‘Pre-Teaching’ and ‘Assigning Competence’ in an Expert Group

By Mark Gibbons, headteacher at Windmill Primary School and chair of the Expert Group for Early Reading, Literacy and Numeracy and Lydia Purdy, senior teacher and Mathematics lead at Birchwood Primary School

Being part of an ‘Expert Group’ has felt slightly weird, because none of us in the Early Reading, Literacy and Numeracy group has considered themselves to be an ‘expert’. From the outset though, there has been a willingness from each of us to collaborate and to contribute.

Our principal aim in being part of this group is to give children in our schools the best chance of achieving what they should be achieving, but an important secondary aim for us is to trial new things in our schools and to share the outcomes trust-wide, for the benefit of as many children as possible.

We started by inviting some ‘proper experts’ to advise us: