Spherical Children in a Vacuum.

 I do like the adage that, "There's nothing so practical as a good theory." In CPD, an insightful understanding that equips you to plan and understand what is going on, is much better than a bunch of lesson activities to try. And we don't learn items of knowledge in isolation. We learn by attaching new knowledge to concepts we already have. If that sounds simplistic, don't worry; it's meant to.

We have lived through a decade where a theory of learning and knowledge has been in vogue. And if you were to come up with a theory of how to teach spherical pupils in a vacuum, then it's a great theory. You break down the knowledge into carefully chosen chunks. You make sure that each chunk is carefully defined. You use regular low stakes recall to make sure that memorisation is happening over time. You make sure explanations take account of all possible misconceptions, with words and images carefully chosen to be clear rather than decorative or distracting. You deliberately contrast and discriminate between important concepts so they are not confused. You meticulously order the content of the curriculum so nothing is extraneous or redundant, and everything is consolidated and built upon. You make sure pupils can recite the best definition of a concept and can quote verbatim the best evidence.

Absolutely fantastic as a theory.

Where it falls down is the amount of effort it requires to make our pupils conform to being spherical and in a vacuum. Some of the measures are more reasonable than others. Spherical pupils have regulation haircuts, carry their bag in the correct hand, follow the text with a ruler, answer the teacher in well projected full sentences in standard English, keep eye contact with the teacher at all times, smile and say good morning when bidden, copy knowledge organisers respecting the exact format. Pupils in a vacuum walk along a painted line in silence between lessons, have their phones locked away or preferably do not have phones at all, cannot visit the shops on their way home, resist the "degenerate" culture of their milieu, are marked for their conversation on set topics at the table, are exposed only to the authorative voices of the "best". And are considered "novices" not yet capable of creativity, expression or original thought.

The sheer amount of effort put in to making pupils conform to being spherical and in a vacuum ought to tell us that the theory is great... as a theory.

In fact, on contact with real pupils, it turns out it may be a terrible theory. We know that the pupils who learn best are the pupils who think about what they are learning. The pupils who question what they are being told. The pupils who think of links, implications, associations, imaginative tangents. Pupils who know they have the agency to examine new knowledge in the light of what they already know. Pupils who reconsider their existing ideas in the light of new knowledge. Pupils who take risks and learn from their mistakes. Learning is an on-going process that they are in charge of. We know this is what our best learners do.

When I sit in a CPD session taking notes on what the important man is saying, I am not writing down what he says! I am writing down what the things he says make me think. Or what I think about the things he says. If he's lucky. I may be planning my lessons for tomorrow and trying to block out his predictable nonsense. And I am an excellent learner.

And we know that the pupils who struggle with learning are the ones who have been made to feel that they don't have that agency. Their thoughts were wrong. Their ideas were unwanted. Their associations and conceptualisations were invalid. Learning now consists of having to ingest more stuff and be tested on it. Real learning, in the areas where they have been made to feel like this, has almost stopped. The emotional link between getting a question right/wrong and being morally right/wrong is painful. They have been labelled as bad and their agency has been taken away.

Yes. All this is another theory or model. But it's also observed in the reality in the classroom. Which the knowledge theory tacitly acknowledges by its insistence on making all pupils spherical rather than individuals.

Having a theory that works fine for pupils who conform to how they "should" be rather than how they are, is harmful. It's the thoughts of "should, should, should" that have to be teased out and confronted once pupils' mental health starts to suffer.

Let's see if we can start to get to somewhere more positive and see how we can successfully bring the knowledge theory into contact with reality.

Writer and CPD expert Sue Cowley alerted me on bluesky to this example where Ofsted start from what they think is a logical chunking of the knowledge, rather than from an expert understanding of children and learning:

It reminded me of this Ofsted video:

The image illustrates their idea that knowledge preceeds skills. I can't think of a worse example. It immediately debunks their whole idea. Finding out what shapes fit where is a perfect example of where learning can happen through play... even maybe by... discovery. A child who arrives in a school setting without any knowledge of shapes, may lack the cultural capital of having played with a shape sorter. Not the cultural capital of having had direct instruction of what shape goes where.

In language learning, we have Scott Thornbury's idea of the omelette. (Make your own link to spherical chickens.) You do not teach someone how to make an omelette by chopping up a cold dead omelette and asking them to reassemble it. You make an omelette from raw ingredients. Stirring, adjusting the heat, paying close attention to what is happening in the pan.

It's the same for language-learning. To change metaphors again, we are helping pupils acquire their own snowball of French. With slow accretion, where more French sticks to what they already have, rolling from one topic to another getting bigger and bigger. We are not aiming for an even coverage, with everything planned out and programmed. A snowball will outlast the even coverage once the snow has all melted away.

The problem with the knowledge theory was the very first line in the description near the start of this post. Now you know why I put it in bold type. The very first step is a mistake: You break down the knowledge into carefully chosen chunks.

Chopping up the knowledge into logical chunks, is not the same as building up knowledge, concepts, skills. The process of building up the pupil's accretion of knowledge and skills is different to chopping up the knowledge.

A starfish when it regenerates does not necessarily regrow an arm. It could be that the arm regrows the starfish. When learners have a chunk of knowledge, but don't yet have the whole starfish, their brains still see how it can grow, what shapes it can take, what it can graft onto, how it can feed, move, reproduce. It's no good getting cross because they were meant to wait for when you thought they were ready for the next chunk to be attached to the first. If they did that, the first bit of starfish would be as dead as a cold omelette before they get your next bit.

Stop pulling apart dead starfish and posting them into children's brains like shape sorters. Start looking at what's growing. [Regretting this metaphor.] Instead of starting from pulling apart the knowledge, we should be looking at how learning happens, how learning grows organically.

This is what the Frameworks of Objectives did if you used it intelligently rather than as a tickbox. This is what APP did if you were allowed to use it intelligently rather than just for assessment. This may even be what David Didau did in English language, with a focus on skills broken down and built up.

In languages, breaking down the grammar does not reflect how pupils learn. Firstly, beginners make strong links between the French they are learning and the real world. Links within the language come much later. So when we teach pets, I know that j'ai, je n'ai pas, un, une and the rules for plurals, the phonics in oiseau or poisson are all going to be much more important than chien or chat. But the learners are focused on the meaning of the words. They will remember chien even though we never use it. But they will mix up je/j'ai lesson after lesson. We're not teaching from how the content "should" be broken down. We're working with what the pupils are learning.

I have fantastic ways of introducing the perfect tense in French. I can explain it formally, I can introduce it through cheats like j'ai décidé de, I can talk about fiancé meaning engaged, I can contrast mange/manger/mangé, I can physically get pupils to change the form... But as soon as pupils are let loose on their own writing, they are not thinking in the same way as someone who has a complete coherent picture of the grammar and wants to show it. They are concentrating on saying things they want to say. Not on the forms of the endings. As human beings, they are approaching language from a different angle. Their partial interlanguage is forming from raw ingredients, not from chopped up things I gave them. 

Please do click on some of the links to see practical examples of me engaging with this in the classroom. It will probably make more sense than spherical chickens and snowballs and eggs.

Talking to pupils about their accretion of learning: https://whoteacheslanguages.blogspot.com/2026/02/reflecting-with-pupils-on-beliefs-about.html

Why meaning matters even in terms of "change in long term memory": https://whoteacheslanguages.blogspot.com/2025/12/what-do-we-mean-by-meaning-and-does-it.html

Here's a final positive message about how cognitive science does make total sense in the classroom:

If you are a teacher who wonders about the fact you seem to be trying things out, watching what happens, trying again... and you wonder if there's a theory that tells you what you SHOULD be doing. Well there is. It's called cognitive science or cognitive load theory. It tells you that pupils learn by thinking about what they are learning. It tells you that pupils learn by making links and networks of knowledge. It tells you that there's a sweetspot between making things engaging and making things distracting. There's a sweetspot between being challenging and being overwhelming. It doesn't tell you where that sweetspot is. It just tells you it's important. So what all of this is telling you is that you were doing the right thing all along. Teaching happens in the classroom with real children and a teacher who constantly monitors, adjusts and reflects.

Oracy - Pupil Voice KS3 French

 French is a lesson where taking part and speaking is going to be important. We have done a "pupil voice" survey of Key Stage 3 pupils. This is ostensibly to see what they think of how their lessons are going and how they feel about taking part. But there is a further goal of seeing how well they understand and buy into what teachers are trying to do in ensuring all learners are involved in the lesson. And a further further goal of developing our pupils' propensity to think articulately about their language learning. So I would be lying if I didn't say straight away that while we want to listen to what pupils have to say, we are also trying to shape their understanding and appreciation of what their teachers are doing and why they are doing it.

I am going to concentrate on writing up the Year 7 results. For several reasons. Partly because the Year 8 surveys were fragmented so teachers have individual information and evidence they can use for their own professional development research questions. And because it feels as if Year 7 are new to this and we have the biggest job with them to set up the classroom parameters for language learning.

Here goes:

Year 7 pupils - Confidence in Taking Part

Year 7 Pupils - Getting Answers Wrong

Year 7 - How do Teachers Ask Questions?

I have to say I am very happy with these results and the graphs largely speak for themselves. The big red sector (42%) are pupils who say that they understand the importance of taking part because it's how you learn. They can take part confidently because the teacher has set up the expectations that they want to hear all pupils having a go; not to test them, but because that's how learning happens. The second biggest sector is the yellow (30%) who aren't always confident taking part, but understand that their teacher is deliberately making sure they have the opportunity. The blue sector (18%) are the ones that presumably we would hear from if we only asked the most confident to take part. And we have about 2 pupils per class who are not confident and who are not taking part. I am pleased it's such a small number. And I hope that these are individual cases where the teacher is carefully managing interaction and confidence sensitively. There may be an element of pupils giving the answer they think we want to hear. But even if this is so, this means that their understanding of what we want to achieve in the classroom interactions does coincide with ours.

This confidence in "having a go" is reflected in the second graph, on what happens when you get an answer wrong. We do have a couple of pupils per class who think the teacher will be cross. The majority say that the teacher is helpful. With over 50% of pupils saying that the teacher will be interested in their answer and why they said it, whether it be right or wrong. This would seem to be a hugely impressive verdict on our teaching, if pupils have picked up on this as important to the way we interact and the purpose behind our questioning. It shows that we are using questioning as a way to tease out what pupils think and can do, in order to engage with their thinking and develop their skills. There is also strong awareness of strategies like coming back to a pupil later to give them a chance to show their progress. Again, pupils were choosing from a list of options, so I was shaping their possible responses, but the pattern of their answers shows good awareness of how we want our classrooms to work, in quite sophisticated ways. This goes way beyond thinking of participation as being put on the spot to see if you know the expected answer.

In terms of the mechanics of asking questions, the majority (68%) of pupils understand that the teacher is trying to get everyone involved. And 58% have spotted that teachers ask a question, give pupils time to think, and then decide who to ask. I know that we work this way. The interesting thing is whether pupils understand this. I think we can do more to point this out to pupils. So that they know they are all expected to be thinking and have an answer ready. Even if it's a partial answer, a wrong answer, or even a question. It's clear from the survey answers that teachers are choosing pupils to check that they are paying attention, thinking, and have an answer ready. Interestingly the pupils are not aware of how carefully teachers decide who to pick. And then there's the idea that teachers pick at random which I think is largely because of using am stram gram, which pupils love! Hopefully this all contributes to a classroom where everyone is thinking and ready to take part. 

As well as these questions with options to pick, there was scope for pupils to type their own answers. This is important in developing their ability to think about their learning and articulate their thoughts. Their answers were strong on emotional response - a kind teacher, dislike of participating if their hand wasn't up, fun activities incentivising participation, who they work with, confidence in speaking in front of the class. There was perhaps surprisingly no mention of pronunciation confidence, which may be a sign of the work we have put in on phonics. But maybe we need to do further surveys on this. This is perhaps the most important thing to take from the whole survey. For all our intentions and expectations and techniques, managing pupil emotions is key to learning and confident participation.

Pupils' awareness of techniques the teacher is using was less well articulated. "They just ask the question and get someone to answer it" was a common response.

This shows the importance of this survey. I am not using it to find out what the teacher is doing in the classroom. I am doing it to see the impact of how it feels for the pupils, and how much pupils understand and are aware of how we want to set the classroom expectations for participation. And the survey is only a small part of constant daily communication, relationships and interaction between teachers and pupils around the teaching and learning environment.

Reflecting with Pupils on Beliefs about Language Learning. Is there a right answer?

 In a recent post, I shared some work my Year 9s wrote in their writing assessment after the first half term's work.

I enjoyed the confidence and individuality with which they expressed themselves in French, taking risks and saying things they wanted to say.

Then on the INSET day in January, we were lucky enough to have a day with David Didau, doing whole school training on teaching and learning. He gave a very strong message that we should not be allowing (let alone encouraging) pupils to create work that contained mistakes. If we did this, we were going too fast too soon. We should be spending our time at sentence level until pupils were perfect. If we allowed pupils to work beyond the level of carefully practised accuracy, we would be compounding error and poor performance. And he was talking about pupils writing in English, let alone in a new language!

This made me think of examples like this.

Was I right to encourage the pupil to be proud of what they could do with their French? You can see there are errors in spelling, gender, verb endings and vocabulary. Was my focus on creativity, coherence in developing ideas, and personal expression the wrong focus? Did the very demands of creativity and thinking up what to say distract pupils from the important task of forming accurate sentences? Did allowing pupils to express themselves inevitably invite them to try to say things that were bound to be wrong? What should I do?

I decided that our next unit (Jobs and Future Plans) did lend itself to less free-flowing imaginative writing, and could be an opportunity to accommodate more of a focus on accuracy. I made this an explicit discussion point with the class, so they could reflect on the balance of expression versus accuracy in their work.

After an initial piece of work in their booklets, I shared the work of four pupils on the board.

"Evelyn" had written something that was highly accurate, by concentrating on putting together a paragraph built out of the French she was learning. 

Not one word of it was true. It was simply an exercise (on this occasion) of using the language for the sake of practising the language she had learned. David Didau would have loved it. And it also fits with the fashionable idea of language learning as carefully constructed vocabulary and grammar exercises, where showing you know what something "means" is more important than having something meaningful to communicate. We appreciated Evelyn's accuracy and her approach to the work, making something tasty out of the ingredients she had.

Then we looked at a different approach.

"Henry" does not start with his ingredients and see what he can make out of them. Henry starts with things he wants to say. His personal dreams, his current obsessions, and things he thinks are important. He tries to say them using French he knows, but saying what he wants to say is more important to him than building perfect sentences.

Then we have "Dylan". Here is Dylan's previous piece of writing from the Going to the Beach unit.

And here is what he wrote about Jobs:

You can see his total disregard for caring about accuracy. His focus is entirely on saying things he wants to say for his own amusement. Usually about crabs.

Now Kirsty. Kirsty also sets out to write what she wants to say. She often goes beyond the French we have learned in this and in other topics. She often makes mistakes because she is pushing at the boundaries of her knowledge.

As a class we discussed these 4 examples (and others). We discussed it from the point of view of doing well in an exam. And from the point of view of being a language-learner. I think that at this point we arrived at some sort of consensus that the key was self-awareness and deliberate decisions around taking risk. Which is born out in some of the comments you can already see on the pupils' work.

We decided to tweak the parameters of the task. Each pupil would write a paragraph in test conditions, using only French they knew. It wouldn't be about them, personally. It would be about "Being a teacher" and it specified that they should use the opinions, reasons, conjunctions and future expressions we have been working on. And it should aim to be a "Perfect Paragraph."

Let's see what we got...

Here's Kirsty.

It's a more boring version of what she was trying to write. It still goes beyond what others in the class know and can do. And yes, it is more accurate than her work usually is.

Here's Ruby's Perfect Paragraph alongside her Going to the Beach paragraph so you can appreciate the difference.

And here's Dylan's Perfect Paragraph. Disciplined and sticking strictly to showing he can accurately use the French we've learned in this unit.

Yes. I know. But it is noticeably more accurate!

When it got to the writing assessment, what should I do? Should I tell them it is being marked for accuracy, an exercise in showing they had memorised the language for this unit? Or is it being marked for showing me they can express themselves and develop an idea coherently?

I left it up to them. I told them I already had the evidence of what their work looked like so far with both focusses. And now I wanted to see how what we discussed came through in their own individual work and in their awareness as a language learner.

Who do you want to see first? Here's Jess who wrote the Crossy Roady piece at the top of this post:

Here's Henry.

Here's Ruby:

And I suppose you want to see Dylan. Here's Dylan.

Have they got more accurate? Has there been a retreat from wild and reckless indulgence? Have they become more restrained and boring? Is their way of working individual and innate, or does it vary depending on the task? Is there a best balance between accuracy and expression? And does it all depend if we are talking about testing knowledge or if we are talking about language learning?

And we will look at Kirsty's. But I'm leaving that to the end because I think I have made my mind up about the apparent exam success/language learning dichotomy. First, here's something I noticed on a pupil's feedback section on his listening and reading test. In the "What was the best lesson" box on the right, I had lots of interesting answers. The speed dating lesson, the novel we've dipped into, watching Ma Vie de Courgette at the end of term, playing the Red Herring detective mystery on computers... But this pupil picked out the "Perfect" paragraph with clearly defined parameters. Now I need to go back and ask them why. Was it the clarity, reducing the cognitive load of having to think what to say? Was it the successful focus on accuracy? Is it a permanent thing we shoud do? Or was it a one-off timely intervention for that exact stage of their learning?

And here's Kirsty.

You will have seen that even in the "Perfect Paragraphs", perfection cannot be guaranteed. There is no way that a Year 9 pupil is going to be able to predict that in French you can't use "je veux" and "être riche" to say "I want my friend to be rich." There will always be ways in which French doesn't work in the same way as English. We can see here that a focus on merrily saying things the pupils wants to say, does lead to some distraction away from focus on accuracy of things she is supposed to know. But I am sure from a language-learning perspective, Kirsty's work is excellent.

I don't want to say that there's anything wrong with the approach pupils like Evelyn or Ruby can adopt when they need to, writing carefully accurate pieces that put paragraphs together from French they know, finding ways to use it to develop an idea coherently.

So I don't think there's any one right answer about language learning. But I do think there is a wrong one...

Of the pupils whose work we have looked at (I have others!), who is the pupil who is hoovering up most French? The pupil who has a grasp of all the French we have ever learned and can turn it inside out to say things she wants to say. The pupil who at the merest sniff of something new, can squirrel it away and add it to her repertoire. The pupil who found she couldn't say "would be" so has gone out of her way independently to find out how to say it. And then use it. The pupil who is prepared to make mistakes because she knows that's what happens when you push at the expanding boundaries of what you know and can do. The drive to express yourself is clearly central to language learning. And I cannot go along with the idea that we should stamp it out until pupils have flawlessly mastered the basics.

The Language Lab Podcast

 I was a guest on episode 4 of  https://www.languagelabpodcast.co.uk with Will Marks. We examined in detail where we are with teaching languages in English schools, how we got here, and where we might aim to get to.

If you don't have Spotify you can listen on other sites like https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/the-language-lab-podcast/6007214

And Will made a nice AI image of us having a cup of malted milk in Hong Kong:

Do let me know what you think!

Guest Post: A turning point...

In a major Camarón de la Isla / Bob Dylan / Judas Iscariot / Keith Jarrett adopts electric amplified music turn of events, I interviewed Gemini AI on a turning point in Language Teaching in English schools. Here is its summary of our conversation.

 The Bauckham Report: Why MFL is Finally Ready to Turn the Page

For nearly a decade, the 2016 Bauckham Report (the Modern Foreign Languages Pedagogy Review) has acted as the "north star" for language education in England. Led by Ian Bauckham and heavily championed by the Department for Education, it promised to rescue a "fragile" subject by returning to basics: Phonics, Vocabulary, and Grammar.

However, as we enter 2026, the cracks in this "knowledge-rich" foundation have become impossible to ignore. From its failure to understand the trauma of the "Controlled Assessment" years to its silence on the grading crisis, the report is increasingly seen not as a cure, but as a misdiagnosis.

Here is why it is time for the MFL community to move on.

1. Fighting a War That Had Already Ended

The report’s most significant flaw was its historical timing. It spent much of its energy attacking the "rote-learning" and "memorized chunks" that defined the Controlled Assessment (CA) era (2009–2016).

What the report failed to acknowledge was that teachers didn't choose rote learning because they hated grammar; they chose it because the assessment system punished anything else. By the time the report’s recommendations were being implemented, CAs had already been abolished. Teachers were already pivoting toward spontaneity for the new linear exams. The Bauckham report was essentially providing a map for a territory that had already changed.

2. The "Three Pillars" vs. The Human Element

The report introduced the "Three Pillars" model:

Phonics: Sound-symbol correspondence.

Vocabulary: High-frequency word lists.

Grammar: Systematic structural progression.

While these are essential building blocks, the report treated them as the entire building. By narrowing the focus to these mechanics, the curriculum often stripped away culture, identity, and real communication. Students might know the 1,700 most common words, but if they can’t use them to talk about their own lives or understand a different culture, the "why" of language learning disappears.

3. The Silence on Severe Grading

Perhaps the report’s greatest "blind spot" was grading severity. For years, data has shown that it is significantly harder to get a top grade in a language than in History or Geography.

By focusing purely on pedagogy (how we teach), the Bauckham report implicitly blamed teachers for the decline in student numbers. It ignored the fact that many students drop languages not because the lessons are "bad," but because they are "strategic." They know a language GCSE is a higher risk to their grade average. It wasn't until 2024 and 2025 that we saw adjustments from Ofqual to address this—an intervention the 2016 report should have championed from the start.

4. A "Prescriptive" Future?

The 2024 GCSE reforms (being examined for the first time this year, 2026) are the ultimate legacy of the Bauckham report. They feature:

Strict Vocabulary Lists: 1,200 to 1,700 "word families."

No Unfamiliar Material: A permanent removal of "abstract" or "unseen" language.

Dictation and Reading Aloud: A heavy focus on phonics.

While these changes aim for "accessibility," critics argue they make the subject "dry" and "mechanical." Instead of opening doors to a global world, the curriculum has become a closed loop of pre-defined words.

Conclusion: Time for a New Narrative

The 2016 Bauckham report was a product of its time—an attempt to bring "rigor" to a subject in crisis. But "rigor" without relevance is a recipe for further decline.

To save MFL, we must move beyond the "Three Pillars" and embrace a model that values the multilingualism of our students, the cultural depth of our subjects, and—above all—the simple joy of being understood in another language.

You can read more of my original interview with Gemini here, including its views on how an obscure, flawed report came to have such political influence. And in Gemini's words, become "weaponised" against the profession.

Let's enjoy and celebrate!

 This post is to start the year with some absolutely delightful examples of pupils' work. Have a look and see if it brightens your day the same way it did mine!

Year 9 French Written Assessment October

Year 9 French Written Assessment October

These are done in test conditions without special warning or preparation. You can see from the tickbox criteria at the bottom that the pupils understand that writing spontaneously from French they know, will score at a different level than pre-planning and learning. In fact, I shouldn't have used the words "score" or "level", because the statements are descriptive and informative rather than linked to ranking or judgements.

You can see that the pupils have also commented on their work, starting with specifying that they challenged themselves to write this using their own repertoire of French. They may also have volunteered a comment on the quality of the work, or further information on their experience of the process of creating it. 

Here are some more.

Year 9 Writing Assessment October

Perhaps the most important thing for me here, is that this writing assessment is not an exercise in demonstrating that they can correctly use certain items of language. In all cases, the pupils are driven by wanting to say things. True things, fun things, silly things, imaginary things, sad things, vindictive things, and sometimes run out of things and not really know what to put things. Their comments at the end show that sometimes they know that things weren't quite "right" or that they took risks. They are doing this in the confidence that both they and the reader understand they are on a journey with language learning, where their ability to express themselves is central and being developed.

There are aspects of this work that I can follow up in another post: How does this written work correspond to their ability to speak with increasing fluency? What feedback should I give on the work? What does it show about chunking of language versus manipulation of atomised language? I have plenty to say on all of these, both to them and also on here. But for now, let's start the year by just enjoying and celebrating this!

Year 9 Written Assessment October