The ERRR podcast can also be listened to on Spotify, apple podcasts, and all other podcasting apps. 

Today we’re speaking with Tom Sherrington. Having trained as a physics teacher, Tom  has over 30 years of school leader experience, working in a wide variety of school contexts including several schools in the UK and also in Jakarta, Indonesia. After 11 years as a headteacher, Tom is now an educational consultant supporting schools with teacher development, school improvement, assessment, curriculum design, and much more, as I’m sure you’ll gather from this episode! I came across Tom’s work via his incredible blog, teacherhead.com several years ago, and I can’t emphasise just how excellent Tom’s blog is. I’m not sure how many posts there are on there, probably several thousand, but I’ve found that if I go on to teacherhead.com and search any keyword to do with school leadership, or teaching and learning, I’ll always find a post with down to earth and helpful guidance.

More recently, Tom has had immense success with two books, Rosenshine’s principles in action, and Teaching Walkthrus

If you appreciate the ERRR podcast and you'd like to support its continuing production, please sign on as a patron at www.patreon.com/errr and support the show for as little as $1 per month, or the average donation of $5 per month. 

Now, this is a bit of a unique one. Usually we focus on one particular book, idea, or article from our guest. I thought about doing this for Tom, but I felt that, given Tom’s breadth and expertise, there was a bigger opportunity for this podcast. Instead, in this episode we draw on Tom’s multi-decade experience to discuss ‘The Most Important Thing’ in relation to a wide range of topics in education. 

At the school leadership level, here are some of the questions that I ask Tom in this episode:

  • What’s the most important thing for a school beginning a school-improvement project?
  • What’s the most important thing when it comes to curriculum?
  • What’s the most important thing about assessment?, and 
  • What’s the most important thing when designing professional development?

We then zoom in and look at advice for people at different stages of their career, and Tom answers

  • What’s the most important thing for newly qualified teachers?
  • What’s the most important thing for Heads of Department?
  • What’s the most important thing for Headteachers and Principals to do?, and
  • What’s the most important thing to keep in mind when taking on a new role in a school? 

I was constantly impressed by the clarity of Tom’s responses. He seems to have this impressive ability to immediately get to the heart of what matters most in teaching and learning, and he does so using clear, precise, and understandable language. For this reason, I have a feeling that this is going to be one of the most popular episodes yet!

Links/resources mentioned in the show

This episode of the ERRR Podcast is brought to you by John Catt Educational. Use this link along with the code provided within the podcast to get 30% off all books from John Catt Educational! https://www.johncattbookshop.com/books/errr

Listen to all past episodes of the ERRR podcast here.

Related