From classroom struggles to systemic change: how two innovators are transforming education
When Josh stepped into his first classroom as a Teach First trainee, he faced the reality of how difficult teaching can be. Alongside co-founder Ben, he created Steplab – a professional development (PD) platform now used in over a quarter of England’s secondary schools. Josh’s journey shows how a personal drive to improve education, grounded in real classroom experience, can change thousands of lives.
When I trained with Teach First I was passionate about supporting young people to achieve, particularly those from more disadvantaged backgrounds.
I've spent my whole career thinking about the Teach First mission in my work. We know that great teachers can change student lives and at Steplab we aim to ensure that each and every teacher can become truly excellent.
A mission born in the classroom
I did the Teach First training programme in 2010 at a large academy in London. I moved from there to be part of the new team launching a free school serving one of the most disadvantaged communities in the country. Here, I saw the impact high quality PD can have on the quality of teaching and moved into a role leading professional development at one of the UK’s largest multi-academy trusts.
My teaching career, particularly in the first couple of years, was very difficult. I went in with a vision of the teacher I wanted to be and quickly realised that was unrealistic. I didn’t know how to get students to be quiet, how to use routines to make the best use of time or how to explain things in a way which meant students would understand. I had no clue. And I would sit in my school's PD and struggle to take anything from it that solved my specific classroom problems.
I wasn’t alone in this frustration – almost every teacher I worked with went to a weekly hour of professional development and didn’t improve. PD was just something we all had to do.
I knew it wasn’t going to help me improve. That was the catalyst for trying to do things differently.
Turning frustration into innovation
Originally, I didn't set out to build Steplab. I just wanted to help our teachers become the best they could be. Working at one of the most disadvantaged schools in the country, there was a real need for effective teachers in every classroom and I committed to reading everything I could to understand what great teaching really was - and how to translate that into high quality PD.
I wanted an approach where every teacher had just one thing to focus on every week, which is the idea of a step.
You don't need to improve everything all at once, do this one thing and your teaching will be better. Week on week this adds up, and I saw teachers transform their practice.
I knew seeing models of what good looked like, and collaborating with others to rehearse, would help teachers improve. But when I tried to roll it out across my school I found that even our most expert teachers struggled to think of the granular targets. They didn't know how to rehearse with each other. So, I committed to writing it all down and building the tools for us to use. Over time, more and more school leaders came to visit to see what we were doing. I knew at that point that creating something which could be used across all schools could help thousands of teachers.
This experience led me to set up Steplab - a PD platform for schools. Over time, we’ve created thousands of modules and courses to help share research in a practical, usable way.
We’ve filmed some of the best teachers in some of the best schools in the world to showcase what great teaching looks like.
And we’ve created tools that enable teachers to improve in a way which recognises the complexity of teaching, alongside the realities of schools.
Impact at scale
Over the last few years, I’ve been working full time on Steplab and we’ve grown the team to over 30 people working across the UK, Australia and North America.
The Steplab team, working to improve teaching every week.
We work with experts from around the world to continually improve and update the platform and are also proud to partner with organisations, like Teach First and Teach for Australia, to support more great teachers who are committed to working in schools who need them the most.
Nearly 60% of Steplab schools have higher than average Free School Meal (FSM) eligibility, which we’re really proud of.
Why change matters
We work hard to analyse the impact of our work. Some of our partner schools have seen a huge impact, not only on the quality of teaching but also on well-being and retention after using Steplab. So teachers are happier and more likely to stay when they have a great programme of PD.
We've also seen improvements in student feelings of efficacy in the classroom.
Students feel like they're learning and are enjoying lessons and therefore student attendance is improving in these schools.
Doing things differently
There have been many challenges along the way and convincing the sector to view how they do professional development was by far the hardest. The role that Steplab, and many other organisations, have played in this conversation has meant that millions of students are getting better teaching, every day.
Teacher PD is unrecognisable from what it was in 2010 and I’m really proud of the work Steplab has done to support this.
Driving change
Everything I’ve done started with my experience of Teach First. I’d say that if you have a great idea to solve a problem, make it work well in your school and, if you can show that it does, you’ve done 85% of the hard work! If something works, it will spread.
I joined Teach First to help achieve change and over the years I've really focused on trying to widen the impact I can have. I spent a long time having an impact on the students in my classroom, then on all the students in a school as a school leader.
Now, Steplab enables me to have an impact on hundreds of thousands of students. I’m proud to do that work, and I wouldn't want to be doing anything else.