Why I started Invicta Education
In my early years as a secondary school teacher teaching History and Politics to students in the south east of England, I saw some students make incredible progress, while others who appeared to have natural levels of ability, were unable to reflect this in their grades. Common explanations from teachers, students, and parents for this were simple: “they’re very weak”, “I’m just not a writing person” or “that student is very intelligent”. We all accepted these explanations and allowed things to continue as normal.
For me, something always felt unexplained by this. Why were some students making enormous strides in their education, while others sat on a plateau? And, what can we do to help those who aren’t making progress? Around this time, our school had some training from Steve Oakes on GCSE, VESPA mindset framework. Steve and his colleague Martin Griffin - two former school leaders - had dedicated many years of research identifying what successful learners do. They identified 5 non-cognitive factors all successful students had to explain their success: Vision, Effort, Systems, Practice and Attitude. Their plan was to democratise learning, borrowing from the techniques, habits and attitudes of successful students across the five areas, and teach them to all students.
Steve’s training session was an epiphany. They hadn’t created anything new. Much of their work drew together existing research across many different areas of cognitive and non-cognitive fields of psychology. However, they’d shown that all students had the ability to become far more effective learners, if we work on improving the generic skills needed to study effectively. Finally, we had a way to look beyond those simple explanations for student success, and to start embedding meaningful learning skills into our everyday teaching.
As a teacher in the British school system, the benefits were obvious. We gained a new way to increase performance in the standardised GCSE and A-Level national exams. I took on a role as a Head of Year or Pastoral Learning manager, where I was responsible for a grade of students who were on their journey through the national GCSE exams. We delivered a daily curriculum of small lessons and assemblies to embed these skills alongside rounds of one to one mentoring with students to deliver targeted support in the areas they needed it most.
The benefits of these skills were immediate, as their application extends well beyond simply helping teenagers through exams. I realised these skills were also helping me become a better teacher and leader. We were teaching skills to use in further education, the work place and beyond. So what were we teaching? Let’s use Oakes and Griffin’s framework to explain.
Vision - All students need to know what they want to achieve. They should be able to set clear, manageable goals to reach their vision. Crucially, learners need to be able to connect their daily studies to a bigger picture.
Effort - This is the core to student success. A student can have a clear vision of straight A grades, but this simply isn’t going to happen without repeated regular hard work. Not only do the best students have the habit of regular independent work, their work is done out of their comfort zone.
Systems - Effective students need to have clear, organised systems to manage their resources and time.
Practice - The best students use deliberate practice, drawing on the best study skills to maximise their efforts.
Attitude - Successful students seek out and embrace feedback. They use a growth mindset and they have a clear grit to see them through their studies.
These areas cover a huge range of non-cognitive skills, drawing on research from dozens of academic studies. Carol Dweck’s work on mindset, Angela Duckworth’s research on Grit and Anders Ericsson's study on expertise have been invaluable resources to explain the importance of these factors. Our job was to take their advice and make it accessible to students in easy workable activities.
Working on these skills isn’t an immediate answer to student success. Like all skills, with regular effort and practice, they develop over time. It was extremely rewarding to see students become more proactive with their learning, seeking out feedback and working independently. I saw my role as a teacher change. Rather than simply spoon-feeding information and endlessly repeating skills to pass an exam, we began to see ourselves as facilitators of learning, guiding students in the right direction and providing advice. The emphasis had changed; students themselves became responsible for driving their own learning and study. We were no longer helping students pass an exam: we were teaching them to become better learners.
This is where Invicta Education was started. I love teaching students about History and Politics, explaining concepts and seeing students develop a similar passion for the subject is why we do the job. However, developing the key learning skills in students has a far bigger reach, across multiple classes and subjects.
I set up Invicta Education with a clear intention: to help students become better learners. To lift the limits on their learning, and allow them to flourish in whatever area they choose.
There will be more blog posts exploring all of these concepts, offering help and advice. Please get in contact for a chat!