This blog looks at building a collaborative, evidence-informed culture where teachers drive high-impact practice to challenge and support all students toward success.
The corridor was still buzzing after the lesson changeover when two colleagues paused:
This short exchange captures something important: leadership of teaching and learning doesn’t just belong to senior leaders. It is enacted every day in classrooms, through the subtle decisions teachers make and the collective habits they form as a result of school systems and structures.
A Tiered and Evidence-Informed Approach
At the heart of the leadership of teaching and learning is a commitment to high-quality teaching for every student. Guided by the Education Endowment Foundation’s (EEF) tiered approach — which prioritises teaching, targeted academic support, and wider strategies — it’s important to take deliberate, evidence-informed steps to improve outcomes and close the attainment gap.
Effective classroom practice is our most powerful lever for equity and whole-school improvement.
Implementation: More Than a Rollout
While adopting an evidence-informed teaching and learning framework provides clarity, improvement depends on how well strategies are embedded and sustained in practice. Implementation is not a one-off event — it is an ongoing process.
We began by asking two key questions:
‘Where are we now, and how do we know?’ This reflective starting point aligns with the EEF’s guidance on diagnosing the implementation environment during the “Explore” phase. To answer it, we drew on triangulated evidence from:
Student voice activities.
Challenge Partners Review
Challenge Partners SEND Review
Camden SEND Visit
Focus Fortnights
Focusing for Impact
To move from insight to action, we adopted the Great Teaching Toolkit — an evidence-informed framework developed by Evidence Based Education. It defines what constitutes effective teaching and enables us to codify effective practices, create a shared language, and eliminate low-impact strategies.
As Dr Tristian Stobie notes in the toolkit’s foreword:
“Helping teachers become better is the most important responsibility we have as educational leaders, as it is the best way to help learners fulfil their potential.”
Educational research provides us with a strong evidence base on what supports learning:
Retrieval practice
Reducing cognitive overload
Increasing the thinking ratio
Embedding disciplinary literacy
These are some of what the EEF calls “best bets” — strategies with the greatest likelihood of improving student outcomes.
Armed with our internal evidence, we focused on embedding this framework into daily teaching. We engaged in collaborative discussions with Team Leaders, teaching teams and students to identify and prioritise strategies based on our needs and context.
The EEF stresses that implementation is a collaborative process, not simply a top-down plan.
Shared Language, Shared Purpose
At the start of the process teachers reflected on two key questions:
Which dimensions from the Great Teaching Toolkit are current strengths within your subject?
Which areas represent the greatest opportunities for professional learning?
This helped us identify areas to strengthen while building a sense of shared purpose. The EEF calls this the ‘Engage and Unite’ phase — critical to securing buy-in across the school.
Priority Areas for 2025/26
From our staff and student consultations, three interconnected priorities emerged:
Activating Hard Thinking – Challenging all students, especially those at risk of underachievement, through structured thinking, questioning, and retrieval strategies.
Literacy Across the Curriculum – Embedding disciplinary literacy to give students the language and reading skills they need to access and excel in every subject.
Learning Behaviours – Developing routines that support focus, metacognition, and self-regulation — especially for disadvantaged pupils.
Subject Clusters and Professional Collaboration
To support this work, we organised subjects into collaborative clusters — facilitating deep pedagogical inquiry and the sharing of effective practice. These clusters drive adaptive, evidence-informed professional learning tied to student outcomes.
Teachers use this space to engage with research, reflect on practice, and trial strategies in their own contexts.
As we move forward, we’re focused on ensuring that key principles — activating thinking, strengthening literacy, and embedding routines — are reflected in day-to-day teaching.
Coaching for Collaborative Growth
To deepen the impact of subject clusters, we introduced coaching pairs. These developmental partnerships enable staff to reflect on pedagogy, trial approaches, observe each other, and offer feedback — all within a safe, non-judgemental environment.
This model reflects EEF recommendations for effective professional development: sustained, job-embedded, and collaborative.
Now in the second year of this work, we are focused on developing monitoring and reflection systems that support adaptation and sustained impact. Coaches and subject leads regularly capture feedback on what’s working, what needs to change, and how specific strategies are affecting student outcomes. In addition, coachees are centrally recording their action steps to ensure transparency around what each person is working on. This is aligned with Recommendation 5 of the EEF’s Implementation Guidance Report, which emphasises the importance of monitoring implementation processes, not just outcomes, and making adjustments as needed to improve fidelity and effectiveness.
This reflective process ensures that coaching remains responsive and that staff professional learning is closely linked to real classroom impact. We are building an iterative model where coaching, monitoring, and professional learning work together to refine practice over time, not just evaluate it at the end. All teachers continue to position themselves as leaders of learning.
Professional Learning That Drives Improvement
A commitment to high-quality professional learning is central to our improvement efforts. The EEF notes that the most effective professional learning is:
Sustained over time
Closely tied to school priorities
Focused on implementation and classroom impact.
Subject clusters form a key strand of our professional learning model, fostering shared ownership and subject-specific pedagogical dialogue.
We have also protected dedicated time in the school calendar for this work — demonstrating that professional learning is a priority, not an optional extra.
A Culture of Collective Leadership
Ultimately, our journey is about building a school culture where teaching excellence is everyone’s responsibility. By grounding our work in evidence, collaboration, and reflective practice, we’re taking meaningful, sustainable steps to improve outcomes for all learners — especially those who need it most.
References
Coe, R., et al. (2020). The Great Teaching Toolkit: Evidence Review. Evidence Based Education. Retrieved from: https://greatteaching.com/
Education Endowment Foundation. (2021). Cognitive Science Approaches in the Classroom: A Review of the Evidence. Retrieved from: https://educationendowmentfoun…
