Empowering English teachers with EdenFiftyOne

English teachers need to be empowered and enabled by multi academy trusts (MATs) and senior leaders to teach, mark and assess one thing at a time, well, two…

English and maths have long stood as the two pillars of the educational system, both equally as important as the other in supporting the development of young people during their educational journeys.

But unlike their academic counterparts, English teachers are routinely faced with teaching, marking and assessing ‘everything at once’, resulting in an increased workload, and a regularly felt ‘impossible task’.

According to data published by the National Education Union, 44 per cent of teachers surveyed suggested they would leave the profession by 2027.

Founded by Tom Reynolds, former five-times head of English and specialist leader of education (SLE), EdenFiftyOne is an award-winning edtech platform that encapsulates his step-bystep approach to English skills education and the process for exam success.

Tom said: “English teachers face an impossible task of doing everything all at once, whilst learners don’t have the flexibility to explore and master skills, one at a time.”

As is common practice across maths departments and maths lessons, Tom believes that English teachers and leaders should be empowered, enabled, and encouraged, by MATs and senior leaders, to adopt a similar bitesize methodology.

Teachers will always have a primary focus taken from their curriculum map, poetry, prose, drama etc, but a secondary focus on a particular foundational skill keeps things simple for teachers and, crucially for students: lightening the load of the day-to-day learning journey and making the job manageable.

By having a curriculum-only learning objective, learners are indirectly requested to demonstrate their proficiency across all skills, and subsequently, teachers are inadvertently challenging themselves to mark everything, for everyone.

Tom added: “The pressure of the curriculum means that teachers are forced to focus on whether students have the wealth of knowledge, without having the time to establish the foundations of understanding to build that knowledge upon.”

The EdenFiftyOne edtech platform promotes the 51 universal skills at the core of every English curriculum.

Peter McClincy, teacher of English at Sandbach School, said: “It’s fantastic to listen to someone who so clearly understand the issues involved… I’m emotional just listening to this. This is what we’ve been trying to do for years but this will make it work. I can see immediately how this will help us.”

Tom and the EdenFiftyOne team have an exclusive offer for Educate Magazine readers. The first 25 schools to use the code ‘Educate51’ on EdenFiftyOne’s ‘Contact Us’ form will receive FREE ACCESS to the EFO Platform until December 2024.

Simply visit: www.edenfiftyone.com/contact to register your interest and book a platform demonstration.