Joe Kirby
@joe__kirby
School leader. Writer. Director of Education at Athena. I champion school leaders, teachers and school staff so we can create great schools together.
Hornets, Slugs, Bees and Butterflies: the workload relief revolution wp.me/p31zUY-Li 🐌a let-go-of list of 20 slugs 💥a not-to-do list of 18 hornets 🐝a keep-doing list of 10 honeybees 🦋a start-doing-list of 12 butterflies ✊ join the revolution
Building on 'Reading Reconsidered', this really is an excellent book by @Doug_Lemov @EricaWoolway and Colleen Driggs. We will be referring to this throughout 2025-26 in Astrea secondaries, as it underpins and enhances our literacy strategy launching in September.
New Blog: The Spirit of Our Team How do we introduce staff and stakeholders to our teams? How do we induct people beyond what they have to 'do'? Some wise words from a chap called Denis, and a few less wise ones from me. samcrome.com/2025/07/26/the…
New Blog Post! How my dawdling trudge into a two-day office temp job turned into inspirartion and connection, all courtesy of Denis and his wise words on the 'spirit of our team' How can we engage team members with 'the way we do things here'? samcrome.com/2025/07/26/the…
Too many new ideas, says @stoneman_claire, with the wisdom, restraint, healthy scepticism and perspective of a grizzled veteran. birminghamteacher.wordpress.com/2023/02/19/the…
the cool thing about writing a popular book is that your thesis can outlast the on-the-ground data indefinitely a decade out from the decline, people still cite Finland
What is it you prefer about the Finnish system?
Content knowledge is the lifeblood of education at every level. Even in skills-based curricula (i.e. trades) one person with knowledge and experience is directly instructing another person who does not yet possess the same knowledge and experience. The concept is so simple.
Education that prioritises "21st-century skills" over content knowledge is like teaching someone to fish by removing all the fish from the lake. You can't think critically about nothing, collaborate meaningfully around ignorance, or create innovatively from an empty vessel.
What Direct Instruction is and what it isn't.
It’s a whole lot easier to implement the science of learning with a program that contains interleaving, spacing, incremental introduction of new topics for novices, etc, supported by active training/live coaching. This is not in place in many schools. educationrickshaw.com/2025/07/24/whe…
Our founding year at @Reachhanworthpk comes to an end. So proud of our Year 7 team, children & their families for: ✅98% attendance ✅Social norm of ‘obvious kindness’ ✅6-day French residential 🇫🇷 ✅Huge increase in reading proficiency from 36% reading at or above…
All power to @RhysSpiersAGFS and the work he is doing at @Alexandra_Ark. I remember very clearly hearing about how challenging that school was when at Ark. no doubt a Herculean effort is required to turn it round.
100% behind this, and @bphillipsonMP is right to say this. Mobile phones are a huge source of distraction, safeguarding and privacy issues, and we need to be doing more together to let children learn and flourish in schools, safe from their influence. independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…
At the National DI Conference, you’re expected to work on teaching, not merely talk about it. There’s rehearsal. There's feedback. There’s repetition. And there’s a final Check Out form - because ultimately we all came here to learn new skills. educationrickshaw.com/2025/07/24/whe…
✳️without knowledge there is no critical thinking✳️ Don’t fall for the fantasy that our learners no longer need content knowledge. They will have nothing to think critically about.
Education that prioritises "21st-century skills" over content knowledge is like teaching someone to fish by removing all the fish from the lake. You can't think critically about nothing, collaborate meaningfully around ignorance, or create innovatively from an empty vessel.
A reminder that ‘knowing’ is not binary, it's not an on/off thing. We move through stages; hearing, recognising, recalling, mastering, before knowledge becomes truly usable. This example of of children's different phrases of 'knowing' words from Beck, McKeown, and Kucan is so…
Expertise isn't about having more working memory, it's about needing less of it. Experts automate many components in long-term memory and can recognise meaningful patterns instantly, bypassing the need to process individual elements. ⬇️ 🧵
Yet this creates a timing problem. The payoff from automation is delayed, students must invest significant cognitive effort in foundational skills before experiencing the liberation that expertise provides. This is why explicit instruction and guided practice matter so…
It's so bizarre to me how facts are now a bad word in education. We tell students "don't memorise, understand". As if these were opposites. But understanding emerges from the interplay of multiple memorised elements. Expertise isn't about having fewer facts; it's about having…
But knowledge isn’t obsolete, it’s the precondition for reasoning, creativity, and insight. Skills divorced from knowledge are empty performances.