It has been a frustrating few weeks in my feed, if I am honest. Almost every maths post has been about GCSE, and the responses have settled into a familiar shape: look one stage down, secure KS3, question the resit and what comes next. Each is reasonable on its own. What gets to me is the pattern. The debate always seems to gather wherever the spotlight is pointing this term, and in a few months it will move on, to primary, to early years, to whatever the next consultation or publication brings into view. The stage in fashion changes. The argument underneath rarely does, and neither, I suspect, do the problems.
What I keep coming back to is integrity. By that I mean holding the same principles whether the spotlight is on GCSE this month or early years the next, and whether or not those principles happen to suit what you are selling or who you are hoping to impress. It is easy to have a view that moves with the season. It is harder, and far more useful, to hold a line and let people judge you by whether you keep it.
It is also about focus. The child in front of a teacher does not change because the policy conversation has moved on. Learning gaps do not wait for the right consultation, and asking which stage needs fixing this year too easily becomes another cycle in which the same problems are repackaged as new priorities. I am more interested in what is true at every stage, for every child, regardless of what happens to be in fashion, or what happens to attract the funding, sales or recognition.
Stage, not age.
And it is about priorities. Difficulty does not disappear when we look away from it. It moves to a harder and more expensive place to fix, from primary into KS3, from KS3 into GCSE, from GCSE into a resit, and in the end into a young person’s life. You can see the cost written into the curriculum itself. We cover much of the same ground in Years 4, 5 and 6, then again across 7, 8 and 9, then revise it once more before GCSE. Some of that is sound design. A great deal of it is the system paying twice, sometimes three times, to teach the same thing, because it was never secure the first time and rarely secure the second. This is not an argument for teaching less, or for deciding in advance what a child will or will not need. It is an argument for getting the priorities right, for securing what is foundational properly, once and early, so the years that follow can build rather than repair.
With that in mind, here is the line I try to hold, whichever stage the debate has decided to notice.
It starts with seeing the child rather than the year group on the register. Stage, not age. And seeing the child clearly is itself the first act of assessment, because no one can teach a child they are not really looking at. From there it is a baseline to know where each child actually starts, and regular checks to catch a gap while it is still small enough to close. A teacher who closes the gaps that assessment reveals, and narrows the spread of attainment, builds a foundation solid enough to teach from with confidence.
That foundation should be secured as early as possible, and only then should pace come. But the assessing never stops, because once a class is moving it is easy for a child to miss the bus long before anyone notices they have.
Teachers’ judgement has to be protected. Schemes and advice that tell teachers what to do, rather than show them where their pupils are and trust them to decide, quietly strip away the agency, confidence and sense of control that make a good teacher good.
And the tools and systems we build should serve the teacher’s decision. They must never replace it.
None of this shifts with the calendar, and none of it depends on which key stage is in the headlines this month. For seeing the child, not the cohort. For securing the foundation early. For assessment that informs teaching rather than just measuring it. And for trusting teachers to teach.
People say you should plant your flag and stand by it. Mine is planted firmly with protecting teachers’ agency, trusting them to make the decisions that best serve their pupils, and valuing them for the success they help children achieve. So whatever the next focus turns out to be, you know where to find me.