Adaptive teaching has entered the language of education and, as innovation and developments (or buzzwords and fads!) often will, has already taken on multiple interpretations across the sector. I’ve seen school level tick lists of adaptive features and single page summaries of what each department does for SEND in their subject, and I would usually strive to distance myself form anything like this… but this is different. Both of those approaches have missed the point though.
Adaptive teaching may be new language to try and overcome a very old problem, but it is far from being the new ‘quality first teaching’ (shudder) or differentiation. It is barely SEND provision or even a discrete provision at all. The ECF’s descriptors cover a broad range of aspects of what happens in our schools and it has resonated with me because it aligns so well with Mountain Rescue and the work we have been doing at Dixons Trinity for the past ten years.
And I’m worried.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m delighted. But I’m worried too. Because the history of (attempted) inclusive education is filled with promising developments and missed opportunities, and a good idea isn’t enough; right now, we are in the adaptive teaching danger zone. It already has a buzzwordy name, a checklist, and a strong association with SEND, so it is in grave danger of becoming a separate thing, something we do for our SEND students and separate from the ‘real’ work of teaching and running our schools. This is a mind-set that has already let our students down so many times before, but we have to start somewhere, I suppose.
Schools operate on a simple cyclical process. We establish where our students are at currently, we use that information to plan what we are going to do to move them forward, we implement our plans, and then we review how it went, using this review to update our information and start the cycle again.
Assess. Plan. Do. Review.
Everything else happening in our schools is either to support that cycle to happen effectively, to maximise on the opportunities it provides, or a combination of the two. For example, the behaviour system is to support classroom management, but also provides opportunities for personal development. Safeguarding is how we ensure access to education and we are also ideally placed to provide early and emergency intervention. We probably most closely associate the ‘assess plan do review’ (APDR) process with SEND provision and the graduated response. SEND APDR is simply the same process we have in place for all students, but with increasing levels of specificity and personalisation to meet the needs of groups and individuals who require a more targeted or specialist approach. For students with SEND it is a system that is enshrined in law, but actually it’s a pattern of response we see throughout our schools and for other areas of vulnerability and need. For example, there will be whole school routines for managing behaviour, and then graduated layers and increasing individualisation for just the children who need it. The same goes for mental health and for safeguarding.
The ECF descriptors don’t give us anything additional to do, or anything different that should be in place for students with SEND, but instead gives us the most effective, and therefore inclusive, approach for all learners. It gives us a lens through which we can view our schools as a system, identify gaps and analyse for optimal inclusivity, and understand how all the moving parts must work together as a whole in order for all children to be able to learn and thrive.
The first phase of the cycle is assessment, including not only meaningful and usable academic data, but all of the information we can pour into the system in order to empower teachers, leaders and support staff to work with precision. It includes academic levels, but also pastoral information and what staff know from their own observations and interactions with students.
For the students we identify as SEND, it includes whatever their school is using to share children’s reasonable adjustments and strategies with staff, typically something like an Individual Education Plan (IEP), pen portrait, one page profile, or similar. With this, and with all of the sources of information contributing to this phase of the cycle, leaders must ensure that the quality, quantity and relevance of the information is right, that support is provided and time to review it is protected, so that staff aren’t overwhelmed or having to sort through what is and isn’t useful.
The next phase of the cycle is to use that rich and varied information to plan and resource effectively, including planning for reasonable adjustments and specialist resources to be in place, but the ECF puts particular emphasis on ‘flexible grouping’. This might be the opportunity I’ve been waiting for to move away from the term ‘double staffing’, which was an accurate description of it when we first said it, to something that better describes what it has become. Although literal double staffing of lessons does still happen, it would now be much more accurate to describe it as a willingness to be flexible, a bit creative, and a very information led way to staff and group students. At this phase, I would also include effective use of teaching assistants, i.e. following the research and not received wisdoms, and ensuring well-stocked, tidy and purposeful spaces for our children to learn in.
At the heart of the cycle, and therefore at the heart of everything we do, is the lesson. The black box. The moment. Our raison d’être. You can have all the right information and have made all the best plans, but ultimately it comes down to what the teacher does in their classroom. The best laid plans can turn out not to be quite the right thing and, to complicate things further, our audience are children who have their own personalities and preferences, skills and needs, good moods and bad, just as anyone does. They are expert curveball throwers and so teachers have to be expert curveball catchers. Standardised routines and resources, such as expected lesson formats, ‘do now’ activities and curriculum booklets, reduce extraneous cognitive load and clutter, help share best practice and create consistency, but must be used as a springboard and not a ball and chain. What the students need are teachers who are knowledgeable (about their subject and about their students), who have a range of skills and strategies to draw from, and who have the confidence, autonomy and agency to teach dynamically and make responsive decisions in order to maximise on the opportunities the lesson brings them.
Making the most of the lesson itself also relies on support and conducive factors from outside the classroom. Well-managed transitions, absence cover, senior leadership presence and, whenever something results in a child being out of the lesson (typically for behaviour, SEND or mental health reasons), systems that prioritise quickly returning them back to the classroom where they belong are all crucial for ensuring the lesson itself goes well. There are valid reasons why a child might be out of their lesson and things like withdrawal intervention, time out cards, internal exclusion, part-time timetables and suspensions, all have a place, but they also all take students away from the thing they came to us to get. They are effectively forms of legitimised absence and overuse of them, arguably any use of them, results in children being away from the classroom, creating gaps in learning, damaging relationship and, often, children affected finding it increasingly difficult to cope in the classroom. A student might need a behaviour response, a break or a particular intervention but, ultimately it is our main offer i.e. the main timetable, routines and lessons, that tends to be our most effective, well-resourced and stable offer. Often it is our most vulnerable learners, the ones that need the very best and most consistent experience, that are most liable to spending time out of their lessons. We should be operating on the basis that every exit from the classroom is a tragedy. Unless we are running a behaviour system that recognises classroom paramountcy over getting that pound of flesh, and SEND provision that recognises the difference between a reasonable adjustment and educational provision, we are inevitably going to be letting children down.
The final phase of the cycle is to review. This includes academic progress and attainment, but also evaluation of how things have gone, what has been learned about the children, what has changed for the better and the worse, and what can be fed back into the next iteration of the cycle, so that it isn’t just repeating but evolving and improving too. Another key feature of the ECF descriptors is formative assessment and, although there may be literal APDR cycles as well (e.g. timings for assessments or providing feedback on SEND targets), in general I would say that the cycles are more figurative; it is a constant process of using rich information, smart resourcing, and formative assessment to make excellent decisions, big and small, about what action should be taken next.
What does this have to do with Mountain Rescue? The adaptive teaching cycle and the school’s pastoral services are two intertwining branches of the same tree, with each one both taking and providing information, resource and support for the other. The two are inexorably linked, and so the flow of information, resource and people (staff and children) will move between them whether they are optimised for that to be done efficiently or not.
Mountain Rescue, the model we use (there will be others, I’m sure), is a three-tier multi-disciplinary approach, utilising shared spaces, combined resources, and collaborative leadership to streamline provision and meet the needs of all children holistically. We can continue to talk about SEND, safeguarding, challenging behaviour, poor attendance and various other vulnerabilities as if they are groups of children distinct from one another, but of course, in reality they are not. Our highest profile students are likely to fall into multiple categories, and every child has elements of each and the potential to escalate through our systems. I have seen enough examples of our most vulnerable, ‘edge of education’ students being caught in a tug of war between supportive (but segregating) SEND systems and overly punitive behaviour systems, or life-changing placement decisions being made in the absence of important safeguarding or SEND information, to know that it is about more than just streamlining. It is about finding ways to do better for our children who are most at risk of losing their entitlement to the best protective factor we can give them and the very reason we exist; a high quality education. Mountain Rescue is how we optimise the flows of information, resource and support to protect that entitlement for every student.
Another important overarching factor is relationships. Understanding the teacher student relationship, how it impacts on teaching and learning, and being proactive in fostering, maintaining and protecting it (which requires high quality professional development, just like any of other important aspect of our job) is crucial and has relevance throughout the cyclical process. What we learn from our interactions with students is a valuable information source and one that (hopefully!) strengthens and strengthens over time, but maybe more importantly, building strong relationships – trust – is how we get children to take learning risks and how we notice the subtle responses that enable us to make dynamic decisions. Non-attendance, not having your needs met, and inappropriate or excessive use of sanctions are all threats to our relationships with students and so need to be minimised wherever possible.
So how can we make the most of the potential adaptive teaching brings whilst avoiding the pitfalls of previous attempts to make education more inclusive. Firstly, this is not a separate thing to do, or a replacement for a previous concept, but a new lens through which to look at our school systems as a whole, identify any gaps, disconnects or in-inclusivity, but probably most importantly, to find opportunities to move forward for the benefit of all students. Secondly, to remember that the SENCO is an important voice in this conversation, but as soon as you make this a SENCO responsibility, you have missed the point and the opportunity. This is not SEND provision, it is a way of making your school more inherently inclusive as the norm. And thirdly, if you use the ECF descriptors as a checklist and tick each one off as done whilst students with SEND remain overrepresented in behaviour and attendance data, your corridors and classrooms are calm through extensive use of internal exclusion, suspensions and part-time timetables, meaning that your vulnerable groups get poor outcomes (not just academic outcomes but other measures as well) you have not been reflective enough.
Adaptive teaching isn’t really a thing, but a description of what a school does just optimised for inclusivity; but that doesn’t mean it isn’t needed. The reality is that vulnerable groups still typically receive a second-rate experience of education and adaptive teaching is an opportunity to do something about it; it is an opportunity to make things right for more students and, as if that isn’t enough, also to better understand and maximise our systems and how they work together to build more inclusivity, efficiency and sustainability into our most effective and most stable offer. It is a way to steady the ship and succeed in spite of any external factors that might affect us. In the end it will come down to the same thing that any potential change for our most vulnerable groups comes down to; not just what do we want, but what are you willing to do to achieve it? We all want to be more inclusive, but what are you willing to actually change, even if you’re the only school in the country that is doing it, to make it happen? Because the only real inclusion is equality. And we are a long, long way from that.
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