 Hello everyone, this is Ross at Teacher's Talk at the most influential blog on education in the UK today. I'm really excited to be joined by David Lowbridge Ellis. David is a school leader in the West Midlands. David, could I just get you to introduce yourself to our listeners and tell everybody what you do? Yeah, so until a few months ago, I was at Barbican School in Warsaw where I've been for many years. But in that time, I've been working across our trust, a small but perfectly formed trust called Matrix Academy Trust, which we set up here some years ago. And I've spent, I'm now formally working across the trust, working on school equipment. So that's what I do day to day. So I'll catch up on that in a second. But I guess just for listener context, we first connected, I suppose, when I discovered your, I think you sent it to me originally when I was doing my research for Just Great Teaching before the pandemic a couple of years back. And you had on your site at the time, 47 things that you do to support teacher workload. And I wrote about it and you kindly agreed. And I put it in my book and I actually came back to it last month and I thought, I just want to check, see how you're going. And I just like to unpick that for listeners because we know workload is just a thing that always drives teachers crazy. It's a constant burden. But I guess I want to just evaluate some of the things that you said you did. And, you know, two years later, what what worked, what needed refinement, what did you throw away? Anything new that emerged? So I've got a big list here if you're happy for me to read them out. But could you just, you know, give me the background story to how it's happened? So as I wrote in the original article, I saw, I think it was John Thompson, who posted online that he had come up with a list of 27 things. And the last thing I ever want this to be is an arms race to try and outdo each other with the number of things, which is one of the reasons, actually, one of the changes I've made to it is I've taken the number off it. Right, interesting. Although it appears in your book with a number on it and it appears on the Department for Education website with your number on it. We did with that number on it. I've actually taken the number off because even though I didn't want it to be that we could be viewed as not work, if you were to amalgamate two issues into one and you go down, people might be, oh, it's not work to exactly because rather than progression and we'll get into the detail in a minute. But those things aren't necessarily equal, obviously. Some of them are going to have much more impact than others. So I just saw this list and I just to be perfectly honest, because I'm really sad, I just kind of sat there and made a list of the things that we we did as a school. And the more I wrote, the more I thought, actually, not necessarily some of the schools will be doing these things. Some schools will be doing different things. But I thought it would be I thought it'd be useful just to kind of make the list. And I was doing some work with the Department for Education at the time, which I've carried on doing recently, actually, on what eventually became the teacher workload reduction toolkit. Yes. And the more I kind of did that and did presentations across the country and talked about some of the things we did, the more I realised some of those things were quite special, not necessarily unique to us, but some of them were. But I came to realise that there were the worst things that I assumed everybody did, but I wanted to kind of get almost trying. You've got your trust lens going around different places. You've got a wider lens that actually it's not the case. People aren't doing all these things. But can I just part this for a moment? Let's what I do in my podcast is let's get a little synopsis of who you are. So describe your 16 year old self to everybody. Oh, gosh. So I was complete geek at school. Always was still a goody two shoes. I wouldn't necessarily say teachers pet, but I used to find any excuse to try and avoid going outside at lunchtime because I was never being like a sporty. So, you know, if a teacher wanted me to help me with their displays and things, that would be I'm not creating a very pleasant picture. OK, so what happened after school then? Let's go up to kind of college university. Well, yeah, a part of this is unfortunately it's not it's not a bad thing that I'm gay, but at the same time I did and I've written on the articles on your website about this which which you kindly published to again to try and get those messages out there. But I didn't have a particularly happy time at school, if I'm brutally honest. And I was always quite an insular kind of introverted sort of person. So I didn't go very far away for university either. But I did kind of enjoy university and sort of find myself a little bit. I did a degree in English at the University of Birmingham. So that was half language, half literature. And then I decided to become a teacher because I couldn't think of anything else to do, to be perfectly honest. So it was never anything I sat there and thought, you know, if I ever sat there and thought of, you know, I want to be this in the future. It was train driver, but, you know, like a lot of let's let's let's let's speak up teaching profession for a moment. You're still doing it. So what keeps you there? And I can't imagine doing anything else. And that's not from a lack of imagination. I just find it it's it's brilliant at giving you a sense of purpose. And I I can't imagine any of the job giving you that sense of purpose. I do sometimes kind of think, oh, maybe, you know, I could be a postman. That seems really nice in terms of having a sense of purpose. You know, yeah, I'm sure there are lots and lots of jobs that break, give people purpose, but it's like it's like instant purpose. I think that actually is at the is at the heart of a lot of workload issue is actually with some teachers and that because they feel a sense of vocation and because it is one of those things, you almost when you start it, you feel there is nothing that that beats the heart, the natural high of imparting knowledge with your leadership, you know, juggling balls that you've got a wide range of skills now that far beyond the perception of just you're in a classroom with kids and whatever else. So we'll we'll come back to that. University, so where was your first job? Where was your first teaching job? It was well, I did I did teaching practice a school in the Central Wausel and then one not that much, not that far other away. In fact, pretty much the building I'm in now. So yeah, that was 18 years ago. So yeah, I've been there. I've been teaching my first lesson and trainee teachers that I do sessions with the lesson was on a chalkboard. Yes, there was still one there, but I was also the first teacher to ever use an interactive whiteboard. Well, there you go. I think it was that kind of that transition point really. So, yeah, I mean, what's your subject, David? I'm an English teacher at heart, although I've taught most I like many of us. I've taught many things over the years. I mean, teaching on the blackboards hard, but, you know, having to do technical drawings the night before and telling people not to rub it off as your kids came the next day was always a challenge on the blackboard, but there we go. We're in a we're in a technical era now. And so when did leadership first happen for you? I think I was five years into the profession, which, again, I'm never a fan of kind of competing, but at the same. I understand that was relatively soon. Yeah. And it was partly because of the circumstances of the school at the time. Yeah, probably, probably because this it was then for the first few years of my career was in an off-stead category. And I think the team that came in and I work with many of those people still, but the team that came in recognised the teachers who were kind of, you know, doing the business sort of thing. So in a sense, I think that was kind of advantageous because I got the opportunities because, you know, they were there to do things outside of my own classroom. So because I got those opportunities and I seized those opportunities, I think it was recognised that actually he can communicate to a broader or, you know, a teacher, an adult audience and can kind of drive things in terms of school improvement, which is what I'm doing today. Yeah. So now you should now you're a watch a specific title of the Matrix Trust. So it's Deputy Director of School Improvement, which sounds so what's your, you know, obviously pandemic and stuff, but what are you doing week to week, you know, visiting schools, working with certain individuals? So I'm trying to split my time evenly between our different schools. And I spent quite a lot of time this this term in the school that we took over earlier this year in the summer, which was in special measures. And we've we've we've taken several schools out of special measures. So we're kind of applying what works there, but obviously customising for context. So yeah, I spent a lot of time there, particularly in curriculum stuff, but also behaviour stuff, whatever needs doing, essentially. Yeah. OK, fantastic. And I guess, you know, some of the things that you're seeing and learning from, you know, visiting multiple different venues and working with a wider range of teachers has been an interesting learning curve. A really interesting learning curve, as I say, there are some things that we watch that Dylan William quote about nothing works. Nothing works everywhere, but it works somewhere. Yeah, that's the one. And that is so true. And I see I can see myself really fortunate because I get to see schools in different contexts across my week. It's never boring. Yeah. So it's about translating your best ideas and thinking, right, what what what can I take here? What can I try there? Yeah, it's always always a fascinating aspect. So let's come back to this workload thing. I've got the list up in front of me. If we start with the kind of teaching and learning part of your original forty seven ideas, I guess rather than going with kind of visionary things, for example, we trust teachers. Let me go to some specific ones. So number three on your original list was no lesson plans of any kind. So, yeah, you know, did that live out at Barbican? Is it something that can live out across the trust? Or in that special measure school case, is there a little nuance required? And it's something we that Barbican, we've never gone back on. No one ever produced is a lesson plan of any description. That doesn't mean you don't plan your lessons, but it means. Yes, of course. Lesson plans. There have been schools which we yeah, we have these schools we've taken over in special measures where the principles of planning weren't robust enough, but and we have kind of trial versions of lesson plans, like five minute lesson plans to try and embed those principles, but always with the aim of it's like it's like in a lesson when you model for the pupils and you include scaffolds. It was always there as a supportive measure. And yes, it does take a bit longer for practice teachers to fill in even a five minute lesson plan. But with the goal always of taking that away, which is what we stood by. OK, I've got another one for you. So there was another one you said no one covers more than one less and a half term. I suspect through the pandemic that's been a real challenge, doesn't it? It has been a challenge, to be perfectly honest. And I'm certainly at the school where I am physically right now. Staff have been amazing at pitching in where required. And yeah, it's it is one of those which we've managed to keep the school open without having to I know some school students lack of capacity to send. Obviously, before the pandemic, this was something that you could honor. So to speak, yeah, yeah, on paper. Yeah, so that's that's great. We still try to resist it as much as possible. And we do keep very close tabs on how many how many hours people have covered. Yeah. OK, let's move on to behavior. So we've got you've got two lines here, senior leadership provisible and all staff on the corridors and senior leadership run lunch duties so behavior doesn't bubble up. Yeah, so both still true. I must admit, I edited this recently just to kind of and I thought this is going to be a big job and only took me about 10 minutes because most of the things we've actually managed. And I think that's the crux of it really. Yeah, what we tried to do was tackle the things that really did make a big impact. So one of the things that I took out of the 50 things, 46, 47, 50, however many it's got to, I think it's 52 or something like that now. I've lost count. Yeah. But one of the things I took out was the thing about Zumba lessons. Because I was just like, we don't do that anymore. But also that was the only thing that I felt that was in the list was just kind of a bolt on some that you stick on for well being rather if you're going to tackle well being you need to do the stuff that's embedded. So if we go back to behavior, yeah, senior leadership are really, really visible. We spend very little time in offices, certainly while the pupils are in school and lunch duty. Yeah, we do. No one else. Yeah, it's already through a few things. No, no, I, you know, workload for me very passionate topic, as you know, it drives a lot of people crazy. And some schools that do quite the opposite. So it's an important issue, a couple more on assessment and reporting. So the one important one was give feedback, however you think best policy, which I love. So talk about that. And then the second one, no detailed reports to parents, no detailed written reports. So let's talk about the feedback policy first. OK, yeah, just be warned, I could talk forever. So I'll try to be succinct, because this is the thing I've worked most on with the DFA and across many of our schools, because I in most schools, it tends to be marking which teachers identify. If you do any form of survey or focus group tends to be to be high on the list. So the aim is to mark a set of books in under an hour or whatever it is. Sometimes, you know, if it's mock exams, like English mock exams are the worst. They take about three and a half hours per class set. Awful. But yeah, we still we still stick to that. And that is the aim. And most people accomplish that. Funny enough, one of the schools that one of our other schools the other day, in fact, it was the it was the one in in special measures. They've got some as you always find with any school, whatever the off-stead rating, there are some amazing teachers at those schools. Of course, of course, there was one of the teachers I was talking to was saying, I set myself a goal of marking, you know, of being able to be able to do whole class feedback after reading through the books for 20 minutes. I was like, OK, that's is an ambitious goal. But then I actually saw what deal the kids were getting. And I went and talked to the pupils in his lesson and they were getting a fantastic deal. So I always it's one of those things like with most of the really serious workload issues that you you need to encourage staff to try doing it even better than they are already. I know that sounds really, really cheesy. But if you give staff the license to think of the more effective ways to feed back as long as it works and you check it's working by asking the children, you know, what do you need to do to improve? And, you know, what are you doing well already? And how can you build on these those sorts of questions? So a metacognitive approach, then then that's how that's how we approach it. I know we are nervous. Yeah, have we unpicked the special measures context, we don't need to go into details of school, but how do you see the feedback policy immersing from Barbican over to perhaps the good and the bad aspects of what could be used elsewhere? That's a really good question, because what you don't want to do is just transplant something that works at one school and the surface level features and you end up you end up transplanting it and it doesn't work because people do strategies, you know, a feedback approach. But unless you understand the principles of effective feedback, it's going to call for completely flat on its face. So what we've been doing is we've been doing before, you know, saying this is a strategy you could use, making sure that teachers understand the principles of effective feedback, such as, and I could promise I won't go on all day, but such as, you know, feedback is something that you don't just schedule at the end of a unit. Feedback is something that happens every single moment of every single lesson and making sure that staff understand that. Otherwise, whatever strategy you implement is not going to work. Oh, man. So what about the written reports? What does that look like today? And I guess a second question. What would be a device to schools that still push out three three page reports? Don't because they're usually not worth the paper that they're written on. What we again, what Bobby can have done for years and what are the other schools of now doing is we make sure that have regular updates and it usually is three updates through the year in terms of where their pupils are at. So case A3, we've done it lots of different ways over the years, to be honest, and it's something we always make sure we bring up with our parent forum because we want to make sure that we're giving them the information they need, but it tends to be the numerical information. So what teachers enter during data drops. Sometimes that can be translated into words. So they're working at above, below, etc. But if you if you do all the stuff around the numbers and you do so we've done explanatory videos over the years, a dedicated part of the website, there's the feedback approach which we take. So we say encourage your we educate the parents on asking your children about what they're learning and what they can do to improve. So it's not just, you know, taking something completely away, but it's putting all those other things in place, which actually do make a lot of sense so that you can take away the things that, you know, reports taking weeks to write and by the time they're published, they're completely out of date. Sure. Two more themes. We'll talk about lifestyle and professional developments, I guess, the big one. What does this see, you know, pandemics distracted all of this, but what was the general rhythm of CPD at Barbeek and before the pandemic? The general pattern is allowing a system that is responsive to need as it arises. And I think because we had that model already, I think it was it was something that we were set up quite well for during covid. So in terms of brass tacks, what we do is we do mostly disaggregated days and we do those as hour long twilight sessions, usually every couple of weeks, because it's too intense doing it every week. And then people have the training days off in lieu. We do sometimes have training days and we take advantage last September, 2020 of the extra training day we were allowed and, you know, that was that was really beneficial. But I've tend to find with training whole days, you don't have as much impact and you can't be as responsive to need. I do plan the CPD calendar in advance. But to be honest, it doesn't change all that much, usually. But as other priorities arise, you can kind of move things around. So you also got can I introduce you briefly there? So you also mentioned in your original list that, I guess, the NQTs also have a voice. So is that still the case? And we'll talk about the covid aspect, the CPD in a moment. But can your NQTs stand up confidently and present ideas? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we've got fun enough. We've just we've just literally this afternoon, we've had a CPD, which I partly led with another colleague and someone who's only been teaching for a couple of years, but has recently taken on their first position of responsibility and whole school. And she stood up there along along with us. And I have no perhaps it is my own experience of being that person who'd only been teaching for two to three years. I think I have my first position of responsibility, which was this is how insane the kind of school school was before it was taken over. I was given whole school literacy responsibility, I think, as an NQT. Right, crunchy. I know, I know. But at the same time, TLRs flying out all over the place. Yeah, totally. You find it everywhere, don't you? But as you know, there might be towards the end of this year, there might be some of our ECTs for year one ECTs who may be maybe starting to, you know, that they are those stars of the future. And so we just interact before you were talking about covid. Obviously, there's all the headaches that have associated. But let's just keep with the CPD thing. How has that shaped up from March last year all the way through to here where we are a year and a half later? To be honest, we sort of kept the same model. Now, obviously, quite a bit of it had to be moved online and obviously other priorities interceded, particularly around teacher assessed grades and the year before centre assessed grades. So we had to do we had to allocate a lot of CPD time to things which were absolutely necessary, rather than necessarily being the development priorities that we really wanted. But it was getting it was getting that balance. But the model essentially stayed the same. OK, well, that's a good sign that, you know, you got a lot of things that are an embedded part of your culture. Yeah. Now, the lifestyle one, you know, that headless chicken, there's no prizes for looking busy or staying late. Obviously, the pandemic and workload and teachers work in, you know, 50 plus hour school leaders, you'll know, work in 80 hours a week. How does that shape out? You know, if you're cutting away lesson plans in Barbican, for example, I'm going to gain a bit of time there and probably use some of my time to do other things. And I just want to. Is it more than just words? It's it's not. I'm sorry to disappoint you, Ross. It isn't more than just words. Well, I would just caveat that with the senior leadership. And I know that we weren't alone on this, but senior leadership hours mostly due to things like contact tracing. I'm not I'm not kidding. There was I did I did a little poll on this on Twitter back in July, because I thought, are we alone on this? This is not getting mainstream media coverage. And I was getting I was getting fed up to be perfectly frank about that senior leaders. I mean, one week, I'm not kidding. We clocked up at least 40 hours. So what did you say, just out of interest? The. Of schools were spending about 40 hours a week doing contact tracing in the summer term crazy. And then the majority about I think it was about 60 percent were doing somewhere between 50 and 40, 15 and 40 hours. So we were sort of we weren't alone. There were a quarter of other schools that were like us, but we were being really diligent with the contact tracing. We were going through seating plans with a fine tooth code. Everyone took at least two hours. So we were we were we were we were. And as a result, we managed to keep the school more full of pupils than we than than many other schools. And that's not passing judgment on any other schools at all. Because like every other school, we were, you know, we were substantially reduced by the end of the summer term. So I guess the message is, you know, don't do the silly things. But we obviously with Covid, you had to do the things you had to do. And there was a bit of a workload issue that you couldn't avoid regardless. We couldn't we. And it was it was just something we couldn't move. So some of the things that we did to adapt, for instance, is that I didn't want to stop doing any form of lesson droppings and giving feedback to teachers on how to improve. So we had to adapt our systems to be able to do that because we did have all this necessary Covid stuff. But we wanted to keep everything going that we wanted to have our cake and eat it, basically, I don't know, like it was a challenge. But we took the approach that actually if this is taking too much time, like we always do, we've got to find a more efficient way of doing it. Sure. Now, you've also let me pick up on where we started at the start of our conversation. You mentioned Zumba. So you've got in school health events, flu jab yoga. You've mentioned, you know, with the seasonal events, the less serious side staff get dressed up for World Book Day. And you've also got the international visits. Obviously, they perhaps haven't happened. I suspect, you know, Iceland, Martin and Greece. Well, we've fingers crossed for next year. All right, your fingers crossed. So what does the well being stuff look like at the moment for your staff? The I will just say in the interest of full disclosure, the yoga has also disappeared from the most recent version. Just, yeah, so. But, yeah, I mean, the series was is that a covid headache or a logistical or people won't see the member of staff who was doing it on maternity at the moment? But also, you know, it was it was, you know, something that that member of staff had to have to spend time doing. So it wasn't necessarily fair. And I know we did we did almost like a list of well being things. But I go back to what I said earlier to really impact the well being of stuff. You really need to tackle workload. And I know there are things you can you can do. We still do the flu jobs and all that. But we had another one this year as well. And and that sort of thing. But, you know, the panter, hopefully, you know, if we're allowed to do big gatherings, the panter, yeah, no, we don't know if we're a secondary, but no, no. So I guess, you know, lessons learned and where you are with your role now. How do you see your influence in workload being shifted to across the trust in with schools in different contexts? Is that something that's part of your brief or just a passion? No, absolutely. It's definitely part of my brief. So everything we implement, it's always try it. The most important thing to do is before you introduce anything new and I know this is there in the things as well. I passionately believe this. In fact, I think I put it right at the bottom just to kind of underscore it. But the if you're going to introduce anything new, you've got to take something away or make it more efficient. And that's the approach that we're taking. And a lot of the times I do feel like I'm going into schools at the moment and I'm just kind of hacking and slashing, kind of going, no, you're not not as kind of willingly as just hacking and slashing. But we've overcomplicated this. So, you know, you have. So, for instance, if we think about teaching and learning, people are told, put this in your lesson and it'll be a great lesson. It'll be an excellent lesson, whatever, whatever, whatever. And I'm just going in there and say, no, no, take it away. What you want to do is check what the kids know about this already, teach them some new stuff about it, check that they've understood it and then come back to it in future to make sure that it's going in their memories. That is it. That is it. And if you introduce any of this feedback, it's way too complicated. So that's a good point to kind of sum things up. So that and I guess the profession and, you know, I know you're active on Twitter. We're in a much better place. And we've still got plenty of things to do, but we're in a much better place, I guess, to when you and I first qualified. Yeah, I would say so, because I know a lot of it is being in evidence informed profession. I think I don't think we can really overestimate how important that is, even though still more evidence needs to be collected as the recent AF report pointed out, you know, some of the things that we we consider to be evidence informed still need some rigorous evaluation. Yeah. Sorry, David, I interrupted you again. I was just going to say we I was involved in a research project, a series of research project last year, projects last year, where we actually did we did proper research into proper studies into making sure that anything we were implementing in terms of workload wasn't having a negative impact on people attainment. So we need to do even more of that. Yeah. And I think also there's a real shift for teachers becoming research literate more than anything, you know, methodologies, whatever else. And even, you know, we find things that we don't like or necessarily can take and apply into our own school, you know, that going back to it works somewhere, but not everywhere. You know, there's the research informed, but being literate about research methods to be able to challenge them also, which, you know, some of the EEF things that we came out on retrieval practice still question that there's not enough robust evidence for absolutely, you know, keep pursuing it. And I think that that definitely put a cat among the pigeons for all the retrieval practice fans. And I know I'm one of them. Let's sum things up then, David. So you'll know in my podcast that I kind of throw a few kind of fast-paced questions at the end, kind of catch you off guard, little kind of summary of all the things that we've covered. But I guess just before I come to it, I'd like to ask you a big question, I suppose. And I know the answer is going to be challenging and difficult. But if we just put back on our head, you know, put a hat on in terms of the LG BQT agenda. Yeah. Well, and I know you've written about it on my site and it's an important topic, you know, and I've also researched, you know, if you are, if you want to come out, it's much more of a struggle for people in isolated communities rather than the big cities, they're saying. I'm not saying that it's difficult for people in cities, but there was an interesting piece of research I discovered as part of your blog. I guess the question I want to ask is, you know, where is the dialogue for not you, but, you know, teachers, and teachers who want to come out, people still ostracized, you know, etc., etc. You're the expert here. Give me some help. Where do you see this conversation of being gay openly in a school? Is it still a tough gig for some people or is it or in a better place? I guess the question I want to ask. We're in a better place than we were 18 years ago, the year I started teaching. You know, when Section 28 wasn't repealed, actually, even if I wanted to, in the first, you know, before I started teaching, I wouldn't have, you know, before 2003, I wouldn't have actually had the opportunity to do so. And I wouldn't necessarily have had the support. And I think that really, I think that nails it. I think it depends on the school. I'm part of the Askel LGBT group. And we meet usually about every month. And it's quite interesting, because obviously they're school leaders and obviously they're very on board and they're LGBTQ themselves. And I think that does make a real difference. But I am seeing an increasing number of allies. I've done quite a lot of work with some primary schools recently. Those headteachers are not LGBTQ themselves, but they really are passionate about it as, you know, lots of teachers are really passionate about tackling racism, prejudice against disability and so forth. But the appetite needs to be there from the senior leadership team, I think. So because I was, yeah, I think it's quite difficult if you go into a school and they've not done much work on that. And I sometimes think that I almost take it for granted that we've created a culture where it is absolutely, you know, absolutely. I mean, the point I raise it is because, you know, you're getting out to a few more schools, I see a lot of schools. And I know that dialogue isn't the case everywhere. It's not. And I always warn teachers to choose the school very carefully, totally, to your personal values and the school's vision and values. All right, so that that's, you know, it's a big topic. Maybe we can revisit that one in the future. So let me wrap things up then, I suppose. So we've covered your kind of role, your origins into the teaching profession, which was an interesting story. You're kind of role what you're doing today and then this big workload thing and how it all, you know, has shaped out throughout COVID. I guess one final question on this is what's still the workload key issue that you that you now perceive that still needs to be cracked? I think we really need to look at senior leadership workload. And I'm saying that obviously as a member of senior leadership. But as far as I'm aware, we haven't, you know, got. We haven't tackled the succession, you know, planning and I think that a lot of a lot of people might do. I'm not saying it for this school, but I've had conversations with people from other schools who are not senior leaders at the moment. But because of what we've gone through with COVID and because we've had to adapt to so many changes out of necessity. I think some people don't necessarily see senior leadership as something they want to join. Yeah. And actually, if again, apologies for interjecting, but the latest education support research, the teacher wellbeing index, I found not surprisingly supposed, but also disheartening that school leaders out of all the different roles in education, you know, teaching assistant support staff, et cetera, were the least likely to go and seek support. And, you know, if I recall, you know, I'm sure you this is all still very familiar to you, you know, 80 plus hour weeks, you know, if you're in a special measure school, we can't have any school leaders work in part time, you know, co-headships still quite a rare thing, actually, as well. So I guess, you know, going back to that top question, what are your hopes for senior leadership specifically then? And I wish I had the answer to be perfectly honest, Ross. I'm not sure what the solution is. And I have, as I say, I still work with the DFA and we've recently updated the workload reduction talk. It hasn't been published yet, but we were we were all of us who are working on that were pushing of more of an acknowledgement. I think that's a really good start. But an acknowledgement that, you know, the hours that senior leadership particularly have been putting in over the last couple of years and what he's really sustainable in the long term. So I don't have an easy answer. No, no, no. And, you know, when I when I did my deputy headship, you know, I love the classroom, I was only doing six hours a week. But even still, I was, you know, 60, 80 hours a week during term time easily. And that's without the normal workload you get if you were teaching 22, 25 lessons. So, yeah, I guess it's still a big nut for us all to crack unpicking succession planning, a good work in well being life as a school leader and having a bit of a life also and showing that evident in school. So I look forward to the toolkit being published. Any rough idea when the DFA might do that? No, I'm not sure, to be honest, it will be in the next couple of months. They're currently contacting everyone who's contributed items for it. Just to keep our eye on that. So let me wrap things up then. So I'll throw some whistle stop questions that you'd know. Let's see if we can catch you off guard. So let's start easy. What project are you working on at the moment? What's on your desk? You can see my desk. And then you say the gigantic piles of paper over there. I think, oh, God, I don't even know where to begin to be perfectly honest. But I suppose in terms of my own role, what's your next big deadline? Again, not sure where to go to be perfectly honest. I think I'm really enjoying getting to grips with the curriculum impact side of things. I think what lockdown did for a lot of us, even though we were incredibly busy during lockdown, I hate that myth that teachers were just sitting around drinking cups of tea in their bedrooms in their pajamas and whatever. That certainly wasn't the case. I don't know about any, you know, I'm sure like a lot of leaders. I was actually working longer hours outside the office than I was inside the office. But it sometimes also gave us a little bit more thinking space to do the curriculum intent side of things. Yeah. And what's really exciting now, although some people don't see it as as exciting, but I do, is seeing how that's then translated into the classroom. And one of the things that I'm really interested in is that tight looseness between this is the curriculum as planned and then how do teachers, how, what kind of latitude do we give teachers to implement this in their own way? It's in our list of things we do. We do encourage teachers to teach in their own way, but at the same time, we've all got to be teaching the same thing. Yeah. So that's the thing that I'm working on. That's the common thread. No offence. This is supposed to be quick fire. So let's let's let's finish this sentence. If you were Education Secretary of State, I would never miss an opportunity to acknowledge how hard senior leadership are working. Yeah, great. And what's the most useless thing you've bought online during the pandemic? A useless thing. My husband's the special is the expert on buying useless things. We've got so many remotes and pieces of technology in our language. I have no idea. None of them are working. OK, I'm going to say some of those things. Piece of advice for an early careers teacher who wants to become research literate. What would you advise? And follow the right people on Twitter because it's a great shortcut. Now, I'm assuming you've already said you're doing your best job ever. But if you had that off the wall, wacky career that you could choose, what would it be? This is going to sound really maudlin. I often think that if you're talking about purpose and that kind of thing, a funeral director. Right, OK, that's a that's a very, very interesting one. I think I think you can have a real impact on people's lives. Yeah, no, you definitely could. What's the last thing you experienced that made you laugh or cry? Um, I'm going to say the last James Bond movie. Right, I just cry thinking about it. Who would you recommend I interview next and why? Within education, I presume. Ideally, yeah, otherwise an education podcast. I try to have an education focus. I try my hardest. Yeah, otherwise, I go with Taylor Swift or someone like that. All right, well, I'll chase Taylor. But let's let's keep it real. Any any education recommendations? Oh, gosh. Yeah, I go for Claire Hollis, who does really great stuff with diversity in the curriculum. All right, I shall look clear up. Thank you. Where can listeners find out more about Barbican, your trust, maybe you on Twitter, et cetera. Will give us some hyperlinks. Yeah, so Matrix Academy Trust is who I work for. And the building I'm in right now is Barbican School. And yeah, you can find out information about those just by giving those or they're both dot code on UK's. And I'm on Twitter, David T. Lowbridge. Great. Thanks, David. I guess, you know, pandemic question, what's the pandemic taught you? Don't put off things that you're passionate about. OK, and my final question, what do you hope to do your legacy? I hope that, well, we've got loads of people who I've taught who come back to this school or over the schools. So I kind of see that as quite flattering, to be perfectly honest. I didn't I didn't manage to put them off. Well, there you go. So thank you, David. There you go, listeners. David Lowbridge Ellis, a school improvement leader in the West Midlands. David, thank you for your time. Thank you, Ross. And it's been really good to see how the Barbican workloads moved on. I really look forward to the reduction toolkit being published. And, yeah, I think we should revisit the topic on the LBLGP for you and see what work needs to be done and see if we can support teachers out there. Thank you for joining me. All the best. It's a pleasure. Cheers, David. Bye now.