A school leaders’ guide to 2025/26: Teaching and learning

What’s on the horizon in 2025/26?

As the summer sun begins to fade and we prepare to open our school gates again, the 2025/26 academic year comes into view – not just as a date in the diary, but as a critical juncture for education. 

This coming year, we will have to navigate a shifting policy landscape, as well as evolving societal expectations, and persistent operational pressures. 

For governors and trustees, school leaders, and teachers and staff, the key to success is not merely to respond, but to anticipate.

Indeed, strategic vision has never been more crucial. In a climate marked by constant change, those with foresight will be best placed to lead with clarity and conviction.

As such, this series of short blogs aims not just to summarise existing changes but to predict what’s yet to come. It’s a framework for professional curiosity; a panoramic view of the key themes likely to define the year ahead.

In this blog, we will explore…

3 Teaching and learning

The last decade or so has brought with it a flurry of pedagogical fads and research-informed practices. While, undoubtedly, this can be enriching, the risk is fragmentation – pockets of good practice that remain isolated in individual classrooms.  

The challenge for 2025/26 is to knit these threads into a coherent, school-wide fabric of teaching and learning so that whether a pupil is in Year 2 or Year 11, they encounter a consistent, high-quality approach underpinned by shared principles.

Embedding evidence-informed practice

Evidence-informed teaching is not a laminated poster in the staffroom; it is the muscle memory of the school. This means:

• Shared language of pedagogy – Agreeing on a handful of key strategies (e.g., retrieval practice, modelling, scaffolding, oracy) and using the same terminology across the school.
• Lesson study cycles – Small groups of teachers collaboratively plan, observe, and refine lessons, focusing on a single evidence-based strategy in action.
• Practical CPD – Using staff meetings for live classroom modelling, peer micro-teaching, and case study reviews – not just slide decks of research summaries.
• ‘How to’ guides – Clear, visual guides for core practices so that every teacher (new or experienced) knows what great teaching looks like in your context.

Creating a culture of trial and improvement

Innovation flourishes when staff feel safe to try, tweak, and learn without fear of punitive judgment:

• Low-stakes observations – Replace formal lesson observations with peer coaching cycles.
• ‘Test and tell’ slots – Staff share one change they trialled in their classroom this term, what happened, and what they learned.
• Pupil feedback loops – Use structured pupil voice surveys to see how new approaches affect engagement and understanding.

Balancing pedagogy and workload

With recruitment and retention challenges intensifying, protecting teacher capacity is vital. Practical solutions include:

• Slimmed-down marking – Shift to whole-class feedback, verbal feedback codes, or live marking where appropriate, reducing hours of written marking without compromising impact.
• Assessment efficiency – Audit your assessment schedule for duplication or “data for data’s sake.” Replace low-value assessments with formative approaches that feed directly into planning.
• Centralised resources – Subject teams build shared lesson banks and knowledge organisers, so individual teachers aren’t reinventing the wheel.
• Protected planning time – Ring-fence at least one uninterrupted block each week for collaborative planning, free from duties or meetings.

The trick is to make “How will this improve teaching and learning?” the first question for any new initiative, and “How will this affect workload?” the second. If you can’t answer both convincingly, it’s probably not a priority.