Most popular posts 2024-2025
As the 2024/25 academic year draws to a close, I’ve been mulling over a few questions:
what have we achieved together?
what have you found most useful?
what (and more importantly who) are we thankful for?
Read on to discover the answers in my We Are In Beta review of 2024/25.
Have a wonderful break! We’ll be out of the office until Sept.
We - schools - Are In Beta - always learning (when we reflect on the year gone by and head off for a well-earned summer break).
We Are In Beta review of 2024/25
1. What have we achieved together?
We have achieved so much this year.
But here are some stats we are proud of:
👥 20,368 members - we've kept growing meaning even more shared expertise at your finger tips (up from 18,809 last year)
📔 13,189 members we’ve gotten to know really well (up from 9,551)
🎯 627,587 disadvantaged students - the number you collectively teach - together we can have an even greater impact (up from 487,132)
✅ 84% - of paying members got an answer to their questions from other members of the community with our help (up from 71%)
🔬21 researchers, 33 pieces - we've continued to build out our research function to help you find great practice (up from 8 and 15)
Since launching the We Are In Beta Community in 2020, you have helped us achieve a cumulative total of:
📝 3,178 resources shared by members (like curriculum here and pastoral here). Up 576 (22%) from 2,602 last year.
📺 871 session and event recordings. Up 136 (19%) from 735 last year.
📜 2,750 high performing school policies pooled and analysed here. Up 1,485 (160%) from 657 last year.
📎 2761 departmental resources pooled and analysed here. Up 0 (0%) from 2,761 last year.
💰£47.2 million (2.99 million hours) of research time saved by our members accessing our school policy and practice research. Up 52.% from last year (£31.1 million and 1.08 million hours)
💼 267,207 times the 1,222 vacancies we have promoted have been seen in our newsletters (like this). Up 128% views from 118,609 and up 34% from 911 vacancies from last year.
If you want to know more about these headlines and get links to the content beneath them…
📍Click here to find out who and where these schools are on this interactive map.
Every purple pin represents a school that has a colleague who is a member of the 20,000+ We Are In Beta Community.
2. What have you found most useful?
Our job inside the community is to help you get what you need so you can do the best you can for your students. That includes:
getting to know each other and understanding your challenges
pointing you in the direction of the most useful people and practice across the system and
helping you achieve your careers goals
To those three points, here are the most useful conversations, research posts and jobs threads from 2024-2025.
🧵Top 5 conversation threads.
The real community magic happens when you meet and share with each other.
So where did that happen the most?
5️⃣. “I am interested in developing the AI policy in my school and was wondering if anyone else is on the same or similar journey at their school”
4️⃣. “We are investigating the re introduction of form/tutor time and would be interested to hear from anyone that currently has it, how it is structured and the benefits of it!”
3️⃣. “We are seeking to connect with schools that have secured or improved accountability, especially in middle leadership, developing consistency and ownership without excessive paperwork requirements”.
2️⃣. “Can anyone recommend a secondary school that has a really strong inclusion culture/structure and set up? Ideally has a resource base too. Would love to forge a connection and share practice”.
1️⃣. "Are any schools within the Community who operate a three lunchtime day? We would be keen to liaise and potentially arrange to visit"
🔬Top 3 pieces of free research.
We believe that most of the solutions to education’s challenges are in schools are already.
So it makes sense to follow the data to find where success is happening.
We do that by taking your questions about areas of school improvement and asking: which schools are doing well? And what are they doing?
Here are the three pieces of research you found most useful in 2024-2025:
3. Attendance policies and practice: strategies from secondary schools with a track record of improving attendance
ICYMI: This piece found 27 schools, who improved attendance over a 12 month period, plus 100+ resources (letters, handbooks, policies etc) analysed by Hannah Gregory-Harris
Read free version here.
Read premium version (with schools directory, case studies and drive of resources) here.
2. Assessment: An in depth look at assessment policies and practices in secondary schools
ICYMI: This project found at high 21 high performing schools with high levels of disadvantage approach assessment.
It includes 7 case studies including: student achievement and recognition, progression models, subject specific approaches and research informed models. By Jessica Dobrowolski
Read free version here.
Read premium version (with schools directory, case studies and drive of resources) here.
1. Top-Performing state-funded secondary schools for progress of disadvantaged students in England in 2024
We all love learning from people who have been there and done that. We all love listicles too. That this post tops the charts every year proves that.
ICYIM: Here are increible 93 schools with large disadvantaged cohorts who get incredible Progress of >+0.5.
💼 Top 3 jobs threads.
This year we’ve helped paying members get 311 vacancies seen 148,598 times the in our newsletters (like this). Up 37 vacancies (14%) and 81,827 views (122%) from last year.
But what were the busiest threads?
3️⃣ May 4th - 35 jobs posted.
2️⃣ March 16th - 36 jobs.
1️⃣ Jan 26th - 103 🤯
If you want to get your vacancies seen by the 23k school leaders and teachers who receive We Are In Beta newsletters across curriculum, pastoral and more, let us know here and we’ll send more info.
3. What (and more importantly who) are we thankful for?
None of what follows would be possible without you showing up, asking questions, sharing answers, attaching documents, contributing sessions and investing in your development.
Nor would it be without our school and MAT partners believing in collaboration and investing memberships for their staff.
There are too many to name here.
So I named and tagged 400 of our most supportive and engaged members in our Curriculum Thinkers Community review here and our Pastoral Champions review here.
Thank you.
I am very proud of what we have achieved together. Let’s keep going.
On a personal note.
This year has been the hardest of my career to date.
My wife had brain surgery in January.
Shortly after, my then 13 month old was admitted to hospital with pneumonia. She was then readmitted twice more in the weeks that followed.
Good thing our boiler didn’t break down at the same time.
Oh, wait. It did 🤦♂️.
How did I get through it? And what lessons can we learn from it?
Being honest and transparent - telling people how hard things were achieved three things:
helped me to admit to myself that not everything could be business as usual and some things had to give
helped manage expectations of what was achievable
helped others tailor how they could support me
Asking for help - I am not the best at this. (The irony of me running a community, which is designed to help schools support each other in not lost on me). But when you do ask for help, it can come from places you never thought it would.
Having a community - people by their nature are tuned to help. Relationships are powerful things when you take invest in them. I am super grateful to have relationships with my family, my friends, my colleagues and our partners. Thank you all for your help.
Have a lovely summer.
Thanks for reading.
@NiallAlcock and the We Are In Beta team
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