Congratulations to our friends at Hyndland Secondary School in Glasgow, which has become the first secondary in Scotland in almost a decade to be rated “excellent” for learning, teaching and assessment.
A recent inspection report by Education Scotland praised Hyndland for its “sector-leading learning environment”, and said the overall quality of teaching across the school was of “a very high standard”.
This is a remarkable achievement for the school, and the culmination of years of hard work from all the staff.
We’re proud to have worked closely with staff at Hyndland over the course of several years on a project to help them improve the quality of teaching and learning at the school.
During the Covid lockdowns we delivered a series of remote sessions via video conferencing, working with staff on the science of learning and curriculum design.
Some of the educational research topics we covered included cognitive load, retrieval practice, multiple choice questions, desirable difficulties and teaching for transfer, and we looked at the work of researchers including Rosenshine and Dunlosky.
We spoke to Headteacher Louise Edgerton and Deputy Head Jodie Stewart on the Impact Podcast about the work we did together.
On the podcast, Mrs Stewart told us that staff had given feedback that the work they had done with Impact Wales had “given them a chance to truly reflect on their practice and improve”.
Mrs Edgerton said: “I think staff are inspired almost in a sense to seek out that knowledge and how they connect their ideas of what they’ve learned from Impact Wales, from the programmes, their own research and to their own subject context. What they have said about feedback from yourselves is that it is integral, it’s really reliable, what they’ve done. They’re ready, they’ve got the ingredients to go on to work in those trios [of teachers] with those principles and fundamentals.”
We are especially pleased that this aspect of our work was later singled out for praise by inspectors. Hyndland’s inspection report says: “Teachers work very well together and seek to improve their practice through high quality professional learning founded in educational research. Sharing strong practice is an ongoing feature of departmental and whole-school collaborative time…Trios of teachers have been working with young people and parents, to explore, share and embed high quality approaches to teaching and learning.”
So congratulations – llongyfarchaidau – to all at Hyndland from us at Impact Wales – we look forward to working with you again in future!
At Impact Wales, we deliver bespoke, research-informed professional learning that is designed to make an impact in the classroom. To learn more about how we can become your partners in professional learning, get in touch.