It wasn’t until recently that I realised I had fallen into exactly the same trap we so often identify in our students. We hear children say, “I’m not into maths,” or a parent describe their child as “more creative than academic,” and we immediately recognise these as limiting beliefs. Yet as adults, many of us carry exactly the same assumptions. We categorise ourselves into subjects we enjoy and subjects we don’t, rarely stopping to question whether those categories actually exist anywhere outside school. Science is perhaps the greatest example of this, it does not know it has been divided into biology, chemistry and physics.

Nature certainly doesn’t. The cells in our bodies are not aware they belong to biology. The oxygen we breathe does not stop at chemistry before becoming physics as it moves through our lungs. Gravity does not recognise curriculum descriptors. Life simply exists as an intricate network of interconnected patterns, relationships and systems that we have gradually learned to understand.

The word science itself comes from the Latin scientia, meaning knowledge. Long before science became a school subject, it described humanity’s pursuit of understanding. For centuries, what we now call science was known as natural philosophy which was the study of the natural world and our place within it.

That pursuit changed dramatically during the Enlightenment. Thinkers such as Francis Bacon challenged the idea that knowledge should come primarily from authority or tradition. Instead, he argued that we should observe the world carefully, collect evidence and search for patterns. He understood something that still resonates today: we do not simply replace old ideas with new ones. As he famously wrote, “The mind is not like a wax tablet; on the mind you cannot rub out the old except by writing in the new.” Learning builds upon what we already know.

René Descartes encouraged systematic doubt, not as an act of scepticism, but as a disciplined pathway towards truth. Isaac Newton demonstrated that the same laws governing the movement of planets also explained the fall of an apple. Antoine Lavoisier revealed that matter is conserved through chemical change, transforming chemistry from speculation into a rigorous science. Charles Darwin showed that the extraordinary diversity of life could be understood through natural selection rather than mystery alone. Dmitri Mendeleev recognised an underlying order in the elements before many had even been discovered. Each scientist contributed something profound, but perhaps their greatest achievement was not simply what they discovered. It was the demonstration that beneath apparent complexity lies order, pattern and an intelligible universe.

As knowledge expanded, no one person could master every field. In fact, scientists are incredibly focused on proving or disproving highly specific hypotheses. The irony is that while their work often becomes increasingly specialised, the knowledge it produces helps reveal an increasingly connected picture of reality. This is the very paradox that Edward O. Wilson explores in Consilience: the deeper we dig into individual disciplines, the more we discover that they are all describing the same world.

Natural philosophy gradually separated into disciplines - biology, chemistry, physics, geology, psychology and sociology. These divisions helped us organise knowledge, specialise and make extraordinary progress. Yet they also created the illusion that these disciplines exist independently of one another. The concept of Consilience argues that reality itself has never been divided. Only our study of it has. Biology does not stop where chemistry begins. Psychology does not end where sociology starts. They are different lenses through which we understand the same world. Schools, however, sometimes forget this.

We present science as a timetable allocation, a collection of descriptors or a series of disconnected topics to cover before moving on to the next unit. We talk about science as inquiry and as a human endeavour, but sometimes in doing so we underplay the extraordinary body of knowledge that humanity has accumulated over centuries.

Science is not merely a way of asking questions; it is humanity’s collective memory of the answers we have discovered so far. Schools have the responsibility of ensuring every child inherits that memory before asking them to extend it. This is where my thinking has shifted most.

When we talk about the Science of Reading, the Science of Learning or the Science of Behaviour, we are not referring to fashionable labels or educational movements. We are referring to bodies of knowledge built over time through observation, experimentation and the careful testing of ideas. Science doesn’t ask What do we believe? it asks, What patterns have we consistently observed, tested and supported by evidence?
Those patterns are evident in how children acquire language, build knowledge, remember information, respond to different environments, develop relationships and learn to participate in communities. While these patterns are often studied within different disciplines, they are all describing the same human being.

Philosophies often begin with ideals about how learning ought to occur. Science begins by asking what actually happens when human beings learn. Both have something to contribute, but they are not the same thing. This distinction is important because children are not abstract educational theories. A child is simultaneously a biological organism, a chemical system, a physical body and a social being. Therefore, to understand our students, we need to understand something about all of those things.

If we accept that some students are simply “science people” while others naturally belong in the arts, we deny every child access to one of humanity’s greatest achievements: understanding how the world works.
Science does not diminish creativity; it enriches it. It does not compete with literature or history; it helps explain them. It does not reduce life to facts; it reveals the astonishing patterns that connect them. Perhaps this is why science deserves a far more central place in our thinking about curriculum.

Not because every child will become a scientist, but because every child is already living inside the systems science seeks to explain. Understanding those systems makes us better equipped to care for ourselves, one another and the world we inhabit.

Science is a body of knowledge that all our students deserve to inherit. Perhaps that is the real purpose of education. To ensure that every generation inherits the best explanations humanity has discovered so far, not so they stop asking questions, but so their questions can take them somewhere further than they could ever have reached alone.

When the near inevitable question of, “What did you do during the holidays?” comes up, the range in responses tends to be unsurprisingly disparate. Some of our students will return with stories of enriching experiences, whilst others shrug their shoulders or claim they did “absolutely nothing.”

Regardless, this reminds us of a tacit understanding within our profession. We are limited in the extent that we can influence what our students are exposed to outside of school. However, the flip side of the coin is that as educators, we can definitely influence what students experience within our classrooms. This begs the question: What can we do to ensure that the time in our classrooms is well-spent?

Tempting Term 4 thinking

“The kids are tired, and so are we.”
“There are so many activities and disruptions this term!”

“Teachers are already thinking about their class for next year…”

These are phrases that we probably hear or say ourselves. Why? Because they are, for the most part, true. However, there is a stark difference between the reality of a fact and what we do with a fact. It is tempting to think that just because a statement is true, the “natural” consequence is bound to follow. In this case, repeated disruptions and somewhat diminished focus from both staff and students often result in standards of learning and behaviour slip.

Simply dismissing it as being unavoidably symptomatic of the final term does injustice to the students in front of us. In particular, it does a disservice to the students who rely on school for a calm, predictable environment where they can flourish and broaden their worldview and knowledge. Whilst we have limited accountability with what happens outside the classroom, what happens in the confines of the classroom is certainly under our purview. As the (literal) adult in the room, it falls to us to make sure that term 4 does not become a throwaway term of time-fillers, but rather, an enriching end to the school year that prepares them for the years ahead.

Four things to try in Term 4

Teaching is definitely not rocket science. In fact, it’s less predictable. While astrophysicists and engineers are able to calculate trajectories and timings to incredible accuracy, dealing with a room of children can be somewhat less formulaic. However, to maximise the odds of turning a tired Term 4 into a terrific one, here are some things to consider trying.

1. Restate and reset the routine

Structured, predictable learning routines that are coupled with clear expectations form the backbone of the classroom experience. Having routines and firm boundaries help establish a calm and orderly learning environment where students can turn their cognitive resources in the right direction.

A routine however, is a learned behaviour, and learning is subject to forgetting. Beginning the term with a review of classroom norms and expectations not only serves a smooth segue from the holidays into the academic term, but sets everyone up for success.

Treat the classroom behaviour as you would any other retrieval practice. Praise positive examples and provide corrective feedback. If needed, reteach, remodel, and repeat. The time investment at the start of the term reduces wasted time further down the road, and likely produces fewer sighs of exasperation as well.

2. Prioritise the present

In and amidst report writing, public holidays, holiday events and swimming programmes, it can feel very hectic trying to keep things flowing smoothly. It’s easy to get swept up and lost in the busyness of the term. This is where learning to focus in on the here and now of the classroom becomes a powerful strategy to keep students focussed, and hopefully, reduce teacher anxiety and stress.

Treat learning time as something to be protected and something that is precious. If needed, remind students (and yourself), that during learning time, the attention and thinking should be on the learning happening in the now. As educators, adopting the mindset of “What can I do right now to make learning happen?” moves us away from the what-ifs and if-onlys, and make us think about how we respond to the behaviours and learning of our students.

In the face of disruption and distractions, how do we keep routines and expectations tight, particularly when motivation is running dry for both teachers and students? One way might be to…

3. Celebrate student success

Success is rewarding, and highly motivating. By resetting expectations in term 4, and making full use of classroom instructional time, we actually increase the opportunities that our students can feel successful. Success in the classroom, bolstered and reinforced with warm praise, can serve to reinvigorate students in their learning.

Continuing to hold high standards and expectations in term 4 may seem counterintuitive to the built-up fatigue of the year, but having these standards grants you the opportunity to give meaningful praise. Students have spent the last 3 terms building their knowledge and polishing their routines, and term 4 is the ripe opportunity to allow them to show us and celebrate what they have learnt.

By dropping academic and behavioural standards, we actually deny students that opportunity. When we keep that laser focus in the present of the classroom and make learning the focus, it gives both students, and us, the chance to actually realise the fruits of our labour.

4. Pilot and practice

As you enter into the final term, perhaps you have found yourself thinking to yourself “if only I had done … at the start of the year.” Hindsight is 20/20, and it’s just as easy to think, “Oh well, next year I’ll make sure to…” Perhaps the routines in your class have not yet been set up, and you feel it’s too late to start something. You think to yourself that you might as well wait till next year, take time to plan it properly, and begin fresh.

Not only does this sound reminiscent of failed New Year resolutions, but it actually has a hidden downside. If you wait till next year to introduce a new routine that you think would be helpful, or to try a new instructional technique, then you are going to spend the next 10 or so weeks practicing behaviours that you ultimately want replaced. Practice makes permanent, and the longer we stay in the habit of doing something suboptimally, the harder it will be to change. To get better at something, start now.

In addition, we know that implementation is never without its challenges. Putting off something till next year just means that you will start the year with teething problems and working out the details. At the recent ResearchEd Canberra, keynote speaker briefly discussed the idea of Term 4 being the perfect time to pilot something. While the context he discussed was more organisational, a similar principle applies.

In Term 4, your students are more likely to be familiar with the routines and practices you already have in place. This makes it a prime opportunity to pilot and test out one new thing, when other things are relatively stable. Communicate to your students that you want to try something with them, build excitement, and be open that it might not work the first time. Tell them how grateful you are that they’re willing to be open minded and you are likely to have a receptive audience. This lets them be a part of something meaningful, and lets next year’s class benefit from the polished version of what you want to introduce.

Final thoughts

Term 4 does not have to be a tired and grueling trudge to the end of the year. It can be an exciting time of consolidation, success and experimentation. Trialling something new makes sense when the foundations are sufficiently established and the change addresses a clear need.

• Reset routines: choose one routine, explicitly model it, rehearse it and provide feedback.

• Protect the present: identify the essential learning to preserve when an event shortens a lesson.

• Celebrate success: revisit an earlier piece of work so students can see what they can now do.

• Pilot a practice: trial one manageable change and decide what evidence would show it is helping.

Learning First, an education research and consultancy group, recently hosted a conference titled “Enriching learning through quality curriculum”. At the heart of the discussion was the central idea that a strong curriculum forms the backbone of a solid education system, and a call to action to elevate the level of rigour and specificity in the Australian curriculum was a distinct throughline. Parallel to this were discussions around a term that has been becoming more prominent in recent years; that of a “knowledge-rich curriculum”.

What do we mean by a knowledge-rich curriculum?

In 2024, AERO published “A Knowledge Rich Approach to Curriculum Design”, in which it presents the evidence for the inclusion of a knowledge-rich curriculum, and how this might be achieved. Prior to this the work of many other prominent figures in education such as E.D. Hirsch and Christine Counsell have espoused a similar need. At its heart, a knowledge-rich curriculum is one that pays respect to the importance of building disciplinary knowledge sequentially over time, and aims to create powerful knowledge for students. A common strawman argument or misrepresentation of a knowledge-rich curriculum is that such a curriculum overemphasises the teaching of facts. Indeed, having students memorise disconnected lists of facts would seem rather cumbersome and meaningless. However, that is not what is meant by “knowledge”.

Rather, proponents of a knowledge-rich curriculum put forth the need to layer levels of meaning and depth around concepts and topics in an attempt to build a learner’s internal schema, or representation of the world. Knowledge is an emergent entity when multiple ideas, facts, and opinions are considered, analysed, and evaluated, which can only be done when students are explicitly presented with sufficient information and guided in creating meaningful connections. Knowledge is the picture that students are rewarded with when we present them with the right dots, and teach them how to join them.

The challenge of a knowledge-rich curriculum

One might then argue that if a knowledge-rich curriculum is so important, then why do we not already have one? Conversely, one might also put forward that the current Australian curriculum is already “knowledge-rich”. This article however, is not here to challenge the philosophical or systemic arguments. Rather, let us consider why the creation of a knowledge-rich curriculum is a herculean feat from the offset. For a curriculum to be knowledge-rich, content must be carefully sequenced in a way that allows prior knowledge to form the bedrock of subsequent understandings. This means intentional choices in how, where, and when topics are introduced, in ways that align with what we now know about effective student learning.

Curriculum cannot just be viewed in terms of “weeks”, “lessons” or “units”, but must take a more macroscopic view of how all the cogs should be placed to allow the cognitive machines to turn. This requires deep understanding of disciplinary and pedagogical content knowledge, coupled with enough time, focus, and energy to critically select, sequence, and specify knowledge that creates a coherent schema for students. Creating and curating such a curriculum is not only effortful, but a massive commitment that taps on the specific expertise of not only educators, but subject matter specialists or experts as well.

What does it mean for educators?

Realistically, the demands of creating a knowledge-rich curriculum mean the following for the educator in the classroom:

1. It is impractical and unfair to expect individual educators to be able to create their own knowledge-rich units and curriculums on top of teaching demands.

2. A knowledge-rich curriculum is not something one can “do” in a single classroom or year level.

3. Even at the school or organisational level, having the right individuals with enough bandwidth and expertise to oversee the construction of a full curriculum would be rare.

However, there is something within the discussions of a knowledge-rich curriculum that still remains valuable to our everyday pedagogy. While we may not be able to plan a coherent curriculum on our own, we can definitely employ the underlying principles within a knowledge-rich approach.

Moving away from the “lesson” as the unit of knowledge

All too often, we let the timetable decide what learning has to look like. We think in terms of 50-60 minute sessions, and make our best attempt to neatly package learning into those arbitrary units of time. There is nothing implicitly wrong with that, and it is a practical reality.

However, if we want knowledge to be our guiding impetus, then we have to be specific in terms of where we are going with each of these lessons. What is it that we are hoping students to take out from each of these lessons, and most importantly, where do these lessons lead?

In more hierarchical subjects like Mathematics, this may be more straightforward, but in the humanities and the sciences, being specific and intentional in which elements of the lesson are absolutely non-negotiable. Careful curriculum and pedagogical choices allow us to prioritise, reteach, and check for understanding in a way that allows each of our lessons to bring students closer to the intended endpoint. These choices cannot solely be centred around what happens within a single lesson, but what happens across lessons. Well-mannered decisions around rushing through a foundational piece of knowledge so that it fits neatly into a lesson, or spending excessive time on a tangent that is interesting don’t just affect a lesson; it affects the trajectory of a student’s knowledge building.

How can we make sure classrooms are knowledge-rich?

Regardless of the desired endpoint, one thing is for certain; learning has to be secure before students are able to create any form of meaningful connections. For any form of new knowledge to emerge, prior knowledge has to be firmly in place within students’ minds. Before the puzzle can be put together, our students must have the pieces firmly in their grasp.

To this end, regular and meaningful retrieval practice, not just as stand-alone quizzes, but embedded within relevant topics and discussions as well, serves as a powerful tool to ensure that students come to a topic with firm foundations to build new knowledge. These should be focused on key ideas that are revisited and built upon across multiple lessons, and not a scattergun collection of disconnected facts.

If students arrive in the classroom equipped with secure prerequisite knowledge, and we were mindful enough to ensure that the most salient understandings were prioritised, then we create the opportunity for meaningful discussions and connections to be made. This is where disciplinary knowledge can be brought to the forefront. When students have mastered basic facts about a topic, we are able to model and guide them to apply those facts in ways that match the discipline.

To prioritise knowledge within our classrooms means to be specific about what it is we want students to know, and explicitly modelling how we can make connections between ideas. It is to appreciate that knowledge builds over time, and that with each instructional cycle, we are intentionally paving the way with stepping stones for our students to reach a destination. As we embark on a journey towards a truly knowledge-rich curriculum, we can first start by creating knowledge-rich classrooms.

Martin Ravindran is a Learning Specialist at Templestowe Heights Primary School and a content creator for Learning First’s latest Science curriculum. He has also developed nationally used mathematics lessons and resources and regularly presents on evidence-informed instruction, curriculum and effective classroom practice.

Subject knowledge remains one of the defining characteristics of expert teachers because expertise is more than the accumulation of facts. It is the ability to organise knowledge into meaningful patterns, recognise the relationships between concepts and anticipate where learners are likely to struggle. Lee Shulman (1986) famously distinguished between subject knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge - the unique professional understanding that enables teachers to transform disciplinary knowledge into forms that are comprehensible for learners. Expert teachers do not simply know more; they know how to teach what they know.

Research into teacher expertise consistently demonstrates that expert teachers notice things that novices miss. They identify misconceptions before they become entrenched, recognise the significance of students’ responses and make sophisticated in-the-moment instructional decisions. These judgements depend upon secure disciplinary knowledge. A teacher who understands the conceptual structure of mathematics, history, English or science is better able to decide what to emphasise, what to simplify, what to revisit and what connections to make. Professional judgement is built upon professional knowledge.

Cognitive science also reinforces the importance of this expertise. Decades of research demonstrate that learning is constrained by the limitations of working memory and supported by the development of well-organised knowledge in long-term memory (Sweller, 1988). Students are not empty vessels waiting to discover knowledge independently; they learn by connecting new information to existing schemas, gradually building increasingly sophisticated mental models. This means that teachers must make careful decisions about sequencing, explanation and practice; these decisions depend upon deep subject expertise.

This is one reason why explicit instruction has become such an important feature of evidence-informed teaching. Explicit instruction is sometimes caricatured as passive or teacher-dominated, yet the evidence suggests the opposite. For novice learners, clear explanations, expert modelling, guided practice and regular checking for understanding reduce unnecessary cognitive load and allow students to focus their attention on the ideas that matter most (Rosenshine, 2012; Kirschner, Sweller & Clark, 2006). Explicit instruction is not about telling students everything they need to know; it is about making expert thinking visible until learners can increasingly think independently for themselves.

Knowledge, therefore, is not the enemy of creativity. It is its prerequisite.

Daniel Willingham (2009) argues that critical thinking is not a generic skill that can be taught independently of knowledge. Instead, thinking is inextricably linked to what we know. Students cannot analyse historical events they know nothing about, write persuasively without vocabulary, or solve complex scientific problems without understanding underlying concepts. The richer a learner’s knowledge base becomes, the greater their capacity to question, critique, innovate and create.

Of course, this has profound implications for teachers. If we want young people to become independent learners, then teachers themselves must possess the deep disciplinary knowledge that enables them to build rich and coherent curricula. A knowledge-rich curriculum is not about covering more content. It is about carefully selecting the powerful knowledge that allows students to understand the world more deeply and participate more fully within it (Hirsch, 2016).

Yet expertise is never a finished state. Teaching is a profession of continual learning. Curricula evolve, research develops and disciplines themselves change over time. Expert teachers therefore remain intellectually curious. They continue reading, questioning and refining their understanding because they recognise that professional expertise is always under construction.

This is where subject networks become indispensable.

Too often, professional development is generic. Teachers spend hours discussing broad pedagogical approaches that, while valuable, can overlook the distinctive demands of individual disciplines. There is something uniquely powerful about subject specialists learning alongside one another. These spaces allow teachers to engage in disciplinary conversations that simply cannot happen elsewhere. Within subject networks, teachers debate curriculum design, explore common misconceptions, examine emerging research, share resources and discuss how abstract ideas can best be communicated to learners. These conversations deepen both subject knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. They expose teachers to diverse perspectives while strengthening their professional judgement.

Subject networks also play an important role in professional identity. They remind teachers that they are members of scholarly communities rather than isolated practitioners. They foster a culture of intellectual humility in which teachers are encouraged to ask questions, challenge assumptions and continue learning throughout their careers. In a profession where it is easy to become consumed by operational demands, subject communities reconnect teachers with the intellectual excitement that first drew many of them into education.

In an age where artificial intelligence can retrieve information instantly and increasingly sophisticated resources can generate lesson materials in seconds, the distinctive contribution of the teacher has never been clearer. Expertise is no longer about simply possessing information. It is about knowing how knowledge is organised, understanding the misconceptions learners are likely to develop, making informed pedagogical decisions and responding intelligently to students in real time. Great teaching therefore sits at the intersection of deep subject knowledge, evidence-informed pedagogy and responsive professional judgement. Subject expertise allows teachers to explain with clarity, challenge with precision and adapt with confidence. Explicit instruction provides the bridge between expert knowledge and novice understanding and subject networks sustain that expertise by ensuring teachers continue to grow alongside others who share their disciplinary passion.

The best teachers never stop being students of their subject. They understand that every new insight, every professional conversation and every piece of emerging evidence strengthens their ability to help young people learn. Subject knowledge is therefore not an optional extra or an academic luxury. It is the bedrock of expert teaching, and investing in subject expertise, both individually and collectively, remains one of the most powerful ways we can improve learning for every child.

The TFE Secondary Network is beyond excited to welcome Dr Haili Hughes as our first expert presenter on what secondary schools need to do to implement the science of learning successfully. With over 24 years’ experience teaching and leading within secondary schools in the UK, Haili is well placed to share genuinely impactful wisdom.

Based on what our new network members have told us, the Secondary SOL Network webinars will feature a combination of:

• expert presentations around whole school implementation and achieving consistency

• School implementation success stories from schools at various stages of implementation

• Subject-specific presentations, led by subject-specific experts, to enable discussion and sharing of knowledge, curriculum and curriculum resources

References

Hirsch, E. D. (2016). Why Knowledge Matters: Rescuing Our Children from Failed Educational Theories. Harvard Education Press.

Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. E. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry-based teaching. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 75–86.

Rosenshine, B. (2012). Principles of instruction: Research-based strategies that all teachers should know. American Educator, 36(1), 12–19.

Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–14.

Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12(2), 257–285.

Willingham, D. T. (2009). Why Don’t Students Like School? Jossey-Bass.

Yet knowing these ideas and implementing them consistently are two very different things.

If you’re in a leadership position, you’ve probably noticed the gap between staff understanding of the Science of Learning and what actually happens in classrooms. Teachers can often articulate the principles with confidence, yet applying them consistently—particularly in secondary classrooms—can prove much more difficult.

It is easy to assume that as students grow older they require fundamentally different teaching. Certainly the content becomes more sophisticated, the curriculum more specialised and the stakes much higher. Yet the cognitive architecture of learning does not suddenly change at Year 9. Working memory remains limited, prior knowledge continues to determine what students can understand, and attention remains the gateway to learning. The challenge for secondary teachers is therefore not abandoning evidence-informed practice, but adapting it to increasingly complex disciplinary content.

So what is it about secondary teaching that makes implementing these principles feel so much harder?

At our Year 5–12 coeducational school in regional Victoria, we have spent countless hours leading professional learning around evidence-informed practice. Staff have explored cognitive load theory, interactive explicit instruction within a gradual release model, checks for understanding, formative assessment, responsive teaching and the importance of consistent school-wide routines.

All signs would suggest that our staff understand these concepts intellectually. Pleasingly, they are implemented with reasonable fidelity in the younger year levels. Yet somewhere around Year 9 we begin to notice a gradual decline in how consistently these practices are enacted. Some senior classrooms continue to model exemplary practice, but implementation is far from uniform.

After discussing this with both colleagues and students, four broad themes have consistently emerged. Interestingly, each seems to reflect a misconception held more strongly by teachers than by the students themselves.

1. “It feels awkward.”

Teachers often report feeling uncomfortable asking Year 11 or 12 students to complete choral responses or respond to school-wide attention signals such as “3-2-1”. Asking a room full of almost-adults to respond in unison can initially feel unnatural.

The interesting finding, however, is that students don’t appear to share this discomfort.

Many explain that these strategies have simply become part of what school looks like. They have experienced them for years, understand their purpose and appreciate the clarity they provide. Far from feeling patronised, they see them as efficient classroom routines.

We have observed something similar during staff professional learning. Presenters frequently admit they feel awkward using choral response or attention routines with adult colleagues, yet participants consistently report appreciating the clarity, predictability and engagement these routines create.

The awkwardness, it seems, belongs almost entirely to the presenter—not the audience.

Similarly, teachers sometimes describe evidence-informed instructional routines as feeling “babyish” with senior students. Once again, the students themselves rarely describe them this way.

2. “It demands more from the teacher.”

Interactive explicit instruction is cognitively demanding—not for students, but for teachers.

Because attention is limited and working memory is finite, teachers must carefully direct students’ attention, anticipate misconceptions, present information in manageable chunks and continually check whether students are constructing accurate mental models before moving on. When checks for understanding reveal that fewer than around 80% of students have grasped a concept, effective teaching requires more than simply repeating the explanation. It requires presenting the content differently.

This level of instructional expertise demands deep subject knowledge.

By comparison, setting an open-ended research task can appear considerably easier. Students search the internet, gather information and produce something that resembles learning.

The difficulty, of course, is that many students lack the background knowledge needed to distinguish reliable information from unreliable information, relevant ideas from irrelevant ones, or superficial understanding from genuine comprehension. Inquiry approaches can therefore unintentionally widen achievement gaps because the students who already possess the strongest knowledge base are also the ones best equipped to benefit from independent research, while those who need the most support are left to flounder.

In a profession where teachers are increasingly asked to teach outside their area of expertise because the school needs a ‘body at the front of the room’, it is understandable why inquiry tasks can become attractive. They reduce the cognitive demand on the teacher, even while increasing it substantially for students.

3. “Good instruction isn’t always entertaining.”

Some teachers expressed concern that consistent routines, a knowledge-rich curriculum and explicit instruction leave little room for fun or personality in the classroom.

This assumes that enjoyment and structure sit in opposition.

Yet students consistently described something different.

To their thinking, predictable routines reduced uncertainty. Retrieval practice helped them reconnect with what they already knew before encountering new learning. Small, low-stakes checks for understanding allowed them to experience early success before progressively increasing challenge. Even when they couldn’t answer a question, they understood that the concept would be revisited and clarified.

Retrieval practice activates prior knowledge in long-term memory, reducing cognitive load as students encounter increasingly complex ideas. Successive questioning allows teachers to continually monitor understanding while strengthening memory.

Perhaps students don’t need every lesson to be entertaining.

Perhaps they need lessons where success feels achievable.

For many students—particularly those with additional learning needs—predictability, clarity and success are precisely what make learning enjoyable.

4. “We’ve lost our autonomy.”

Perhaps the most interesting theme was the perception among some teachers that they no longer had autonomy over what happened inside their classrooms.

Yet this perception often seemed selective.

Senior teachers readily accepted externally prescribed curriculum documents set by the governing body of the region. Few questioned teaching mandated content because they recognised the importance of equity and consistency.

Yet some of those same teachers expressed concern that adopting common evidence-informed instructional approaches somehow reduced their professional autonomy.

Students, however, viewed consistency very differently.

Many described previous experiences where different classes studying the same subject received vastly different content depending on who taught them. They appreciated the school’s low-variance approach because it reduced this “lesson lottery” and ensured everyone had access to the same knowledge and opportunities, particularly in high-stakes senior subjects.

Distinguished Professor Pam Snow and others have written persuasively about professionalism in teaching. Few professions would expect practitioners to operate entirely independently, without shared protocols, agreed standards or common approaches to practice. Education should be no different.

A final reflection

This is by no means a scientific study. These are simply observations gathered through informal conversations with staff and students in one school. However, discussions with colleagues across other schools suggest that these barriers are far from unique.

The most successful strategy we have found has been remarkably simple. Continue modelling evidence-informed practices during staff professional learning so they become normal rather than awkward. Give students opportunities to explain why they value these approaches. Keep returning to the research that reminds us how learning actually happens.

Perhaps the misconception is not that these strategies are too “babyish” for older students.

Perhaps the misconception is that adolescence somehow changes how people learn.

It doesn’t.

A Year 11 student’s working memory functions according to the same cognitive architecture as a Year 1 student’s. Older students bring greater knowledge, experience and maturity, but they still benefit from explicit explanations, retrieval practice, guided practice, checks for understanding, carefully managed cognitive load and predictable classroom routines.

The challenge for secondary schools is therefore not deciding whether these principles apply to older learners.

It is helping teachers feel confident enough to apply them consistently.

If we can move beyond the perception that good teaching looks fundamentally different simply because students are older, we may discover that what secondary students need is not less structure, but better structure.

Join the Think Forward Educators Secondary Network

These are exactly the kinds of conversations we want to foster through the Think Forward Educators Secondary Network. As secondary educators navigate increasingly complex curriculum demands, we believe there is enormous value in bringing together classroom teachers, curriculum leaders and school leaders to explore what evidence-informed practice looks like in Years 7–12.

Throughout the year, the Secondary Network will feature webinars, articles, classroom examples and opportunities to engage with leading thinkers from Australia and internationally. Together, we’ll examine how to adapt strong instructional principles to the unique demands of secondary subjects while strengthening consistency, teacher expertise and student outcomes.

If these are the questions your school is grappling with, we’d love you to join the conversation.

If you are keen to join the network and discussion - click on this link for a 3 min survey: TFE Secondary SOL Network. We are excited to connect with like-minded educators who are keen to develop evidence-based excellence across the secondary sector.

Think Forward Educators is a not-for-profit organisation working to improve outcomes for all students by making evidence-informed professional learning practical, accessible and affordable. Through national networks, events and resources, we support educators to translate research into meaningful classroom and school improvement. Learn more at www.thinkforwardeducators.org.

(AI was used to support editing and proofreading. All ideas, arguments and conclusions are the author’s own.)

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What does this work look like in a large, complex secondary setting?

The challenges of implementation are not identical across sectors, and secondary schools require opportunities to learn from others navigating the same terrain. This brings us to an important question. Why are there not more secondary schools that have successfully embedded evidence-informed practice across an entire organisation?

Is it because there are fewer passionate educators in secondary schools? Less hard-working teachers? Less knowledgeable leaders?

Clearly not.

I would suggest there are equally passionate educators, who are equally hard-working and equally knowledgeable. I know many secondary educators who are deeply committed to the science that underpins effective learning. So perhaps the better question is not why secondary schools have been slower to adopt evidence-informed approaches, but whether we have underestimated the unique challenges they face.

Same, Same, but Different

The argument I want to make is that primary and secondary schools are same, same, but different.

Yes, they both aim to educate young people. However, secondary schools have structural, cultural and organisational features that are distinct from those found in primary settings. I am not suggesting that one context is more difficult than the other. Rather, they are different. If we want to achieve successful implementation of evidence-informed practice in secondary schools, we need solutions that align with the realities of secondary education. That requires leaders who understand three things deeply:

• The secondary school terrain

• The science underpinning how humans learn

• The architecture of successful organisational change

The structural, social and cultural characteristics unique to secondary settings include:

• Highly complex timetables

• A broader range of disciplines and subjects

• Larger populations of staff and students

• Students taught by multiple teachers each week

• Teachers responsible for large numbers of students across multiple classes

• Significant movement between rooms and learning spaces

• Rising rates of adolescent mental health challenges

• Greater student access to technology, both at school and at home

• The pressures and incentives created by senior secondary assessment systems

• Students arriving from diverse primary school experiences

• Wide variation in student readiness for secondary curriculum demands

Taken individually, none of these challenges are insurmountable, yet taken together they create a landscape that requires thoughtful, context-specific solutions.

Nine Years Behind

A Year 8 student struggling with reading, writing and numeracy is not two years into secondary school. They are nine years into their education. And it is likely they have been struggling for much of that time in a system that has repeatedly asked them to do things they have never been adequately taught how to do. Imagine what that feels like.

Day after day, lesson after lesson, they move from Science to Humanities to Mathematics to English being asked to read, write, think and communicate at levels beyond their current capabilities. Often, the adults around them do not fully understand the extent of their difficulties. These students can become labelled as lazy, disengaged, difficult or incapable when the reality is often far more complex.

Secondary schools bear the weight of what happens when students arrive having experienced years of cumulative disadvantage. Stanovich’s Matthew Effect is no longer a theory discussed in professional learning sessions; it is sitting in classrooms every day.

I believe these students are among the most vulnerable in our education system.

Research consistently shows that students who leave school without strong literacy, numeracy and knowledge foundations face significantly poorer life outcomes. Yet many of these young people have learned something else during their years at school: that learning is frustrating, that success belongs to other people, and that adults who promise to help often cannot.

This is not because there is something wrong with them but because too many students have not received the instruction they needed when they needed it. When viewed through this lens, it is perhaps unsurprising that many secondary schools are grappling daily with school refusal, disengagement, challenging behaviour and poor wellbeing outcomes.

These are not separate issues and they are often the downstream consequences of students struggling to access learning for many years.

The Implementation Challenge

Alongside these student challenges sit the implementation challenges faced by schools seeking to improve.

These include:

• Supporting a workforce that has often received inconsistent preparation through Initial Teacher Education (ITE)

• Building shared understanding around effective instruction

• Designing and implementing coherent, knowledge-rich curriculum

• Developing high-quality curriculum resources

• Moving from inquiry-based approaches towards more explicit approaches when teaching novice learners

• Providing effective professional learning for new and existing staff

• Sustaining change despite limited time, funding and competing priorities

Implementation science tells us that most large-scale change efforts fail. When we combine this reality with the complexity of secondary schooling, it becomes easier to understand why many schools feel they are climbing a steep hill.

Uphill, yes, but not insurmountable.

Schools in Australia and internationally have demonstrated that meaningful change is possible. Some of the most inspiring examples have emerged from contexts serving highly disadvantaged communities, proving that circumstance alone does not determine success.

Why We Need to build a Secondary Community

This is why I believe secondary educators need spaces where they can learn from one another. Not because secondary schools are incapable of improvement. Not because the answers already exist somewhere waiting to be copied.

The challenges of implementation in secondary settings are distinct enough to warrant dedicated collaboration and a secondary science of learning network would provide opportunities for teachers and leaders to:

• Share implementation successes and failures

• Learn from schools navigating similar challenges

• Examine evidence together

• Develop practical, context-specific solutions

• Build professional relationships with others doing the same work

Most importantly, it would remind educators that they are not undertaking this journey alone. The stakes are too high for us to work in isolation. There are thousands of young people sitting in secondary classrooms today whose futures depend on schools getting this work right. Together, we can improve outcomes for those students, and together, we can build secondary schools where every student has a genuine opportunity to succeed.

If you are keen to join the network and discussion - click on this link for a 3 min : TFE Secondary SOL Network. We are more than a little excited to connect with like-minded educators who are keen to develop evidence-based excellence across the secondary sector.

_{Think Forward Educators is a not-for-profit organisation working to improve outcomes for all students by making evidence-informed professional learning practical, accessible and affordable. Through national networks, events and resources, we support educators to translate research into meaningful classroom and school improvement. Learn more at www.thinkforwardeducators.org.}

_{(AI was used to support editing and proofreading. All ideas, arguments and conclusions are the author's own.)}

It goes something like this: children are struggling. Mental health concerns are rising. Families are under enormous pressure. The problems are real, they are visible, and they are landing in schools every single day. And so, the question being asked (with genuine care and genuine urgency) is: what role should schools play in addressing them?

I understand why this question is being asked. I have spent much of my career in schools that sit in the middle of these realities. I am not writing this from a distance or an ivory tower. Having taught in and led curriculum and instructional improvement in underprivileged schools, I know what it looks like when a child walks through the school gate carrying the weight of things no child should have to carry. I know what it asks of teachers and leaders. I have felt it, and I know I am not alone in that.

But I think we are in danger of being sold the wrong solution to the right problem, again…

The wellbeing drift

Current discourse in education is increasingly framing schools as the frontline response to a social and health crisis. The suggestion, implicit or explicit, is that schools need to do more by way of mental health support, therapeutic approaches and wraparound services. That we need to think of ourselves less as learning institutions and more as community health hubs.

I want to be careful here, because I am not arguing against schools having connections with health and allied services. I firmly believe those partnerships are a very important pillar in the solution. They can make a profound difference to individual children and families. A school that operates in isolation from its community’s support systems is not serving its students well.

What I am questioning is something subtler and, I think, more dangerous: the slow drift away from the belief that teaching children well is itself a profound act of care.

When we load schools with the expectation that their primary responsibility is emotional regulation, therapeutic support, and wellbeing management, we risk quietly deprioritising the thing that schools are uniquely positioned to do. And the thing that the evidence most clearly suggests changes life trajectories for disadvantaged children.

That ‘thing’ is teaching. Specifically, teaching children to read.

The numbers we must not ignore

The Grattan Institute’s 2024 report, The Reading Guarantee, confirmed what many of us already knew: in a typical Australian classroom of 24 students, eight cannot read proficiently. One in three children not reading proficiently largely because they have not been taught effectively enough.

The report pointed directly at two approaches being implemented in Australian classrooms: the whole-language model, popular since the 1970s and based on the idea that reading is a natural, unconscious process, and balanced literacy, which the report described as “contrary to scientific recommendations.” Both, the report concluded, need to be replaced by structured literacy. Without hesitation.

I am reminded every day, through conversations with colleagues, principals, and teachers, that this shift is actively underway. One by one, states and territories have moved. South Australia led the way, mandating a Year 1 Phonics Screening Check in 2018, followed by New South Wales in 2021 and Tasmania shortly after. Queensland has since joined them. And in 2024, Victoria announced that from 2025, all government schools would be required to dedicate a minimum of 25 minutes daily to the explicit teaching of phonics and phonemic awareness. It is a change that has been a long time coming and one that keeps me (cautiously) optimistic.

This research is not a new finding. It is, in fact, a very old finding being rediscovered with increasing frustration.

In 2005, Australia conducted its own National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy, led by Dr Ken Rowe. Its conclusion was unambiguous. The Committee found that “the evidence is clear, whether from research, good practice observed in schools, advice from submissions to the Inquiry, consultations, or from Committee members’ own individual experiences, that direct systematic instruction in phonics during the early years of schooling is an essential foundation for teaching children to read” (Rowe, 2005, p. 11).

A year later, in the United Kingdom, Sir Jim Rose reached the same conclusion in his Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading. Systematic synthetic phonics, Rose found, offers the vast majority of beginning readers the best route to becoming skilled readers. Two independent national inquiries. Nearly two decades of subsequent research confirming their findings. And still, in 2024, it was found that one in three Australian children cannot read proficiently.

This is nightmare fuel for educators around the world. The gap (between what we know and what we do) is the real crisis in our schools. And it is a crisis with consequences that extend far beyond classrooms.

The pipeline nobody wants to talk about

Professor Pamela Snow, one of Australia’s most respected researchers in language, literacy, and vulnerable populations, has written compellingly about what she calls the school-to-prison pipeline. The research is confronting: young people in contact with the youth justice system overwhelmingly have severely compromised oral language and literacy skills. The vast majority (around 90%) have a history of school suspensions and exclusions. High rates of undiagnosed language disorder are common (Snow, 2019).

This is a pattern that begins, in many cases, with a child who was never taught to decode print, who experienced school as a place of confusion and failure, who fell behind early and never caught up, who eventually disengaged entirely. Somehow, the answer to disengaged learners became “make learning fun,” which I would argue is the wrong solution to a very real problem, but that is for another article.

When I hear that the solution being offered by ‘experts’ to rising social challenges in schools is more wellbeing programs and therapeutic frameworks, I find myself thinking about that pipeline. I find myself wondering: what if the most powerful wellbeing intervention we have is a child who can read?

What is the core purpose of a school?

Daniel Willingham, in Why Don’t Students Like School? (2009), makes a point I keep returning to: schooling as a structured institution has ancient roots, and those roots are grounded in the transmission of knowledge and skill. The purpose of school has not fundamentally changed across thousands of years of human civilisation. We gather children together so that the accumulated knowledge of a society can be passed on deliberately, systematically, and equitably.

Access to that knowledge is not evenly distributed in our society. The children who need school the most are often the ones who arrive with the least: least exposure to print, least language-rich experience at home, least ability to rely on anyone outside the school gates to fill what the classroom misses. For those children, the classroom is their final stopgap.

Psychologist Keith Stanovich described this dynamic as the Matthew Effect, borrowing from the biblical reference that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. In reading, the effect is stark: children who enter school with strong language foundations learn to read more easily, read more as a result, and accumulate vocabulary, knowledge, and comprehension at an accelerating rate. Children who struggle to decode in the early years read less, fall further behind, and find the gap widening with every year that passes. Stanovich’s research showed that first-grade reading ability was a strong predictor of outcomes a full decade later, even when cognitive ability was accounted for.

This has a particular implication for how we interpret school data. A school with strong academic results may (in some, not all, cases) be reflecting the cultural capital of its community rather than the quality of its instruction. Some children whose families can supplement their schooling succeed despite the school approach, not because of it. Many arrive with the oral language, the print exposure, and the parental scaffolding to paper over instructional gaps that would stop others cold. When we credit the school’s results without asking what is truly driving them, we risk mistaking fortune for method. I understand that this might be a hard pill to swallow, but it is an essential conversation to have if we are serious about who our current approaches are actually serving.

The school is, for many children, the one institution specifically designed to interrupt that cycle. Daisy Christodoulou, drawing on decades of cognitive science research, has argued that when schools lose sight of this purpose (when they prioritise child-led discovery, emotional processing, and individualised choice over direct and systematic instruction) it is always the most vulnerable children who pay the price. Children whose families can supplement their schooling have other resources to fall back on. Children whose families cannot supplement their schooling have only the classroom. Is it fair that we still need to cross our fingers and hope their school has been supported to implement what the evidence has told us for decades?

The individualisation fallacy

One of the patterns I notice in current discourse is the increasing push toward individualisation as the response to educational inequality. This is, frustratingly, the very basis upon which government schools receive funding, which sits in uncomfortable tension with the newly released Victorian Teaching & Learning Model 2.0.

The mantras are familiar: every child has unique needs, every child requires a personalised approach, every child needs their learning tailored to their specific profile. There is something genuinely important in this idea. Children are not identical, and responsive teaching is key. But the answer to underachievement is not an increasingly individualised approach for every learner, because there is a real risk in how that plays out in practice.

When individualisation becomes the dominant response to underachievement (when we focus on ‘differentiation’ rather than responsive teaching) we can inadvertently lower the ceiling for the very children we most want to support. We give them a modified version of the curriculum instead of better instruction in the real one. We accommodate the gap instead of closing it.

The research on what actually moves outcomes for disadvantaged students points consistently toward high-quality, evidence-based core instruction delivered to all students, with high expectations for every child in the room. The Rowe Report said it. The Rose Report said it. The Grattan Institute said it. Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction said it. The Science of Reading says it, every day, in every study that replicates its findings.

Teach children to read. Teach them well. Expect them to succeed. Come back for them (sometimes multiple times) when they don’t get it the first time.

Rethinking what we’re being asked to do

Schools cannot be asked to replace the health system, the justice system, and the welfare system while also being held accountable for academic outcomes. That is not a sustainable model, and more importantly, it misunderstands what schools are actually capable of doing.

Schools are not health services. But they are something that, in the right conditions, can be more powerful than a health service alone for a child’s long-term trajectory. They are the place where a child learns that the world of print is accessible to them. Where they discover that they can think clearly, argue well, understand complex ideas, and build something from the knowledge they carry. Where they experience (perhaps for the first time in their life) the particular kind of confidence that comes from having learned something genuinely hard.

And let us be honest about what the alternatives look like in practice. A fidget toy and a Zones of Regulation poster are not a response to a child who cannot decode a sentence. They are a deferral of one. The allied health community has much to offer, and the best school-based partnerships work precisely because they sit alongside strong instruction rather than substituting for it. But when schools are encouraged to adopt therapeutic frameworks as their primary response to disadvantage or poor academic outcomes, the children who needed us most to ‘just teach them’ are the ones who lose.

The conversation I want to have

The current discourse is asking schools to evolve their role. I want to suggest a different framing.

Support schools to focus on implementing what the evidence suggests. And do it so well, and so equitably, that fewer children arrive at adolescence without the tools they need to navigate the world. Instead of asking school leaders and teachers to respond to the needs of our learners with therapeutic or wellbeing management first or alone, support us in upskilling our workforce in evidence based practice, training our pre service teachers and helping us protect instructional minutes every day. Let the conversation in our staffrooms, professional conferences and leadership meetings be dominated by curriculum, instructional quality, what the research says about how children learn to read and how we can teach every child to do it.

The children in our schools who are most at risk deserve the most powerful thing a school can give them. An education.

References

Grattan Institute. (2024). The Reading Guarantee: How to give every child the best chance of success. Grattan Institute.

Rose, J. (2006). Independent review of the teaching of early reading: Final report. Department for Education and Skills (UK).

Rosenshine, B. (2012). Principles of instruction: Research-based strategies that all teachers should know. American Educator, 36(1), 12–19, 39.

Rowe, K., and National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy. (2005). Teaching reading: Report and recommendations. Commonwealth of Australia.

Snow, P. C. (2019). Speech-language pathology and the youth offender: Epidemiological overview and roadmap for future research and scope of practice. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools.

Stanovich, K. E. (1986). Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21(4), 360-407.

Willingham, D. T. (2009). Why don’t students like school? A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom. Jossey-Bass.

I keep coming back to this line from Graham Nuthall, which stopped me in my tracks when a friend shared it with me. I asked her to read it out to me so I could hear it again, then I read it aloud to myself to really let the sentiment sink in. It resonated with me so much because I believe it sits right at the heart of the work we are doing when we build Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) in schools.

With the launch of the Think Forward Educators MTSS Network, I have been blown away by the huge amount of thought and energy that teachers and school leaders are putting into getting this right. Over the past week, I have been reading through the early discussions in the MTSS Network, and I have been struck by how similar many of the challenges are, even though the schools and stages of change are very different. Primary schools, secondary schools, large schools, small schools, new schools, established schools. Different resources, different staffing structures, different timetables. But the questions are often the same. How do we timetable intervention? Who should run Tier 2 groups? What do students miss when they attend intervention? How do we support students who are many years behind? How do we manage this with limited staff and budgets? Help?

These are all very real questions, and they are not easy ones to answer. They are also the right questions to be asking. But if we come back to Nuthall’s idea that “ability is the consequence of what students learn”, then MTSS starts to look less like a system for sorting or labelling students and more like a system for organising opportunity to learn (Australian Education Research Organisation [AERO], 2024).

This is where I think one of the biggest misunderstandings about MTSS sits. The tiers are very easily turned into labels. Schools start talking about “Tier 2 students” and “Tier 3 students”, often without even realising it. But the moment that language starts to creep in, expectations quietly change. The work students are given changes. The opportunities they are given change. They are held less accountable in the Tier 1 environment because there is a belief that “they can’t do this”. The ceiling lowers, even though nobody ever intended for that to happen. Which aligns with research showing that teacher expectations and accountability strongly influence student achievement (Lemov, 2015).

A student is not a “Tier 2 student”. A student might receive Tier 2 support for a period of time for a particular concept or subject. That support might increase or decrease over time depending on what they are learning and how they are responding to instruction. The tiers describe the level of support, not the type of student. That distinction is incredibly important because when we start to label students into types, we tend to unconsciously hold them less accountable out of fear of upsetting them, overworking them, or maybe pushing them too hard.

Recently, we had the privilege of hosting David Didau at our school. He showcased a masterclass in inclusive Tier 1 instruction without ever labelling it as that. Before David started teaching the first class of Grade 6 students, he didn’t ask, “What level is this child at?” or “Are there any struggling students I should know about?”. Instead, he went in with incredibly high expectations for all and demonstrated a “no opt out” approach that called upon any student at any time. When a student did not give the correct answer, instead of saying “great try” with an upwards inflection and a “bless your heart” smile, he warmly said, “That is not correct, but listen out to the next student and I will come back to you!”. And guess what? He did just that! David came back to the student, multiple times, with a palpable belief in them, until they were able to give an answer that was not only correct (and scaffolded from the other students’ responses that were repeated multiple times), but that filled this student with a special thing that we call success. The smiles from the student and David were genuine and encouraging. Fireworks and watery eyes from those of us observing!

When schools start building MTSS structures, a lot of the early conversation is about intervention. Groups, programs, withdrawal, staffing, timetables, progress monitoring, and $$$. All of that work is important, and it is complicated. But in the schools where this work seems to be making the biggest difference, the starting point was not intervention. The starting point was Tier 1, and it remained the point of interrogation for years, not terms, which aligns with research highlighting the importance of high-quality core instruction and explicit teaching as the primary driver of student achievement (Rosenshine, 2012; Archer & Hughes, 2011).

This is the part of the work that is less visible, slow burning, completely exhausting, and sometimes less exciting, but it is the part that changes everything over time. Schools start looking closely at their curriculum, their lesson structures, their routines, their explanations, their feedback, their sequencing, and their pacing. They start asking harder questions about what is being taught, how it is being taught, and whether students are actually learning what we think we are teaching. This is slow and sometimes uncomfortable work because it requires adults to change practice and systems, not just create traffic light-coloured lists of students grouped by support.

Once Tier 1 instruction becomes clearer, more consistent, and tightly sequenced across a school, the conversation about Tier 2 becomes much easier. Tier 2 then becomes an additional dose of the same, already interrogated and finessed Tier 1 instruction, with more guided practice, feedback and opportunities to respond, which are key elements of effective instruction (Rosenshine, 2012). Structurally, this is very difficult to timetable and staff, which is why so many of the questions in this network are really timetable and staffing questions. But this does not mean it is impossible or unnecessary.

At some point, schools building an MTSS model realise that the timetable is not just an organisational document. It is a reflection of what the school values and what the school is willing to protect. The timetable quietly reveals priorities, who receives additional support and when, and whether Tier 1 instruction is protected or constantly compromised. Many of the important MTSS decisions are actually leadership decisions about time, staffing, and structures rather than decisions about specific programs, which reflects the broader view of MTSS as a whole-school organisational framework rather than an intervention program (Brown-Chidsey & Bickford, 2016).

Another pattern that came through in the discussions was that some cohorts have larger gaps than others because of the timing of curriculum changes or instructional changes in a school. This is very real and something many schools experience. When Tier 1 instruction improves across a school, the biggest impact is often not seen immediately. It is seen a few years later, when the students who have had strong Tier 1 instruction from the beginning move up through the school. Over time, the number of students requiring Tier 2 and Tier 3 support often reduces because the system has changed and prevention becomes the intention, which is consistent with the prevention model underpinning Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (AERO, 2024).

Which brings us back again to Nuthall’s idea.

Ability is the consequence of what students learn, and what students learn is heavily influenced by the curriculum they are taught, the instruction they receive, the time they are given to practise, the feedback they receive, and the systems schools build around them. If that is true, then MTSS is not really about intervention programs or grouping students. It is about building a school where more students are successful in the core curriculum because the system has been designed to support them to be successful instead of relying on Tier 2 and 3 to do the heavy lifting.

This is slow, tiring, essential work. It involves curriculum, instruction, assessment, timetables, staffing, professional learning, and hard leadership decisions. It looks different in every school at the moment. But the conversations happening in this network suggest that many schools are asking exactly the right questions and doing exactly the kind of thinking that leads to better systems over time.

If you are keen to join the network and the discussion, click on this link: TFE MTSS Network. Thank you to every educator who has contributed by sharing their school journeys to date!

References

Archer, A. L., & Hughes, C. A. (2011). Explicit Instruction: Effective and Efficient Teaching. Guilford Press.

Australian Education Research Organisation. (2024). Introduction to a Multi-Tiered System of Supports. Introduction to a multi-tiered system of supports | Australian Education Research Organisation

Brown-Chidsey, R., & Bickford, R. (2016). Practical Handbook of Multi-Tiered Systems of Support. Guilford Press.

Lemov, D. (2015). Teach Like a Champion 2.0. Jossey-Bass.

Nuthall, G. (2007). The Hidden Lives of Learners. NZCER Press.

Rosenshine, B. (2012). Principles of Instruction. American Educator.