John Hattie

This week Forest School were delighted to play host to The Learning Revolution Conference and to hear from Professor John Hattie – possibly the word’s most influential educational academic.

Like their pupils, good schools are constantly improving, and keep teaching and learning firmly at the very centre of their provision. At Forest we are always challenging the way we do things, which is why we are one of the first independent schools to adopt the Visible Learning Programme through our one hundred and fifty teaching staff and fifteen Visible Learning Coaches, led by our Deputy Head Academic, Tahmer Mahmoud.

Forest School is keen to share the benefits of this programme with as many schools as possible, and so we are delighted to have hosted the first school-based conference world-renowned Professor John Hattie has led in the UK. The event was attended by more than one hundred and fifty teaching and learning practitioner delegates from institutions up and down the country.

Keynote speakers Professor John Hattie, Laura Kearney and Wendy Delf talked about how to revolutionise teaching practice and put learning at the centre of school improvement, with practical models and the ultimate teacher toolkit to enable practitioners to dramatically improve the outcomes and life chances of the children in their schools.

Feedback from delegates

The John Hattie conference at Forest was an amazing opportunity to hear from the great man himself about the ideas of Skill, Will and Thrill in relation to students, and then think about how we might embed those concepts at our School.

The conference was a unique opportunity to reflect on how to collect dependable and defensible data from our students that enables us to understand our impact in the classroom.

Hattie’s effect sizes are still a solid starting point for deciding where to direct effort and resources in the classroom.  Great to see that his model is incorporating more recent top cognitive science research findings as practical approaches for teachers.