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Episode 259: What happens if you stop asking every teacher to plan in isolation, stop relying on heroic individuals, and build a genuinely shared planning system across an international school?

In this episode of Thinking Deeply about Primary Education, Kieran is joined by Lewis Sargent and Matthew Lee from Wales International School in the UAE to dig into the nuts and bolts of collaborative planning, PLCs and teacher workload.

Lewis and Matt describe how they have moved from uneven, individualised planning to a system where subject teams plan ten days ahead, quality assurance is built in, and every teacher has protected time to adapt high quality plans for their classes. They talk through what their professional learning communities actually do, how cross phase observation works in practice, and why everything they have put in place is grounded in theory rather than hunch.

Across the conversation they explore:

• Why planning across the school was so variable when they arrived, and why they wanted a single planning vehicle everyone could use

• How the new planning cycle works, including ten day lead time, subject leader checks and sharing plans with parents in advance

• What their PLCs look like week to week, and why previous experiences of PLCs often left teachers cold

• The concrete impact on teacher workload, confidence and the quality of lessons

• The challenges and unintended consequences of system change, including staff turnover, curriculum reform and supporting weaker teachers

• Their advice for leaders who want to ringfence collaborative planning time without breaking timetables or budgets

If you are thinking about centralised planning, shared schemes, or how to make professional learning less random and more coherent, this episode offers a detailed case study from a busy international school context.