Teach Sleep Repeat

215. PISA Results, Teacher Pay & BORING Writing Schemes

🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app England has just landed in the world's top ten for reading, maths and science. Good news, surely? Dylan and Hayden are not so sure, because the same PISA results show reading ability falling off a cliff worldwide, and the countries where children use AI the most are falling behind the fastest. Here's the article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgy6n0l4rdo First, though, it is episode one from the new office, complete with a slight echo and a metal works next door. Dylan is fresh off a sleeper train to Edinburgh (think bunk beds, a shower that doubles as the toilet, and a mate who is six foot three), and he has some explaining to do about that Scottish teacher pay post that got a few people worked up. Then two listener questions. With AI able to manipulate images, should schools stop publishing pupil photos altogether? And which subject did each of them love teaching far more than they expected? Hayden's answer says a lot about what league tables miss. Dylan's ends up in a confession about marking writing without actually reading it. Honest, a bit echoey, and back in business. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show! 🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org 💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s

214. "Low-level" Disruption, Emails Out Of Hours & Has AI Gone Too Far In Education?

🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app One day into the new year, and a listener is already drained. Not the big stuff. The whispering, the fiddling, the constant "low level" disruption that never quite stops. She doesn't want to moan all year, but it's looking that way. Hayden has a story about the one thing a leader said to him that made stop-start teaching feel like the right call, and both lads are clear that "low level" is the wrong name for it. Before that, some news. Dylan and Hayden are moving into an office, which is not the same as buying a flat together, whatever Instagram decided. They talk candidly about a year of working from home, cabin fever, and why no combination of teaching, business and podcast has ever felt perfect. Also this week: a Jen Foster post on what to ask instead of "how was your summer?", and why the "just get over it" crowd wind Dylan up. A holiday poll (six weeks, or four plus two-week breaks all year?). And Dylan's worry that AI lesson generators are pushing "save time" ahead of "good lesson", with Hayden pushing back. Plus the eternal question: is there anything wrong with sending emails at 8pm? Honest, funny, and a proper first-week-back listen. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show! 🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org 💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s

213. The Ultimate Back To School Guide! Your Questions Answered

🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app An ECT one week in, a class sat well below the expected level, and a head already spinning with schemes, planning and new information. What do you actually say to them? Season 5 opens with a full back to school Q&A. Hayden defends the horseshoe seating plan, and Dylan has to break it to him that what he ran for years was, in fact, a staple. From there it turns properly useful: mixed attainment seating, whether pairing your high attainers with your low attainers every single day is really helping either of them, and the moment a child offered to hand out the support sheets and reeled off exactly the right six names. Then the ideal INSET day, which mostly means giving staff the time and putting the sugar paper away. When normal lessons should resume. Icebreakers and register games that genuinely work. And a new senior leader asking how to deliver the SIP in September without flattening everyone, which leads to a change policy most schools should probably steal. Honest, funny, and timed for the walk in on Tuesday morning. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show! 🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org 💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s

212. Crazy Health & Safety, Assessing Better & Dress Codes! [Listener Q&A]

🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app Five weeks of rehearsals. Year Six production. Opening night a few hours away. And then the head teacher decides the children cannot stand on the benches, for health and safety reasons. The same benches the school uses for bench ball. Before that, a cracking question from a newly qualified teacher whose university swapped the 5,000 word essay for a shorter portfolio and a recorded presentation. Could schools do something similar? Dylan and Hayden get into timed reading comprehension, why pace is weighted so heavily, and the trap of fixing assessment for one group by quietly breaking it for another. There is also a listener asking whether they would have a Reform politician on the show. That one turns into an honest conversation about platforming, accountability and where the line actually sits. Honest, funny, and a gentle way back in before September. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show! 🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org 💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s

211. Will Burnham's Education Plans Work? [Listener Q+A]

🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app A Year 1 teacher has been told her school is bringing in continuous provision from September, and she is quietly worried her class will not be where they should be by July. Dylan and Hayden take that worry seriously, because badly implemented provision is a real risk. Then they ask the harder question. Where does "where they should be" actually come from, and who decided it? That spirals into knives and forks, shoelaces and shared responsibility, and where the line sits between what a school should help with and what it genuinely cannot take on. Hayden also gets asked when Halloween is. It goes about as well as you would expect, and there is now a poll. Elsewhere, honest assembly tips including the one thing their old head did every single day without fail, and a straight answer on why Wednesday episodes disappeared. Then the big one. Andy Burnham's new technical routes for Year 10, and why both hosts want it to work but are braced for schools to game it. Honest, funny, and a proper end of summer listen. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show! 🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org 💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s

210. Summer Catch-Up: Padel, Smashed Controllers & A New Office?

Hayden turns up in a Nike sweatband, insists it is not cosplay, and claims his paddle sponsorship money is not far off Tiger Woods territory. It goes downhill from there. Dylan sets a test to work out exactly which decade Hayden's sports knowledge stopped in, then gives listeners a guided tour of the podcast room, recently tidied in the loosest possible sense of the word. Five things you can see, including a box from a school Dylan left roughly eight years ago. There is also a confession involving a games controller, a pair of scissors and a level of competitiveness that arguably should have flagged on a DBS check. Then it turns properly honest. A year on from leaving the classroom, the lads are weighing up renting an office space, with a baby six weeks away and a decision needed that day. They are genuinely split, and they want your take. Daft, honest, and a proper break from the to do list. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show! 🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org 💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s

209. Is School Leadership & Having A Young Family Compatible?

Dylan spent half a wedding being blamed for something he definitely did not do, and there were witnesses. It is a strong opening to a Q&A that gets serious surprisingly fast. A listener kicks things off by challenging Hayden to trigger Dylan in the shortest possible time. The broken oven, the door handle, the garden. Only one line actually lands. Then the big one. Is school leadership genuinely incompatible with having young children? Dylan makes the case that the job was built around a household model that stopped existing sixty years ago, and explains why that shows up in exactly who ends up applying for leadership roles. An English lead asks whether English is a bigger subject to lead than maths, and whether the TLR should say so. Lucy wants to know if her PPA actually hits ten per cent, and the maths is worth doing on your own timetable. Harrison asks about Forest School, which turns into something much bigger about school refusers and what school is even for. And James, newly qualified with eleven years of teaching behind him, keeps being told his experience abroad does not count. Honest, funny, and a bit spikier than your average mailbag. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show! 🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app 🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org 💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s

208. Everything You Need to Know About Lucy Powell: The Fresh Start We Need?

🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app Bridget Phillipson is out, Lucy Powell is in, and most teachers could not pick her out of a lineup. So this is the crash course. Moss Side, state educated all the way, a year reading chemistry at Oxford before she walked away from it, a family full of teachers, and her own children at the primary she went to herself. Then the harder question. Does "her mum was a headteacher" actually count as experience in education? Dylan is not having it. And should working in a school be a flat prerequisite for the job? Hayden lands somewhere the internet will hate, and Dylan surprises himself by agreeing with him. Her record is plain to see. Anti academisation, primary SPaG tests called ridiculous, league tables and Progress 8 taken apart. Dylan makes a prediction about how much of that survives contact with the Treasury. Sceptical, hopeful, and worth a listen before you make your mind up about her. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show! 🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org 💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s

207. Year 6 Productions, PPA From Home & Enrichment On A Budget

🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app Seven sessions. That is how much rehearsal time one Year 6 team was given for their end of year production, after leadership insisted English and maths carried on every single day. Hayden, who has run more than a few of these, has a fairly clear view on where that ends up. That question from Izzy opens the episode and it goes well beyond jazz hands. What actually happens to the curriculum in production season, what the other seventy odd children are doing while the leads rehearse, and the uncomfortable truth about the one person quietly working every evening to make the whole thing exist. Dylan and Hayden talk about what schools could reasonably offer that person in return. Then it is school trips and enrichment, where Dylan gets properly wound up about the maths behind the latest pay award and what the people asking for more enrichment are actually funding. There is also a question about what you cared about as an NQT and have since let go, PPA from home and why it should always be a choice, and the summer holiday debate that returns every July like clockwork. Honest, funny, and exactly the episode for anyone limping over the finish line. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show! 🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org 💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s

206. Why We NEED To Start Respecting Teachers' Personal Time (Listener Q+A)

🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app A second year teacher writes in wanting to know when everything you have to do in a day finally becomes manageable. Dylan opens with some news she probably did not want to hear, and then turns it into something genuinely useful about the difference between getting faster at your job and quietly deciding what is no longer worth doing at all. That leads into what Dylan would actually bring in if he were a head teacher, including a one in one out rule on workload and a school with no written marking policy whatsoever. Hayden puts the head teacher's real fear straight back to him. If nothing is written in the books, how do you know any of it is happening? Then the big one, and the one Dylan gets most fired up about. Is it fair that ECTs get paid thousands less for a job that looks almost identical? Dylan thinks the entire pay scale is built on the wrong idea, and he has a full replacement in mind. Plus Tom asks which school rule would cause complete societal collapse if applied to adults, and the pair finish with an honest, surprisingly nuanced conversation about private schools, class sizes and privilege. Honest, funny, and a bit spikier than usual once money comes up. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show! 🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org 💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s

205. Why You Can't Let Teaching Take Over Your Life (Emotional!)

🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app Under what circumstances would you actually raise your voice at a class? Dylan reckons he can count his genuine, lost-it shouts on one hand, and the single time he did it properly, defending a child who was being bullied, still sits with him years later. He and Hayden pull apart the difference between shouting and simply being heard, why going quieter can land harder, and the old staffroom wisdom to reserve the shout. From there it's a full mailbag. A Year 5 teacher heading up to Year 6 wants honest talk on transition, and the lads don't quite agree on when taking your class up is a gift and when it really isn't. A trainee asks how schools can make every adult feel like a learner, ECT and veteran alike. Then a question about education after a change at the top sends Dylan off on the politics of vibes. And the one that gets him. A soon-to-be dad and middle leader asks how to balance school with fatherhood. Dylan does not make it through dry. Honest, funny, and with a proper lump in the throat by the end. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show! 🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org 💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s

204. Tricky Classes, Unpaid Work & Anonymous Surveys (That Aren't Actually Anonymous!)

You've just been handed your new class, and the previous teacher's parting words are that they were the most difficult group they've taught in eleven years. Helpful heads up, or a curse you carry all summer? Dylan and Hayden open with the tricky class handover, why every class somehow becomes the trickiest one ever, and whether tricky classes even exist or it's all down to the school. Then it gets spicier. A listener is made joint subject lead with no TLR, no extra time and no choice, and Dylan has strong feelings about doing free leadership work, including what he would actually say to the head. After that, a teacher reckons some colleagues just don't want to work, which sparks a proper chat about change fatigue and what negativity really means. There are anonymous surveys that are anything but anonymous, and an Ofsted question about who speaks up when it counts and who stays quiet. Honest, funny, and a bit fired up by the end. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show! 🔢 Try our completely free maths worksheet generator now! tools.mathszoo.app 💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s

203. Is Using AI Tutors In Schools A Good Idea? (Listener Q&A)

🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app The government have announced plans for all children on free school meals to be given access to an AI tutor, which begs the question, are we already on the way to humans being replaced by robots? "Am I cut out for this?" Ellie's message is the one that might hit hardest. She moved from TA into a Year 6 class as a trainee, was promised regular meetings and observations that never materialised, has had praise maybe twice all year, and is now quietly wondering whether she's just not built for teaching. Dylan and Hayden have a lot to say about whose fault that actually is. It's a mailbag full of early career pressure this week. One ECT is staring down phonics screening with an 86% pass rate hanging over them, daily interventions and constant mock screenings. Another has been asked to go for Year Group Leader in only their third year, before they've even changed year groups. Is that a vote of confidence or a red flag? And after the setting episode, a Year 1 ECT writes in stretched paper-thin: split-teaching three ways, rushing inputs into a 45 minute slot, and the one TA in the key stage forever getting pulled for cover. Honest, a little raw, and a real look at what we're asking new teachers to carry. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show! 🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org 💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s

202. Is Teaching Becoming An Impossible Job? (Listener Q&A)

Use our FREE worksheet arithmetic generator here: tools.mathszoo.app Twenty-five years in KS2, and Kathy says teaching now feels like a battle. Her message kicks off this listener mailbag: a rise in SEND needs, behaviour, apathy and shaky basics since COVID, and a class where the majority aren't equipped for year group expectations. She's gone more child-led to meet them where they are, but that collides with what the curriculum demands. So she asks the big one. Do the people making the decisions actually understand life at the coalface, and who are they even listening to? Dylan and Hayden don't dodge it. Then Phil asks the fun one. Now they've bagged the Education Secretary, who's the dream guest next? The wishlist gets gloriously chaotic. Luke wonders whether centrally planned schemes of work quietly deskill new teachers who never learn to build a lesson from scratch. And Tom brings the staffroom chaos: kebabs, which infant year they'd brave, and the eternal question of class assemblies. Honest, funny, and a properly good airing of the stuff teachers actually worry about. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show!🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s

201. Frustrated Teachers, Dodging Questions & Important Topics: Reacting To Our Chat With The Education Secretary

So you sit a sitting Education Secretary down, ask the questions teachers actually want answered, follow up when the first answer wobbles, and then the verdict comes back from you, the listeners. This week Dylan and Hayden go through the feedback from the Bridget Phillipson episode, and it was overwhelmingly kind. Listeners said the questions were clear and fair, that the follow ups kept coming, and that the show genuinely tried to hold her to account rather than rolling out the red carpet. But there's a but. A lot of you felt she dodged. The questions were sharp, the answers were not, and plenty of listeners came away feeling the big ones never really got answered. Dylan and Hayden sit with that uncomfortable truth and ask whether that's on them, on her, or just the nature of getting a politician in the room. Honest, a little cheeky, and a proper postmortem of one of our biggest episodes yet. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show!🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s

200. A Chat With Bridget Phillipson: The SEND White Paper, Maternity Pay & School Budgets

Two hundred episodes in, and somehow we ended up across the table from the person who runs the whole system. For the TSR 200th, Dylan and Hayden sit down with Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, and waste none of it on small talk. First, the SEND white paper. The move from EHCPs to the new Individual Support Plans sounds tidy, but it could leave families without the right to appeal at a tribunal. What happens to children with complex needs when the funding does not follow? Then the part that stings any new parent on staff. Civil servants get 26 weeks on full pay, teachers get eight. That opens up parental pay, a dropping birth rate, the quiet saving fewer pupils hand the Treasury, and whether the real answer is cutting class sizes rather than closing schools and cutting jobs. And the big one. A projected 6.5% pay rise over three years that is not fully funded. We asked the Education Secretary directly where that money comes from, and who loses their job to pay for it. Honest, occasionally tense, and exactly the conversation we wanted for episode 200. Oh, and yes, we did ask her about Gemma Collins turning up at the DfE. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show! 🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org 💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s

199. Unpopular Opinions, Draconian Policies, and a SATs Week Rant

"What's the biggest thing you two actually disagree on?" One listener has clocked the I agree, I agree tic and wants a proper scrap, so Dylan and Hayden dig into the teaching vs non-teaching divide and find it's spikier than either expected. Then a brave question lands. Should politics be explicitly taught in KS2? The boys weigh up whether ten year olds can handle it, who gets to decide what counts as balanced, and what happens when a kid asks the question you really didn't want them to ask. Next, draconian behaviour policies. Listeners have sent in the ones that humiliated children or just made no sense, and some of these are hard to hear without wincing. A one form entry teacher wants to know how on earth setting could work in her school, and the lads have a proper crack at it rather than dodging. Plus the SATs week ask that will make every Year 6 teacher's eye twitch. Revising all afternoon for the next day's test, every day. Reasonable prep or completely ridiculous? And to finish, the question with teeth. What's your real, unpopular education opinion. The one that might genuinely cost you a listener. Honest, funny, and not in the mood to play nice today. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show!🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s

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198. Should Teachers Model Healthy Eating? Plus Quickest ECT Quits, Ethical Issues & Zombie Outbreaks

🔢 Sign up for a free Maths Zoo demo right now and get your school using it before the end of term. Boost maths fluency and arithmetic across every year group, completely free trial, no strings. Book it at www.mathszoo.org A teacher writes in asking if it is genuinely acceptable to eat biscuits and drink sugary drinks in front of children. Are teachers supposed to be role models when it comes to lunch, or can you have whatever you want in your packed lunch and not feel bad about it? Dylan and Hayden have thoughts. Then a listener has been trying to get Dylan and Hayden to answer this for ages. Is teaching the most ethically dubious job in the world? Photocopying copyright violations, Disney Plus being streamed in classrooms when the licence says not for public use, the list goes on. Are teachers all walking around breaking rules constantly without realising? What is the quickest you have seen someone start teaching and then quit? A listener once knew an ECT who left by the second week of term. Dylan and Hayden swap stories. There is also a properly nerdy question about teaching publications. Does anyone still read the TES? Are the union magazines just bin material? Recommendations for the actual good podcasts, websites and reading for teachers who want to stay informed. Plus the SEND support staff question. What is the value of lived experience versus a formal qualification? And the most important question of all. What classroom item is the first you grab in a zombie outbreak? 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show! 💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s

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197. Is Setting In Maths Actually A Good Thing?

For about twenty-five years, the dominant message in teacher training has been clear. The research says mixed attainment is better. Setting damages confidence, harms low attainers, and widens the gap. Then in April 2026, the EEF published a study that complicates all of that. Nine thousand pupils, 97 schools, two years of data. The finding: pupils in mixed attainment classes made roughly one month less progress in maths than pupils in sets. High prior attainers made two months less progress. And the team that produced this result is the same team that gave us most of the evidence against setting in the first place. Dylan and Hayden get into what the study actually found and what it did not find, what they were both taught during training and whether they still believe it, and the honest classroom experience that the academic literature tends not to capture. They also make the strongest possible case for both sides before landing somewhere honest. The mixed attainment argument does not collapse because of one study. The setting argument is not vindicated either. But the conversation has shifted and anyone working in secondary maths right now deserves to know how and why. Sharp, properly researched, and the kind of debate that should be happening in every staffroom in the country. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show! 🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org 💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s

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196. Q&A: Unannounced Learning Stalks, Parent Emails & Are SATs Pointless?

A teacher is getting emails from a parent at 10pm most nights with an expectation of a reply before school the next morning. Their SLT's advice? Just manage the relationship. Dylan and Hayden have slightly stronger thoughts on that. Then unannounced learning walks, two-line feedback emails with no right of reply, and the working wall that was too busy one week and lacking evidence of learning the next. How is anyone supposed to win? Dylan and Hayden get into why this kind of observation culture does more damage to staff than it does good for children. A listener writes in to defend SATs, and wants to know if they are in the minority. Every other year group does end of year tests. It narrows focus. It prepares children for formal assessment later in life. It can be done badly but that does not mean scrapping it entirely is the answer. Dylan and Hayden take this one seriously rather than just nodding along. And following on from a recent video arguing that memorising specific facts is pointless, a listener pushes back properly. Is there still a case for children holding knowledge in their heads? Where is the line between rote learning that builds genuine understanding and rote learning that is just performance? Dylan and Hayden try to draw it. Four great questions, four proper answers. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show! 🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org 💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s

• Transcript