Why teacher development sits at the heart of Highfield 

Think back to a teacher who changed something for you. Most of us can name one straight away. For me, my main memory was a lovely Year 2 teacher who somehow made daily rote learning of times tables and mental arithmetic enjoyable! That’s the difference a great teacher makes, and it’s why, as a family-owned, independent school where everything starts with our children, investing in the people who teach them is one of the most powerful things we can do.

So, as schools around the world mark World Teachers’ Day on 5 October, it feels like the right moment to share why the professional growth of our teachers is one of the core drivers of everything we do at Highfield School

Why the teacher matters most 

There’s a line from Professor John Hattie that has stuck with me: know your impact. His research, drawing on thousands of studies, shows that of everything a school can control, the quality of the teacher makes the biggest difference to how well children learn. That’s a big responsibility, but it’s also hugely motivating. It means the small decisions each of us makes in our classrooms every day really matter. For example, when we refurbished our Year 4 classrooms, we chose calm, neutral wall colours to help children focus.

That belief shapes how we invest our time. Over the past two years, every strand of our professional development has focused on one thing: helping our teachers become even better at their craft. This has included training with Amjad Ali on adaptive teaching, exploring practical ways to respond to pupils’ individual needs, as well as our staff undertaking Connections in Mind’s Level 1 accreditation in Neuroinclusive Classroom Practice. Additionally, around 75% of our staff are trained Youth Mental Health First Aiders, because understanding how a child is feeling is an essential part of helping them learn.

Perfecting the craft, one step at a time 

Great teaching is not a mystery, and it is not simply a gift some people are born with. Writers such as Doug Lemov (Teach Like a Champion) and Tom Sherrington (Rosenshine’s Principles and WalkThrus) have shown that it can be broken down into clear, practical techniques that every teacher can learn, practise and refine, and that small, precise changes in practice add up to big gains for children.

This is the approach we have taken with Quality First Teaching. Rather than trying to cover everything at once, we break it into its component parts. In practice, that looks like:

• Bite-sized sessions in staff meetings and on INSET days, each focused on  practical techniques
• The latest research from cognitive science, including how memory works, why retrieval practice strengthens learning and how to manage the load on a child’s working memory
• Ideas taken straight back into the classroom, often tried with pupils the very next day
• Professional review goals rooted in classroom practice, so every teacher is working on what will make the biggest difference to their own pupils
• A central place in our School Improvement Plan, so the whole school is pulling in the same direction

Teaching children from Nursery to Year 8 gives us something special: we can see the whole journey. In our staff meetings and INSET days, colleagues from every stage of the school, including our specialists in Music, Spanish, Swimming and Forest School, come together to consider how each technique grows with our children. When a Year 6 teacher understands exactly how a skill was first taught in Reception, they can build on it with confidence rather than starting again. When an Early Years teacher knows what our oldest pupils will need, they can lay the right foundations from the very beginning. For our children, it means their learning feels joined up, with each year building naturally on the last. We refine our craft not in isolation, but as one team with every child’s journey in mind.

Every child, every lesson 

Our ambition is that every child achieves in every lesson, whatever their starting point. That is a high bar, and it means knowing our pupils extremely well. Our most recent training as a staff, Learning Beyond the Label, has changed how many of us think about the children in front of us. The key idea is simple: start with the barrier, not the label. A diagnosis can tell us something useful, but it rarely tells us what’s actually getting in the way for a particular child in a particular lesson. That barrier might be:

• language
• working memory
• attention
• processing speed

So now, when a child is struggling, the first question we ask is “what’s the barrier here?” and then “what can I change?”

Because of this training and investment in our staff, our teachers are becoming increasingly skilled at spotting what might be standing between a child and their access to learning, their participation, or their progress. What we have found is that many of the most effective inclusive strategies are also the simplest: breaking instructions into steps, reducing unnecessary information on the page, giving thinking time, using visual prompts, checking understanding before moving on. These strategies benefit every pupil in the room including those who need them the most

Crucially, adapting our teaching never means lowering the ceiling. We keep the same ambitious learning objective for everyone and adapt the route, so that all children can reach it, just in different ways. The habits our teachers are building now, such as strong recall, clear thinking and the confidence to have a go, are exactly what our children will carry with them to their senior schools and beyond.

Experts in the classroom and beyond

One of the things that makes Highfield special is the remarkable range of experience our teachers bring with them. Many have developed their craft not only in the classroom, but through careers and passions far beyond it.

For example, our Head of Drama, Sarah Baird, has appeared in adverts and done voiceover work, while our Head of Art, Olga Houghton, brings her experience as a working artist. Our Head of Girls’ Games and PE, Ashleigh Gloster, has played lacrosse for England, while Kelly Reed, our Head of Middle Prep, has represented England in badminton.

This matters for our children. When a child learns from someone who has performed professionally, competed at the highest level or turned an idea into a finished design, they see what real expertise looks like. They learn that skills are built through practice, persistence and a willingness to keep improving, which is exactly the message at the heart of how we develop our teaching. Our specialists bring the same curiosity and high standards to their teaching that they brought to their other lives, and it is our children who benefit.

Celebrating our teachers 

World Teachers’ Day is a chance to celebrate the people who make our school what it is. I feel incredibly lucky to work alongside a team who are curious and committed to getting better every day, not because anyone asks them to, but because they know what it means for the children in front of them.

To every member of our teaching team: thank you. Your dedication to your craft makes all the difference to our children.

“Teachers always make an effort to discuss the children and support them in every aspect.”
– Parent