Metacognition and Self Regulation in Action: A Place-Based Civic Model for System Improvement

26th March 2025

Speaking at the Centre for Social Justice in February, UK Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, laid out plans for a new era of school standards delivering on the government’s Plan for Change. The plan’s key and consistent message has been ‘to break down the barriers between background and success’ so that, through schools, every child achieves and thrives. 

At the ASCL conference in March, the Secretary of State spoke of the need for a ‘relentless pursuit of better’ in our education system. She called for schools and leaders to ‘spread what works, end what doesn’t, and share the spirit of restless improvement.’ Her words capture a growing movement in education - one that recognises the power of collective action not just within school trusts, but across the whole system.

For years, we have talked about the ‘trust dividend’ - the idea that within school trusts, deeply intentional and focused collaboration drives improvement and impact at scale - or that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (an idea evoked by the Aristotle quote). But we must now take a wider view. It is time to consider the ‘civic dividend’ - how place-based groups of schools, spanning school trusts and maintained schools, can collaborate for the benefit of all children in a geographic location, educating a city, a borough or a county.

The need for this kind of collaboration is clear. As the Secretary of State noted, too many children remain in ‘stuck’ schools, and disadvantage is deeply place-based. The Department for Education’s Priority Education Investment Areas (PEIA) initiative, which identified 24 local authorities with the highest levels of disadvantage, has been an important step in moving towards this.

In 2022, James Townsend, Leora Cruddas and Ed Vainker called on school trusts to expand their ‘locus of responsibility’ beyond their own schools and act as anchor institutions within their communities. That challenge - building partnerships across the system, using our collective strength to drive place-based improvement, and deliberately empowering others - lies at the heart of this work.

If we create a system that harnesses the collective capacity, innovation, wisdom and excellence of schools and school trusts, not only do we unleash the power of the ‘civic dividend’ we create the opportunity to influence and shape education across the whole system, unlocking the ‘system dividend’. 

Windsor Academy Trust (WAT), a family of 15 schools across the West Midlands, has the moral purpose of unlocking the academic and personal potential of its 10,000 young people. WAT is also deeply committed to civic and system leadership. When the previous government introduced 24 Priority Education Investment Areas across England (previously opportunity areas or selected due to combined levels of performance and deprivation), Sandwell and Walsall were amongst these. 

In January 2024, a  project, led by Windsor Academy Trust, on behalf of the DfE, in partnership with five other local school trusts, Teach Like a Champion and Steplab commenced. The project focused on Metacognition and Self-Regulation , as EEF evidence shows effective metacognition and self regulation developments add an additional seven months progress in learning for students. Together, they worked with a group of 40 schools, from over a dozen school trusts, dioceses, and local authorities, thus embarking on a place-based, collective journey to raise attainment and to be a civic and system force for good.

Now in the final weeks of the 15-month project, these schools are improving teaching and learning across Walsall and Sandwell and pioneering a new model for leading school improvement at scale across responsible bodies: one that is locally impactful and nationally relevant. 

The offer, designed to be ‘structured but flexible,’ is based on three goals:

• Improve capacity of school leaders responsible for teaching and learning across 40 schools, two PEIAs, and many responsible bodies;

• Improve metacognition and self-regulation that impacts student outcomes in KS2 and KS4 in English and maths;

• Build and sustain capacity in a number of responsible bodies to lead metacognition and self-regulation developments beyond the life of the project.

These goals are guided by an approach that develops leader capacity to consistently deliver on three core school priorities:

Project Approach

1. January 2024 After inviting schools to submit brief expressions of interest, 40 schools were selected to participate in the project. Some schools were high achieving, most were not. Additionally, nine regional experts from six school trusts and families of schools were identified to study the approach to sustain impact beyond the life of the project.

2. February Windsor Academy Trust, Teach Like a Champion, and the team of nine regional experts visited each school for a half-day, meeting with head teachers and carefully observing the teaching and learning at the school. From these visits, the project diagnosed four teaching techniques to prioritise as the building-blocks for student metacognition and self-regulation.

3. March School-based implementation teams (each consisting of 3-5 headteachers, senior leaders and teachers) began developing knowledge and shared language through a series of workshops. Facilitated by Doug Lemov and his team, these practice-rich workshops focused on the application of cognitive science in the classroom. 

4. April Schools began turnkeying the techniques to their teachers using the same high-quality CPL developed by Teach Like a Champion. Regional experts received additional training whilst providing support to participating schools.

5. May As a shared language and practice began to embed at the classroom level, implementation teams were trained in Steplab’s instructional coaching programme to build a culture of drop-ins and drip-fed instructional coaching based on their school’s foci. 

6. June Follow-up visits were undertaken to roughly half the schools to measure progress, diagnose further needs, and tailor autumn content and implementation support. 

7. July and August The project’s regional experts, having received extensive coaching in the spring, took on even greater responsibility as implementation advisors to their portfolio of participating schools. They helped each school tailor its implementation plan in preparation for inset days. 

8. September The delivery team launched the second phase of the project, as the new academic year began, by sharing progress data from June’s follow-up school visits. Teach Like a Champion outlined three priority implementation levers for schools to focus on during the second phase of the project. 

9. October These levers became the focus of a two-day “Leading for Change” workshop led by Doug Lemov. Additionally, 17 video clips, each capturing effective implementation of the techniques by participating schools, were studied and published. Regional experts, as stewards of project sustainability, continued to lead: in small groups, they facilitated study of teaching video with their implementation teams. Known as video collaborative meetings, these rich discussions allowed neighbouring schools to form deeper connections, build knowledge together, and integrate one another’s bright spots in teaching and project implementation. 

10. November Regional experts undertook visits to the remaining half of schools, again measuring progress and identifying additional ways to support schools on their improvement journey. 

11. December and January 2025 With 2024 KS2 and KS4 data published, project delivery leads studied early signs of impact, seeking to see if a correlation was emerging between strong implementation and the lagging indicators of KS2 and KS4 student progress and attainment.

12. February After identifying lesson preparation as a crucial link between curriculum and pedagogy in June and November’s follow-up school visits, Teach Like A Champion responded with a direct-to-teacher lesson preparation session, which was attended by 140 teachers from most participating schools.

13. March To measure and sustain project impact, Teach Like a Champion and the project’s regional experts visited 37 of the 40 participating schools over four days in early March.

The project culminated with a day-long celebration of impact on 27th March 2025. Hosted by Dawn Haywood and Doug Lemov, implementation teams from the 40 participating schools gathered to study and celebrate the project’s success with an eye towards deepening implementation and sustaining impact. While there’s still much to do, including a deeper analysis of the long-term impact on student progress and attainment, some strong signs of project efficacy have emerged.

Conclusion One: Improving Metacognition and Self Regulation Improves Schools

Over the course of the project, we’ve seen an important confirmation of the EEF’s research: a tight correlation exists between metacognition and self regulation and attainment. The chart below shows the percentage of KS2 primary students meeting the expected standard for reading, writing, and maths combined at each school (represented by a red dot) compared to teacher efficacy with the techniques, as measured when project leaders visited in June and November, 2024:

Because metacognition and self regulation unlocks learning, supporting school improvement with the techniques is critical. And, indeed, schools have improved significantly. The chart below shows teacher mastery of techniques increasing over time: a score of 1.5 (out of 2.0) indicates that 50% of teachers involved with the project have mastered their school’s focus technique. Over the course of the project, the team measured a threefold increase in the number of schools where over fifty percent of teachers showed mastery of the techniques. From February 2024 to March 2025, the average proficiency of teachers across the project increased from 0.8 to 1.7 (out of 2.0). Finally, on qualitative surveys, the percentage of school leaders who predict the impact of the project on teaching and learning will be ‘significantly positive’ (the highest possible response) increased to 70% by January, with 100% agreeing it will have a 'positive' impact, indicating that the longer schools participate, the more confident leaders are in the project’s impact. 

Conclusion Two: Place-Based Civic Models Benefit System Improvement 

The results above would be notable if they were achieved by an individual school or trust. What makes the potential so promising is that the results collectively represent tens of thousands of students in maintained, school trusts and diocese schools collectively working together.  First-hand, we have seen many young people in Walsall and Sandwell, previously bound by postcode, are now united by the Secretary of State’s new vision for raising pupil standards via responsible bodies collaborating. This, at its heart, is a story of system leadership at scale - one that shows how, by working together, we can move beyond a trust dividend, and deliver a civic and system dividend for all children.