“Teach Like a Champion” academy trust sets out minute-by-minute expectations on how teachers should conduct lessons

Teaching materials are offering vivid insights into how a traditionalist-leaning academy trust is seeking to control extraordinarily tightly how teachers behave in the classroom and outside when interacting with pupils.

The Astrea Trust, which runs 26 schools in Yorkshire and Cambridgeshire, has been formulating what it calls a “booklet-driven curriculum”, in which subjects are taught mainly through printed worksheets in which individual sections of lessons are laid out for those delivering them; providing “microscripts”, which set out minute-by-minute approaches to classroom management sequences; and laying down detailed stipulations on pupil behaviour.

The trust, based in Sheffield but whose approach has caused most controversy at St Ivo Academy near Cambridge, is implementing almost religiously an approach set out in “Teach Like a Champion”, the bestselling series of books offering up a series of teaching recipes written by the American educationist Doug Lemov.

The centrally-developed materials, which seem to imply pupils’ uniforms could be checked twice by teachers during lessons, are being presented to teachers in Astrea’s schools as necessary to ensure the highest possible standards of achievement and behaviour from pupils. But they were strongly criticised by teaching sources at St Ivo, who are warning of the possibility of teacher shortages at the school as experienced professionals reject the lack of autonomy that the approaches seem to underline.

Wherever one stands on that debate, the materials appear to shed light on the potential for centralisation and standardisation under the multi-academy trust policy, which of course is being promoted enthusiastically by the current government.

The background