Our Quarry Bank Teaching and Learning Framework is the culmination of years of hard work and carefully considered school development. Many people, both inside of school and external to school, supported the process in producing it. 

Having a framework that defines our pedagogical approach is really important to Quarry Bank, and treading the line between standardisation and teacher autonomy is difficult, but as a team we understood there was a necessity to have both standardisation and autonomy and we recorded these as part of a polarity mapping exercise.

We ask teachers to follow our principles, but often there is opportunity to innovate and deploy them in a style that meets the needs of the school, the needs of the teacher, but most importantly the needs of the children.

The framework outlines some of the core systems in place and the tools available to teachers and support staff to ensure the children attain as highly as possible. And of course, it outlines in detail exactly what we, as a school, believe to be really effective teaching and learning based on Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction. Our principles are as follows:

Over a period of time, we shared the principles within the framework and the strategies we wanted our teaching team to utilise. This was achieved through a series of rigorous and effective professional development sessions, followed by our monitoring cycle.

During the 'pre-cycle' phase, training was shared about each principle and the strategies to implement. It was an opportunity to share the granular detail not seen in the framework and provide teaching staff with the time to experiment and explore the strategies in class before providing feedback on them.

The next stage in the process was 'monitoring for compliance'. This is an opportunity to check that the strategies were being deployed in the desired way and suggestions and support is offered.

The final stage is 'monitoring for effectiveness'. This is an opportunity to check that the principles themselves were having the impact that was desired and further feedback and support was put into place where needed.

Monitoring, or 'taking the temperature' is crucial to ensuring success in teaching and learning. However, it can only be successful if it is completed in a way that ensures psychological safety for all staff. We describe this in our profile below.