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In early June 2018, Professor Deborah Eyre signed the Accreditation letters for our first two schools who have achieved the HPL Award, Doha College and British International School, Stavanger. It was a watershed moment for us as an organisation. From our launch in Autumn 2015 we are now firmly established with a rapidly growing number of schools joining the HPL family and many more students achieving high levels of performance.
More and more schools are recognising the power of this approach and when it is implemented fully in schools like our Award schools it is truly astonishing. Each school creates its own unique version and that in itself is a key strength of the approach - but they all demonstrate the core principles of the HPL philosophy with confident, successful and independent students.
It is obvious that undertaking the Award has a huge impact in the participating schools and is far more than a programme, it’s a real game-changer.
This summer our latest set of schools are beginning their Award journey and include schools from the UK - Jack Hunt School and Ravensthorpe Primary School (Peterborough), Mounts Bay Academy (Penzance), Bedford Girls' School (Bedford) Wakefield Girls' High School (Yorkshire), St Swithun's School (Winchester) and Tormead School (Guildford) and international schools – Edron Academy (Mexico), Kings College School La Moraleja (Madrid, Spain) and The British School in Tokyo (Japan).
"We really got so much out of the training last week – it was very much the practical advice we needed!"
Our recent induction event finished with an inspiring talk from pioneer school, Sydenham Girls (Lewisham, UK). Delegates heard about the impact of HPL in the school and about the ‘ups and downs’ of bringing about such a major change. Sydenham's were unequivocal in their support for the HPL philosophy and its positive impact on their students and staff.
What delegates say about our Award induction and planning workshop
"A clear and intelligently constructed training programme backed up with supporting information and a bank of clear resources to draw upon when implementing with staff."
"Thoroughly enjoyed it. Calm, peaceful, time to think."
"Lots of very useful tips for implementation. We are inspired by Deborah and Melanie that this really works."
"We now have a clear plan because as a school team we had time to discuss as a school our way forward."
"The induction gave us a holistic understanding and appreciation of HPL, especially the significance of the ACPs and VAAs as the bedrock."
Join the next Award cohort
We have now opened applications for the next Award cohort, which begins with an induction event in the UK on September 25th and 26th. As always, numbers are limited and we already have some places taken but if you would like to reserve one for your school please contact the HPL office This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or phone us on +44 (0)1993 222408.
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Castle Hill Primary School is unusual. It has grown from being a single site junior school in the heart of Basingstoke to a split-site primary school with a brand new campus a short drive or longish walk away from the main school on a large new housing development on the edge of town. The inspirational headteacher, John Martin, has chosen High Performance Learning as the unifying approach to learning across the two sites.
At Castle Hill, there has always been a drive for the very best, summed up by the simple aim on the front page of the school website, “Every Class, World Class.” Castle Hill thrives in what might be considered challenging circumstances with a fairly high proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals. However, the school has established a local, national and international reputation for both excellence and inclusivity and prides itself on its very close relationship with its community to which it attributes its success.
Castle Hill embarked upon the HPL Award last Autumn and has established working parties of teachers at all levels on both campuses to make sure everyone is involved with the plans. One of the key strengths of HPL is the shared language and Becky Willmouth, who is leading on HPL at Castle Hill, is keen to capitalise on this for her students, many of whom need to build a vocabulary to talk about their learning as well as developing the confidence to speak.
Whilst the aim is the same, the approach has been different on each campus. Beginning with the VAAs, the older children on the Greenbank Campus identify the characteristic they have just demonstrated and stick their picture on the poster in the right place. They then talk with their teacher about how this has helped them progress and what characteristic they need to work on.
In Key Stage 1 teachers and children have developed cards which show the VAAs and these youngest children are encouraged to select the right card and display it on their table to show that they have just demonstrated strength in a particular characteristic. The teacher is then able to move around the room and ask individual children to talk about the card they chose and what they did.
The classroom conversations generated by both these approaches are building the vocabulary of the children and giving them the language and confidence to talk with their teachers about how they are progressing and what strengths they need to develop. The working parties are pleased with this early progress and the school is introducing the ACPs to children in the same way.
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Sir William Burrough (SWB) Primary School is a state-funded Academy serving the local communities of Tower Hamlets. The school is in the top 3% of schools in the country for attainment across all subjects and our disadvantaged children are in the top 1% in all subjects. SWB has been recognised by the Mayor of London as an outstanding School for Success.
We have always been at the forefront of educational innovation, embracing programmes and methodologies that aim to develop children’s independent and critical thinking and encourage enquiry and investigation across all subject areas. Among some of the initiatives we’ve implemented are the You Can Do It! programme, the International Primary Curriculum, P4C and debate. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that we decided to embark on the HPL Award. Following on from introductory training for all staff in January 2018, we identified an initial group of HPL Champions who have started implementing the framework in their respective years. Some of us have conducted lessons which specifically targeted selected ACPs and VAAs and the HPL language can be heard around the school (in classrooms as well as in school assemblies).
For example, in our International Primary Curriculum (IPC) programme, we are currently looking at history and chronology. Over a period of 6 weeks, children will be learning about historical time, interpreting events from the past, and looking into different aspects of history and their manifestations.
I decided to begin the theme with specific focus on two ACPs: connection finding and analysing. Children were divided into groups of four and each group received a mind map template and an envelope with 40 or so pictures representing different aspects of the past (historical figures, war/conflict, discoveries, buildings, art, etc.). The pictures were mixed up and children were asked to find similarities/connections and group them into separate categories.
As they were working, they started to name the categories (for example: ‘war’, ‘famous people’) which helped them further with the process. The task created some interesting teachable moments: where does one place Mona Lisa, who is both a historical figure as well as a famous work of art, and Hitler, who can be grouped in the war category as well as historical figures?
Once the children had accomplished the task and had their mind maps ready, each group was asked to investigate a selected category by answering one question. (For example: What purpose has Art served through history? What have been the causes of different wars and conflicts?)
Children found the challenging lesson easier since they had been working with the concepts of connection finding and analysing before. I made use of this terminology throughout the lesson and offered practical advice to children on how to employ synthetic and analytical thinking skills.
Across the school, our next steps will include creating classroom and school displays featuring ACP and VAA terminology and consistently evidencing classroom implementation of HPL in our weekly planning. The HPL Champions will soon be sharing their experiences and best practices with the rest of the teaching staff during a weekly staff meeting. Long-term planning also includes introducing parents to HPL.
The children at our school have enjoyed the new challenges and are becoming better at recognising, naming and employing new approaches to more powerful learning! We are looking forward to sharing our experiences with other schools in the HPL community.
by Marcin Zaleski, Year 5 Teacher
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I love the Research Ed movement and wish that this opportunity had been available to me as an early career teacher. I am keen that we make research and reflective practice a sine qua non for teachers. It is the only way that a teacher can master their craft. It’s engaging and it is a life long journey. Let’s push for more.
Some might say that research is first and foremost a state of mind. It starts with curiosity and a desire to understand and then it moves on to a quest for more certainty around your area of investigation.
I started researching from the moment I started teaching. I was fascinated by why some children found the learning process so straightforward and why others didn’t. I read voraciously, talked to colleagues and also experimented with strategies in my own classroom. No one told me to do it and no one measured my success. I just felt compelled to reach a better level of understanding and every small step forward and every frustrating setback simply increased my desire.
In this phase I began to make use of research findings from the big researchers but it was exasperating. Researchers disagreed with each other and for the most part cited only fellow researchers who supported their theories. Not only that, I wanted to have impact in the classroom and context plays a big role so not everything was relevant for my school. It was like navigating without a compass and I floundered. But on the journey I did find some new ideas which challenged my thinking about how pupils develop and about what was important in learning. I also began to find the names of researchers whose work I admired and to follow their development. Finally, I discovered that I was a ‘constructionist’ looking to help pupils construct meaning. At last I had a way to conceptualise how I went about the process of teaching and a better basis for discussions with colleagues.
But the thing with research is that whilst you set out looking for a clear and easy answer, what inevitably happens is that you find the answer turns out to be more complex than you expected and it sets you off on another voyage of discovery. I started researching into how the most successful learners function with a view to understanding it. Some 35 years later I am still working on that problem. I know a whole lot more than most people about this but not everything. I never will. You just keep taking the next step and increasing your knowledge.
I moved from early experimentation in my classroom to undertaking more formal research. I engaged in further study so I could learn more about research methods and I became a reasonably competent Practitioner Researcher. It would be wonderful if all teachers became Practitioner Researchers. It is just so fulfilling. The difference between the ad hoc classroom investigations I had been doing previously and the research I was now doing was that it utilised the relevant literature base more fully and better designed investigations helped me to actually reach some limited conclusions. But my research was small scale and so embedded in my school that it was difficult to generalise about its wider applicability. I needed collaborators to work with and that came by finding others who were also using the same literature base of cognitive researchers that I admired. Together we could make progress and we did.
As I moved into the university sector I had the opportunity to undertake larger scale research studies and to formally codify the literature base through meta-analysis. I learned more and faster and my findings were more generalizable. I became one of the researchers that practitioners and fellow researchers follow in the UK and globally and that is exciting.
But I also supported budding Practitioner Researchers in their own research and involved them in my research. This led me in 2004 to create the concept of Structured Tinkering (borrowing the term ‘tinkering’ from Karl Popper1) which is a way to help teachers to ‘tinker’ with their own practice in a systematic way and hence have a greater appreciation of whether the interventions were effective. In effect, creating a classroom that is responsive and self-regulating. In this approach I was suggesting that, as a teacher or group of teachers, you find a problem you want to explore, find out what other people have learnt about it and then set up an intervention designed to fit your own context. I did this with many teachers who wanted to use aspects of my work to explore their problems and I helped them to use the Structured Tinkering 3 step approach to do this. In turn their findings strengthened my overall research proposition. Maybe I was an early exponent of Professional Learning Communities.
Over time I have regularly researched, used the research of others and helped colleagues in their research. Right now I am working with schools to help them investigate effective implementation of the latest thinking of advanced cognition – High Performance Learning. We use a Professional Learning Community approach and encourage research through Structured Tinkering. I am actively engaged in bringing research into schools and working with them to both utilise it and also to create more understanding. All this in a quest to improve outcomes for students and to normalise high performance.
In all schools, creative and thoughtful teachers unearth new knowledge daily and one job of the professional researcher is to help them codify it. Research is practical, it’s rewarding and it’s engaging. It is for everyone, not just for the specialists - but high quality research is the only research worth doing. Let’s provide the infrastructure that makes it possible for all schools to be real research schools and all teachers to be Practitioner Researchers. Plus let’s make sure that academic and practioner researchers work in harmony. It’s not a case of some do research and some use research; it is that we all do both but in our different ways.
Deborah Eyre (Professor), March 2018
Twitter: eyre_deborah
[1] “Piecemeal tinkering combined with critical analysis is the main way to practical results in the social as well as natural sciences.”
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