to work for people.

And if it's not going to work, then we can't really see it.

Probably the way the whole sector should be looking at artificial intelligence.

I mean, last week Neil and James sort of launched their own, their sort of their own strand of the podcast so that the first Wednesday of every term they're going to take a different idea, different elements.

Last week it was alpha school and the idea that you can have these two hours of education and then supplement the rest with the, you know, the fun stuff, so to speak.

Yeah, I listened to that.

I really, I really enjoyed that.

I thought they chose their words really carefully, quite an exercise in diplomacy.

But those other, you know, 4-6 hours they were talking about project based learning kind of leadership RFC in large part, but that's education too.

I think this, this separation of here's where we jam in the content and then here's where we do all the other things as being school and then enrichment.

I mean, it's, you know, it's for the birds, isn't it?

I mean, it's, it's very reminiscent of the Southeast Asian model that I'm become familiar with.

You know, like for instance, in Singapore, I think they start

around 7:00.

They do the three core subjects and in the afternoon is for your tuition and your instrument and your sort of wider, you know, pee, that kind of thing, you know, so you do.

I think the three subjects are normally English, mathematics and your mother tongue and everything else gets encompassed into your your after I'm feeling what?

All right.

Afternoon.

Yeah.

So it, it, it felt like that, but on, you know, obviously they've got expert teachers rather than some sort of computer system teaching the, the students.

We've been, I mean, we've been looking at this a lot, certainly in the university sector, because essays are just being, as we all know, rinsed by church EPT.

And if we're honest, you know, we, we can't tell.

So, So what do you do?

And we've been looking really, really carefully about what makes the university experience, what makes it worth doing, both in the sense of, you know, what you learn and, and what you can use then for a career, but also in terms of the experience and the growth that goes with it.

My, my own view is that certainly higher education, we're trying to hold really tightly to those values.

Like, what are we here for?

What are we about that hold very lightly to how we do it now as it is, You know, you wouldn't trust Sam Altman with your it's education for a second, would you?

But a lot of what we do now isn't how we would like to do it.

So university is a nice example to talk about because most of your listeners will not be university people.

So I can can avoid the risk of offending people.

But like we wouldn't sit down with a blank sheets paper and design the lecture, for example.

So if the lecture disappears in the next 10 years and something better replaces it, you know, we could easily say that's a net gain.

If a very transactional, restricted view of learning comes in in its place.

Well, that's definitely a net loss.

Coming back to Yale, I think you'd see something really similar happening.

You know, there is this sense of learning a language has really grammar, vocabulary and a set of skills, and I think we could almost go the other way.

So one thing that I've I've been saying versions of this for a year and a half now and I think I've finally settled on it.

It now withstands a reasonable amount of criticism, this idea that the EAL provision is not really about language.

So it sounds a bit clever, clever at first, but our goal with EAL is for children to participate in learning and in the life of the school in the classroom.

And the reason that's important is because if we.

If we say the goal of Yale is to teach people's English, then we judge ourselves on how they're learning English.

And that means to succeed, we, we prioritize the learning of English, but actually you, you don't need that much English to get on the classroom.

And so if we say the goal is participation, that means that, you know, the non language specialist has a big role to play and it's much more about where they arrived and where they leave.

So we can do a lot just by focusing on participation and, and you know, and hence the kind of the head of system that you mentioned, how can we focus not on what the El teacher can do, although it's very important, but also on what every teacher should be able to as a people who joins their class.

That shifting, I think, makes it really effective.

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That feeds really nicely into my next question.

I mean, what do you see as the key strands or components of an effective whole school El provision?

And how does your system help hold this them together?

So I think there's, there's two ways of looking at it and that's if you're working in a single school or in a group of schools.

So if you're a teacher leader, El specialist in a school, the first thing I'd be looking at is what's the core expectations you have of, of every member of *.

So we start with our big threes.

If you're completely new and you've got no idea what to do with a bilingual child, we say pause, prioritized vocabulary, prioritized RSC.

You can go so far just by slowing that stream of speech, giving space for people to think and catch up and process the language because it's just an, you know, it washes over you.

Otherwise, anytime we're, we're promoting vocabulary learning, we're supporting all learners anytime we're giving opportunities for RSC and simplest, you know, dim Pesha, that's going to do a huge amount for, for bilingual children and for all children.

And it's no mistake.

Obviously those overlap hugely with what people are doing already.

It's meant to be familiar.

So first thing I'd say is there and it could be as simple as pausing vocabulary and Roc.

Is there a core expectation that is for every teacher in the school?

Because you can always build on it.

And if, if that's already in place, then you can look at putting new things in and you know it, it can be a rolling process.

The other thing I'd really think about is, is what happens when a people arrive.

So we've built our, what we call our onboarding tool.

And we're deliberately using that phrase to separate from what we already do for induction.

Do we capture the right information?

Does it reach the right peak?

So we're going to in January, I think it's going to come out December, isn't it?

In January, we'll be releasing our onboarding tool, simple digital questionnaire, but it will automatically, once you just take the people through that kind of arrival questionnaire, what language you speak at home, you know, brothers and sisters have been to school before.

It will automatically send tailored advice to their teacher.

And that means that before people arrives, you know that the person whose class they're arriving in has a bit of confidence.

They've got an opportunity to get to know them.

They know where to begin with them.

So making that a rival, really good, the welcome, really strong, making sure there's some good strategies in the classroom already and then we can go from there.

Assessment is a huge one.

Make a decision about withdrawal, you know, when, when do pupils need support out of class and so on.

These are all questions that have been asked before and been tackled.

We can just take them systematically if you're in a group of schools.

So if you have a maths leadership role, two things I'd look at #1 is funding and maths are hugely under claiming for El funding.

In fact, many map leaders don't even know that there's specialist El funding available.

So we did, we did a deep dive with one group of schools and they found 25 grand across 5 schools just in in funding that was sitting on the table.

And and that's money that you can put straight back into the classroom.

So first of all, I get the resources in where we could.

And of course, if you're not sure, give us a call, show you how to do it.

The other thing I've been looking at is what's my expectation of school to school support?

Because we tend to think about Yale as being the one person's responsibility.

We might be able to get it across a school, but the real benefit in it, in the multi Academy trust is for schools to support each other.

And for that you need to have some shared vocabulary, some shared planning for the the training.

That's why we built this head or system is so you can see where you are.

But if you have a say, a director of education, director of primary, secondary, you can also see where everyone is.

And that means where you've got a strength in one place, it can support another school and vice versa.

So I think we finally now have number one ways of making sure the money is reaching a classroom and number two ways of seeing how schools can support each other with the AL, which we've really been missing.

First off, if anyone does gain 25,000 lbs then they need to e-mail me at kieran@altahypheneducation.com so I can take my Commission from from whatever comes their way and obviously we can spend the rest on there on on the Heddle community.

For sure.

I mean, you know, I think it, it's, it's a looking good lunch, isn't it?

That, that, that's, that was a group of five schools that we worked with.

And if you think about it, in a primary school, for almost every school, your pupils attract 590 odd pounds for every year they're in school for the first three years.

So that means in the average school they found 10 pupils that they weren't paying for.

They should be.

That's 5 grand.

That is not a huge amount.

In secondary, it's roughly 1500 lbs.

So for every pupil that you find that you've not been paying funding for, that's £1500.

Now often it is for the first three years.

So often that money gets claimed in primary.

The people that arrives in Year 5, year 6 still have some of those years to run in secondary and you wouldn't otherwise know it.

It doesn't take a lot to kind of really rack up an amount of money that, well, schools can really use at the minute.

So a lot of people think, oh, this isn't something that would really apply to us.

It, it definitely is.

And I, I, if you're not sure, definitely get in touch because we will, we'll just show you how to do it and we can even do it for you.

Get from that mind to the classroom is, is really achievable.

And of course, then you can take care of lunch.

In the in the newsletter this week, I will I will include your contact details and that's the best way to.

Yeah, just Google Heddle Education or Heddle EAL.

We come up pretty quick.

Yeah, I mean, that'll definitely be one of the one of the links.

And but I think, you know, when you mention, you know, the entry and the the welcome, you know, I mean, there are times when I've had no information on a student for maybe a couple of months.

And so by that point you're like, what do I do?

What were what are my starting point?

I can imagine that's, that's crucial, that information, you know, and that makes a massive difference to their experience.

Yeah, this is the, this is the not very sexy sort of plumbing bit that old people like me find really, really interesting.

So if you just trace through when a pupil arrives, almost always that pupil start with a school tour.

There'll be a questionnaire that typically, you know, one that the reception admin team will do.

And then yes, someone will show them their classroom.

So it might be the ELE, might be desi heads, could be someone like that.

So in that already there's tons and tons that we can do to make a difference.

First up is to track the information, right?

Who records that?

Where does it go?

It might go on the school's MIS system, it might go on a post it note, it might go on a note somewhere.

You know, once we've captured that, can people use it?

Is it a format that people can use?

So one of the great things that we're able to do when a school is set up on our system, which by the way is completely free to members, we don't charge for it.

Like everything we do, it's it's meant to be there for people able to use.

So first up, we know that that's going to be stored somewhere sensible and we know it's going to be accessible because we're able to work with large number of pupils and large numbers of types of schools.

It means that we can use that information to say, right, this pupil from this background would benefit broadly from this kind of starting point.

So before we've even assessed their language proficiency, you can give basic but sensible, helpful advice, starting points to teacher and it is, you know it, it will ping up that e-mail straight to you automatically.

And, and the school lead could set up who gets what emails and so on.

And the other thing as you as you work through it is you get a really interesting conversation about starting days.

Now I have been accused of using the word interesting more liberally than is perhaps justified.

I think this is really interesting.

So we think it's common sense that you have one day a week when pupils join the school and one day a week when you do tours.

So let's say we do tours on a Tuesday and then pupils join the school on a Thursday.

They've got two days, then they've got a break for the weekend.

And for new pupils that's really, really valuable because it's exhausting at the beginning at a new school, new language, new everything.

So, you know, getting, getting your feet wet, basically dipping your toe in the pool, then having a break and then coming back.

It's really valuable.

It also means that that if you know pupils going to arrive on a Thursday, you know, they're having a tour on a Tuesday, you get that sense of just a bit of predictability.

Now primary teachers tell us again and again, the thing that they want to do is have the have the draw ready, have the peg labeled, have everything set out.

That is part of their welcome for that child.

But also it's, I don't know, I wasn't a primary teacher.

But you know, Kieran, it's, it's just part of what you do, isn't it, that getting it set up for the child is important for you to be ready as as well as the child to be ready and what, when pupils can arrive on any day?

And then the number of people said, oh, yeah, I got an e-mail at 5:30 as the child was arriving the next morning.

It's so destabilizing and so unnecessary.

So just that bit of regularity already people are starting on the right foot.

And then we have the push back.

Because that sounds perfectly logical, right?

But then we have the push back.

Well, no, we can't because and when you engage with that, and this is what we mean by everything being really well tested in schools, there are good reasons why you wouldn't.

So there are child protection concerns sometimes that you don't want a child being at home.

And of course, that overrides the rules, right?

So what is it George Orwell said?

Break any of these rules before doing something barbarous, right.

Well, sometimes, yeah, we've got to break the rules for the right reasons.

Good.

There are other times, you know, mum and dad might be working and putting the child in school two days later rather than go straight in on Tuesday, you know, puts those jobs at risk.

You miss a couple of shifts and and you don't go back.

And we know that some of our, our in newly arrived families from very precarious situations.

And then really that's, that's a decision for the school leadership, but it's the head around, right?

So instead of saying this pupil's just arriving on a random day, saying, look, if we want this pupil to arrive two days later, say on a Thursday, not Tuesday, someone's got to pay the cost for that.

The cost for us is a bit more disruption.

The cost for the parents is maybe losing their job.

I want us to pay, put this on our tab, right?

And I think when you've got that system in place and there's a reason why you want to move away from it, but actually we're going to take this one so the family can have an easier week.

But we need this child to be in school today.

So this child's going to come in and it's bumpy for us, but we'll roll with it.

It becomes really transparent for people.

And I think this is so when we talk about stuff being retested in school, this is the level of depth that we're going to.

After two days working on this with a group of teachers in Birmingham, we went so deep on the 1st 6 hours of a child's time in school.

But it makes a real difference.

And I think this is where we're trying to get to with with Heddle is that in a really distilled, really clear way, it will take you through all the complexities of this in a way that feels completely effortless.

That's our, that's our goal.

Yeah, I think it's really interesting.

I think the admissions procedure is like one of one of the most valuable bits of the day.

It's such a small change, but such a powerful 1.

You know, I've had children arrive in the morning and the first time I've known they're arriving was when they are shown into my classroom.

And you know, it's not nice.

So I'm sure it's not nice for them, but it's definitely not nice for the, you know, for instance, the the support adults here then probably be making those name tags you describe it Saturday because you want the child to feel welcomed, don't you?

But you know, so how?

That would be amazing.

So that was the bit that so we did, it was ADFE funded project.

We were working with schools across the West Midlands.

What what was really interesting is having school leaders and class teachers and Tasmania all in the same room together.

Because I think for a lot of the school leaders, it was the first time in a long time that someone expressed just quite how disruptive it was for the teacher.

Not because of the extra bit of workload, but because it just, it is emotional.

You, you're not ready to welcome a child and you, you feel like you're letting everyone down.

When the school leaders heard that, they were very quick to change to a more regular system.

But without that it was just, well, this is just more admin work.

I've got to do that.

That idea that we can bring people together a little bit.

I think it's really valuable 1.

Were there any other like main challenges in developing and and sort of refining the, the system that those teachers who have been testing things, you know, and, and how did they address them?

It's, it's been, it's been this enormous learning curve and it, it's been a particular challenge.

I think, because we set out with this really clear idea that we wanted to do things from the ground up, that our job as a kind of a university backed spin out, whatever that means, was to do stuff kind of for and on behalf of the community that it's created by teachers.

And our job is to convene that and make it possible.

So that meant we, we had to put a log of our own assumptions.

Second, and we talked about some of those again and again, we came up against these roadblocks and we had to go right back to the drawing board.

That deep dive on on the admissions day is one of them trans and assessment system that will be coming out.

It's, it's out in press type now with our partner schools who are trialling it and we'll, we'll have the full version out later in the year.

Having to make decisions around, you know, do we want to assess writing?

Because weird said it's got to be a teacher has to be able to assess 30 children 30 minutes as an absolute non negotiable because that's what people tell us that, that the workload of assessment is horrendous.

And we're talking to 1 school where they said, no, we've got this great system and it's something that brought in a big El platform.

So obviously it doesn't link with our, with our existing systems.

So, but it's OK.

It's, it's only about 10 or 15 minutes to, to copy across because they, I think they had a trial of so many licenses but couldn't afford more.

So they'd wipe it and then assess the next bunch and wipe it.

We weren't out there spending about a day a week or a day a fortnight just transferring data, right.

So you set these, you set these guard rails down, it's got to work in a certain way because that's how people in the special need it to work.

And then of course, you, you got to rework everything.

So I think trying to get the system and when it, when it comes out, you know, it comes out as a couple of documents.

And yeah, we might, we might input together a digital questionnaire.

There'll be courses and resources to go with it.

And then that will grow over time.

So, you know, very keen on producing something, putting it out there, learning from it during the next bit.

I think actually making those commitments work in real life is the hardest bit, but it's so easy.

It's so easy just to do what you think is right and Chuck it out there.

But actually going from the grassroots up is, I thought it's so much stronger because of it.

It's so much longer, but it's so much more worthwhile.

That bit about, you know, the, the, the time spent, that's the hidden cause.

Some leaders don't consider whenever they're looking at the, the cost benefit ratio of things, you know, because if you imagine one reasonably priced member of staff and how much a day and a half of their time costs and you know, the fact that they're not using their expertise in a different area of the, of school life, you know, it's, it gets to the almost the, the immeasurable sort of point after a while, doesn't it?

When does that cost actually get paid?

And I think that cost often gets paid in, you know, missed family dinners in Sunday night, you know, Sunday nights spent catching up on things and emails at Lord knows what time in the morning.

And then really, I think the kind of the system level implication of this, it's the recruitment and retention, isn't it?

It is universities do it.

We, we spend people's time cheaply because it's, it's already paid for.

And I would hope that if our work does anything, yes, you know, our goal is to help schools and, and you know, we're not doing the work, we're not in the classroom every day to help schools really change things for bilingual children.

So it's just, it just feels boring and easy.

I, I, someone gave me some like a great phrase when I, when I was, I'm doing research in schools and someone says, you know, you're doing well when you're about as interesting as the table and you're literally like just part of the furniture.

And then, then you've properly, you know, got to know the kids a little bit.

You know, when headland is about as interesting as the table, then, then we'll be succeeding.

When, when bilingual children are just part of what we do and it's something everyone takes in their stride, then we'll be succeeding.

But along the way, if we can make, if we can take that stress on ourselves and liken the load a little bit, that's worth doing.

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Are there any, are there any signs of impact that you're starting to see in those schools that have been using us for perhaps through some of your longest trialists or your, your longest users?

Yeah, absolutely.

So we, we've been running in some version of it for about a year now, but really is a trial.

We kicked it off in earnest this September.

And I think one of the the things that we really see is the message we get from people.

And I think one of the ones I'm most proud of is someone who just sent us an e-mail and said, you know, I really appreciate what you're doing.

I finally, finally found a place I can call home.

I've been an Yale teacher for a long time.

Finally found a place I can call home.

That was that was really moving.

Actually, we got, we got lots and lots of messages to say, you know, we really like that you are working on this, that you're that you're tackling it.

One of the really interesting measures we're doing is, is around access to higher education.

So we know that that bilingual children will achieve very, very highly with the right support.

So how do we how do we tackle that?

So using them ahead of resources and getting them into secondary schools in partnership with universities to measure whether they're more likely to go on to to higher education or other kinds of vocational learning.

Now that's come with a huge amount of monitoring and impact evaluation.

We'll have more to say on that soon.

But the early signs are that by making attention to language more explicit, it's helping to erase children's access to examinations and then later examination scores kind of moderate substantially.

That's a bit, I've got to be more American about these things.

Yeah, the early signs are it's making a huge difference, moderately, substantially at such an academic frame, I mean.

I don't know how American this is you're going to take that, but I do know what you mean.

You know, there's almost like a very much a culture of them being really clear about the the perceived impact.

Yeah.

Things we're not we're not being counters in education.

And some of this, you know, the the impact will be transient and we'll be it will be we'll be fleeting moments between people and and teacher between parent and and and I don't know government official or whatever, you know, our local authority representative.

You know, there won't be things that you can you can measure, but actually a a sort of a society that's functioning well is almost.

Yeah.

Well, one of one of the things that's going to be really cool about the assessment system when it's released later this year, that will not pay out for a couple of years time, but it will be because it's designed quite differently to all the other assessments that you can find kind of under the under the bonnet, as it were.

It means that we'll be able to show in a large scale anonymized way what makes a difference for children's learning.

And at the minute, I don't think anyone is able to do that.

There's some big retrospective data sets that analyze exams people took already.

No one's able to say in real time this is making a difference for children.

So a few years of, of that system being used and we'll be able to see that in, in live fine grain, which is, I might not say interesting.

Again, it's exciting.

I mean, for us, look, where, where do we want to go?

We're trying very hard to make something that will be just genuinely deeply beneficial and load lightning.

You, you, you can all judge how successful we are, but but we're doing everything we can.

And what's next?

Like, do we want, do we want a system that will integrate special educational needs?

Some things that are very close to my own heart that we've got great strength on the team, but we're not doing publicly yet.

Do we want to have really good quality communication with parents?

I, I speak the language my school uses, you know, as an English speaking parent, parent communication apps are the bane of my existence.

Having to do that in your second, third, fourth language.

Do we want to really properly manage the process of distinguishing, you know, send an El for example, which is really hard or, or helping pupils to transition from primary to secondary?

I think for us, we will essentially as much as we can do what's needed.

And for now, our starting point is a community of teachers who really support each other, backed by our expert teachers around research work schools that will help pupils to come into the school really effectively, to identify the funding they're eligible for, to assess their language proficiency, to give, you know, that baseline of advice.

So if you've got an El specialist in your school, they can build on it.

And if you haven't got that backstop, this is where we're starting.

But I mean, you know, off the record, he says.

In a broadcast recording.

The ambition for the number of things we could contribute is is huge.

And if people want to come on board and be past fit, they are absolutely welcome.

Lots of people listening will be keen to find out more.

So they're they're going to Havel hyphen eal.com if I remember.

They are so quickly, yeah.

Or, you know, if anyone does want to join us as a member and if they use the code to that be 20, they'll get, you know, a $0.20 discount off membership.

Or I think we've got a code header dot link forward slash the DAP and I'll give you everything as well.

But any of those will will get you in and I'm sure you'll put it all in your e-mail.

Listen, I know you don't you don't really do advertising on your podcasts and on things like that most about it.

So I really appreciate the opportunity to come and talk about what we're doing.

It's it's all work in progress and I hope people like what they find.

But just to say we, we take constructive criticism really well, requests, suggestions, etcetera.

And if anyone wants to get in touch with me directly, it's just rob@heddle-education.com and drop me a line.

We would absolutely love to hear what you're struggling with, what we could help you with, what we could do better, come to a really a really sincere place to try and do something valuable.

So all ideas, critiques, suggestions are really welcome.

It's it's, it's our pleasure.

And, you know, like, I think having been somebody who's been listening to podcasts since the early thousands, you know, probably piece of 0 kind of situation, I, I understand the power social relationship that podcast hosts have with their listeners and things.

And so, you know, I, I do act as gatekeeper because I do think there are a lot of things in education that are either A, a waste of money or B, very, very expensive waste of time.

And, and sometimes too, you will have a net negative impact on the icons for pupils.

And so creating this space where, you know, there may be a cost to it, but actually this is something I would have in my own school or people I know will have in their schools, you know, and, you know, and I've seen lots of people online talk about the impact of your books since listening to the last podcast and stuff like that there, you know, so, you know, anything I can do to make that space to to sort of guide people towards things that I think will be beneficial to them, You know, and having only ever really worked in areas of both a high socio derivation, but also high levels of English, is this language being based in Kent and our proximity post, etcetera.

And, you know, I think, you know, it's always for my mind.

I think the work you do is fantastic.

So you know, it it I don't see it as an advertisement.

I see as a shepherd in people towards the places where they can actually make a difference, you know, and so that's basically the last five years or so of being is, is trying to hear the things that I think are really good, you know, so and so I appreciate, you know, the fact that you've, you've acknowledged that.

Because what I don't like are the podcasts that when they get really successful, the 1st 5 minutes are just advertisements and the advertising can seem nonsense.

Things like what's the, what's the, the shaving people?

I can't remember what it's called.

And there's better help.

We're always in there, you know, the same ones, you know, I think that's when you know I've given up is when better help for being advertised on this.

I, I had a birthday quite recently and something about the algorithm, all I'm getting for is, is your back aching.

Are you burnt out?

I'm getting a lot of better help adverts at the moment and I'm sure they do fantastic work.

But you're right, you love this podcast where people say I'm here for the community, I'm here for the community, I'm here for the community.

Oh, now I'm here for the money.

Respect very much that you don't do that.

Yeah.

I mean, as much as I'd love to, but no, we're here for a higher purpose.

I think if it's not to Graham, dios is probably the word, but Chris would.

Chris would describe it in a different way.

We all need Chris to stop us getting pompous.

Exactly, exactly, if nothing else, and it's been an absolute pleasure.

Hopefully I'm not trying to make sure it's not another two years before between now and the next the next time we chat.

Well, I don't know if I'm allowed to mention here, but of course anyone who does want to come on the head of platform will see a little course about primary mathematics with a certain dulcet toned podcast presenter.

Yeah, I mean, that was a lot of fun to do and nerve racking, but I think your production team did a fantastic job of making that seamless as far as I can.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, listeners, he looks fantastic on the video and it's entirely the videographer's credit.

In real life, Aaron was a nightmare like the diva as well.

But no, it it comes across really well in the end and and all credit to you.

Thank.

You yeah, definitely check it out.

Like I said, there's lots of lots of stuff.

I haven't necessarily shared a lot of that stuff other places, but it's just certainly the things I picked up, you know, the the relationship between cognitive science and the and the AL world and and you know, and then mathematics too, because that that interplay is fascinating.

You know, so if you're going to say interest, I'm going to say fascinating in the middle.

But your list isn't going to get bored of us enjoying each other's company, so almost certainly the time I took my leave.

Yeah, all Walls have just said thank you very much for joining me.

Huge pleasure Karen, as always.

And everyone at home, until next time, thanks for listening.