Helping people make what matters happen.
This website brings together articles, podcasts and videos on teaching, learning, leadership and school improvement.
My book,
Total Impact: The Science and Practice of Improving Learning,
will soon be released and is available for pre-order.
Pre-order link: https://bit.ly/4wuNECq
Together, we can make what matters happen.
SLLG Read
SLLG Watch
Stop Wasting the Meeting : How team conversations change what happens next for students
Schools do not improve because teams meet. They improve when teams use meeting time to think carefully about learning, examine teaching decisions, and agree on what needs to happen next.
This short video introduces the guide Leading Teaching Improvement in Team Meetings and explains how school leaders can support better learning conversations. The message is simple: collegial learning needs structure. Without it, team meetings can easily drift into updates, opinions, administration, or general discussion. With the right tools, meetings can become a place where teachers stay close to evidence of student learning and make practical decisions that improve classroom practice.
A meeting is not collegial learning just because teachers are in the same room. It becomes collegial learning when the conversation changes what happens next for students.
Up stream thinking- a story
This story is a metaphor for learning in schools: the visible struggles students experience are not the problem themselves, but signs of deeper causes. Just as rescuing children from the river treats the immediate danger without preventing it from happening again, responding only to learning difficulties addresses symptoms rather than the source. The real work lies upstream, examining the structures, expectations, and teaching practices that create those challenges in the first place, so that fewer students end up needing rescue at all.
Stop Launching on Hope: Why school readiness matters before the next initiative
Schools do not need another initiative launched on hope. They need to know whether the conditions are strong enough for the work to succeed.
This short video explains why school readiness matters before leaders introduce new programs, frameworks, or improvement priorities. Student outcome data tells us what is happening. Teaching and curriculum data helps explain what is producing those outcomes. But system capability data helps leaders see whether the school is ready to carry the work of improvement.
Implementation does not fail because schools lack ambition. It fails when the system is not ready to carry the work.
Defining Good Teaching: The teaching quality blueprint
This video introduces the Teaching Quality Blueprint : a six-step collaborative process designed to help schools define what good teaching actually looks like in practice.
Rather than relying on vague ideas or individual interpretation, the blueprint guides teams from understanding student needs, to examining evidence, to identifying the specific teaching practices that make the greatest difference. It then makes those practices visible, establishes consistency across classrooms, and connects everything to feedback and professional learning.
The focus is simple but powerful: clarity before improvement.
When schools build a shared understanding of teaching quality, conversations become sharper, feedback becomes actionable, and improvement becomes consistent and sustainable.
SLLG Listen: Success Criteria
Global Education is a leadership podcast hosting conversations between Ashley Govender and Peter Hayes. Through thoughtful conversations, the podcast explores clarity, coherence, and system design in schools. Each episode examines the ideas and practices that shape high-quality teaching and sustaina
SLLG Listen: The key to effective teaching and learning
Effective teaching is not about doing more, but about creating clarity.
In this episode, Ashley Govender and Peter Hayes explore how aligning learning goals, success criteria, and assessment creates more focused teaching, more efficient classrooms, and better outcomes for students.
SLLG Listen: Success Criteria & Feedback
Peter Hayes & Ashley Govender explore what it really means to make learning visible. They discuss how success criteria, feedback and lesson planning work together to help teachers use evidence of learning more effectively.
SLLG Learn
Professional learning that does not end when the session ends
Practical training for schools that want better ideas to become better routines, in classrooms, team meetings, and leadership practice.
These sessions are designed for schools and systems that want professional learning to make a visible difference. Each session is active, practical, and grounded in real school work. Participants do not simply listen to ideas; they apply them, test them against classroom and team examples, and leave with tools, language, and next steps they can use immediately.
Sessions are available as 3-hour workshops, full-day workshops, or as a connected professional learning sequence. Delivery is available in person or as an interactive webinar.
Contact Peter Hayes to discuss the best format for your school or system.
Total Impact: The Learning and Teaching Model
Schools are doing more than ever to improve learning. Yet meaningful improvement can still feel difficult to sustain when teaching, assessment, inclusion, collaboration and leadership are treated as separate priorities.
Total Impact offers another way.
This session introduces the Learning and Teaching Model from Total Impact: The Science and Practice of Improving Learning as a practical framework for making the core work of teaching more coherent, deliberate and responsive. The model helps educators connect what students need to learn, what success looks like, how learning should be taught and assessed, and what to do when students need greater support or challenge.
The focus is not on adding another program or initiative. It is about making the practices that matter most work together.
Participants explore how clarity, cognitive load, explicit teaching, assessment, feedback, inclusion and collaboration can be aligned through a shared model of learning and teaching. The session supports teachers and leaders to build a common language for effective practice and to reduce unnecessary variation in students’ learning experiences across classrooms.
This is an active professional learning session. Participants work with examples, examine planning and teaching decisions, and apply the model to real classroom and school improvement contexts.
Participants leave with:
- A clear understanding of the Learning and Teaching Model from Total Impact
- A practical framework for aligning goals, success criteria, assessment, instruction, feedback and support
- A shared language for discussing teaching quality and learning improvement
- Clearer ways to connect classroom practice, team collaboration and school improvement priorities
- Practical next steps for using the model in planning, teaching and professional learning
Available as a 3-hour session or full-day workshop.
In person or interactive webinar.
Meetings That Actually Change Practice
Leading collegial learning in team meetings
Most schools have team meetings. The question is whether those meetings are changing what happens for students in the classroom.
This session helps leaders and teachers move team meetings beyond administration, updates, and general discussion. It focuses on how teams can use meeting time to stay close to evidence of student learning, examine teaching decisions, build shared responsibility, and agree on practical next steps.
The session is designed for schools that want collegial learning to become more than a phrase. Participants explore how to structure professional dialogue so that it leads to better routines, better follow-through, and stronger collective practice.
The focus is practical: what leaders say, what teams look at, how evidence enters the conversation, how teachers learn from one another, and how meetings create movement between one session and the next.
Participants leave with:
- A practical structure for leading learning-focused team meetings
- Discussion prompts that keep the conversation close to student learning
- Leadership moves that support curiosity, clarity, and follow-through
- A usable protocol for turning professional dialogue into changed practice
Available as a 3-hour session or full-day workshop.
In person or interactive webinar.
Teaching Is Not a Memory Test
Clarity and cognitive load theory
Students do not struggle only because the content is difficult. Sometimes they struggle because the learning is unclear, the explanation is overloaded, or too much is being left for working memory to manage at once.
This session translates cognitive load theory into practical classroom decisions. It helps teachers and leaders understand how clarity, modelling, explanation, worked examples, guided practice, checking for understanding, and feedback can reduce unnecessary load and make learning more accessible.
The focus is not theory for theory’s sake. The focus is what teachers can do tomorrow: how to make learning intentions clearer, explanations more precise, examples more useful, practice more purposeful, and support more responsive.
Participants examine classroom examples, identify where cognitive overload can occur, and redesign learning moments so that more students can access, process, and retain what is being taught.
Participants leave with:
- A practical understanding of cognitive load theory
- Strategies for reducing unnecessary confusion and overload
- Clearer routines for explanation, modelling, guided practice, and checking for understanding
- Practical ways to design lessons that protect attention and working memory
Available as a 3-hour session or full-day workshop.
In person or interactive webinar.
Contact
To discuss training options, dates, formats, or how these sessions can be adapted for your school or system, message Peter Hayes for more information. (see chat bottom right)
Downloadable resources
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Peter Hayes
Peter works with teachers, school and system leaders to assist them teach and lead with high impact solutions that result in improved student achievement and well-being.
Peter knows that the work of schools and educators is to support students to be active participants in their own learning and experience success. He strongly believes that, although not easy, high achievement for all is not only possible but urgent and necessary to ensure all students can lead an active and rewarding adult life.
For over 35 years, Peter has successfully worked with schools and systems in Australia, Asia, North America and Europe to adopt innovative, high impact solutions to challenges in education. He draws on experience from various leadership positions he has held in schools and systems across Australia and in Sweden to help educators make a difference.
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