The 4Ps: A shared language for high-quality teaching

The 4Ps offer a shared language for consistent high quality teaching and curriculum delivery. In this five-part series, Matt Bromley breaks down each one and offers practical strategies and self-evaluation criteria for teachers. In part one, he introduces the 4Ps…

This article first appeared in SecEd Magazine on 24 April 2024.

One of the schools I support is on a mission to improve the quality of teaching it provides so that all students are enthusiastic to attend school and motivated to learn, are challenged and engaged by an ambitious curriculum, and are supported to make good progress and be prepared for their next steps.

The secret to the school’s success will be consistency: making sure every student receives the same high-quality education every day.

As I’ve told them, all the features of high-quality teaching already exist sometimes, somewhere in their school, they’re just not embedded every time, everywhere.

To help them on their journey, I have formulated a framework called the 4Ps. The idea is this: we want a simple way of capturing all the key actions on the school improvement plan, a means of teachers self-evaluating their current practice to identify their professional development needs, and a shared language with which to articulate their vision and values.

I settled on the 4Ps after a review of their current practice and after lots of in-depth conversations with staff and students:

1. Purpose
2. Pitch
3. Pace
4. Progress

The starting point is a set of “student privileges” – this sets out what every student is entitled to receive every lesson, every day. The 4Ps then articulate what this looks like from a teacher’s perspective and what staff must do to ensure they deliver the best student experience. Let’s explore each of the 4Ps.

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1, Purpose 

Purpose is about planning an ambitious curriculum to which all students have access – including, with appropriate support, disadvantaged students and those with SEND. It’s about making sure the curriculum addresses social disadvantages and gives students access to the highest levels of knowledge, skills, and experience.

The process by which we hope school leaders and teachers will achieve this is as follows:

1. They identify the knowledge and skills that students need to thrive in the future.
2. They plan and sequence the curriculum to ensure progression, using “threshold concepts” (or similar) to assess progress over time.
3. They ensure there is clarity about the knowledge and skills to be learned – in other words, each teacher will be clear about what they expect students to learn and why that is important.
4. There is a logic to the order and organisation of lessons – what is taught today will build upon and extend what was taught yesterday and will be built upon and extended by what is taught tomorrow.
5. Prior knowledge will be activated through planned retrieval practice and then added to, forging ever more complex mental maps in long-term memory.

Purpose is also about teachers articulating the bigger picture to explain to students what they are learning, why they are learning it, and what they will do with that learning later. This, we hope, will help build students’ intrinsic motivation. It will also ensure that students have the requisite knowledge to be able to understand new concepts, processing new abstract information within the context of what is already familiar and concrete.

The content taught will be ambitious, broad, and balanced. There will be high expectations of what all students can learn, and the knowledge, skills and behaviours students acquire will allow them to progress to the next stage of their learning journey. The content covered in class will be sufficiently broad so that it prepares students for what comes next, but it will also be taught with appropriate depth to ensure genuine understanding and aid transferability.

There are five teacher self-evaluation criteria associated with purpose:

1. I teach an appropriate and ambitious curriculum to all my students and ensure it fills knowledge gaps.
2. I teach the knowledge, skills, and behaviours that my students need to progress to the next stage of their education, employment, and lives.
3. What I teach represents excellence in my subject field and will prepare students for future success.
4. I sequence learning to ensure my students make progress and I use retrieval practice to activate and build upon prior learning.
5. I tell my students what they are expected to learn, why that matters, and how they will use it later.

2, Pitch 

Pitch is about making sure students know more and remember what they have learned. It is also about how students are helped to become increasingly independent and resilient as learners. It is about making sure all students are taught the same curriculum thus ensuring equality, but also that those with additional needs are supported through adaptive teaching strategies, such as task scaffolding, thus ensuring equity.

In short, scaffolding means that students who start with less will be given more help to access the curriculum and to achieve in line with their peers.

To achieve this, students’ starting points will be ascertained and gaps in prior knowledge – and any misunderstandings or mistakes students bring with them – will be identified and filled.

Next, all students will be helped to access the same task and any additional scaffolding will fall away over time, ensuring students become increasingly independent. There will be opportunities for retrieval practice and thus the building of mental maps or schema in every lesson.

While the shape and form of this retrieval practice – and when it happens within the lesson – will be dependent on the context and left to each teacher’s professional judgement, it will happen frequently to prevent knowledge decay and to help students connect prior learning to new learning.

In lessons, all students, not just the higher-performing students, will be stretched and challenged – both in terms of the content being taught, and in the feedback given to help students improve further.

Students will also be supported to develop research and study skills relevant to their learning, and to develop wider knowledge and skills beyond the school curriculum.

Expectations of all students will be high, both academically and in terms of their attitudes to learning.

There are five teacher self-evaluation criteria associated with pitch:

1. I continually improve and update both my subject knowledge and pedagogical knowledge so that I know what excellence looks like in practice and I use my knowledge to ensure I teach to the top for all students.
2. I teach all my students an appropriate and ambitious curriculum (thus ensuring equality), but I also make sure that those with additional needs are supported through adaptive teaching strategies, such as task scaffolding (thus ensuring equity).
3. I assess my students’ starting points and identify any gaps in their prior knowledge – as well as any misunderstandings they bring with them – and use this information to stretch and challenge all my students through the level of task difficulty and in the feedback I give them.
4. I plan frequent opportunities for retrieval practice and thus the building of schema.
5. I support all my students to develop the research and study skills they need in lessons and to develop wider knowledge and skills beyond the curriculum.

3, Pace 

Pace is about there being a sense of urgency in lessons – so that no student is allowed to sit back or be passive, but rather all students are engaged, active participants in the process of learning.
To ensure appropriate pace and student participation, teachers – aided by a whole-school culture that comes from the top in the form of visible, supportive leaders – will create and maintain a disciplined environment with clear expectations for behaviour, and students will be helped to stay motivated and to embody positive attitudes to learning.

There will be a strong focus on attendance and punctuality, and bullying, harassment and discrimination will not be accepted – any issues will be quickly and consistently dealt with.

Teachers will use their subject knowledge to enthuse students with clear and insightful explanations, during which they will pre-empt misconceptions and questions. Then they will model excellence and while doing so “think out loud” – making their invisible thought processes and decision-making (and the making of mistakes) visible to students, thus making their implicit expertise explicit to the novice learner and modelling metacognition and self-regulation.

Teachers will engage students in co-construction, producing a model together. Students will provide substantive content while the teacher asks probing questions, drip-feeds technical vocabulary, and passes the baton between students so they can comment on and add to each other’s contributions.

Teachers will use questioning effectively to engage students and to provide on-going formative feedback.

Lesson activities will be varied over time – with teacher explanations and modelling “chunked” with questioning, practice activities, or group discussions which will aid students’ retention and increase their attention spans.

On-going formative assessment and feedback will be used to support the teaching of the curriculum and provide information to students on which they can (and do) act.

There are five teacher self-evaluation criteria associated with pace:

1. My classroom is a disciplined environment in which there are clear expectations for behaviour, guided by the whole-school culture, and in which students are motivated and develop positive attitudes to learning.
2. I enthuse my students with clear and insightful explanations then model excellence and, while doing so, think aloud.
3. I ensure lesson activities are planned to gradually hand ownership to my students so that they can contribute equitably, and through this become increasingly independent.
4. I use questioning effectively to engage students and challenge and deepen their thinking, as well as to check understanding and provide on-going formative feedback.
5. I give students feedback only when I allow time for them to process it and act upon it. I then celebrate the progress they make. I use the outcomes of assessments to inform the pace and pitch of my teaching and am unafraid to stray from the plan and be flexible in my delivery.

4, Progress

The commitment here is that all assessments will be sense-checked for purpose, process, and validity to ensure teachers only assess students when it will have a demonstrable impact on their progress. There’s also a commitment to ensure all teacher marking is meaningful, manageable, and motivating, thus protecting teacher workload and wellbeing.

Progress will be expedited when students know how, when, and why they will be assessed and how prior learning will be activated and built upon. Students will only be assessed when an assessment will lead to feedback, and feedback will only be given when there is time carved out in lesson for them to process it, question it, and act upon it.

The results of assessments will be used as learning opportunities – often in the form of whole class feedback on the most common errors – rather than simply to draw lines in the sand.

Students will be given planned opportunities to extend their experiences including keeping themselves healthy and safe, and developing plans for their next steps.

When good practice is embedded, all students will make good in-year progress from their individual starting points and those identified as being at risk of not making enough progress will be supported in a timely manner and targeted, evidence-informed interventions will prove impactful.

Ultimately, as a measure of overall success, all students in school will be prepared for the next stage of their education and lives, and they will progress to high-quality destinations.

There are five teacher self-evaluation criteria associated with progress:

1. My students know how, when, and why they will be assessed and how prior learning will be activated and built upon.
2. The results of assessments are used as learning opportunities – often in the form of whole class feedback on the most common errors.
3. My students are given planned opportunities to extend their experiences including keeping themselves healthy and safe, and developing their plans for their next steps.
4. My students receive effective advice and guidance to help ensure they follow a relevant pathway and are prepared for the future.
5. My students make good in-year progress from their individual starting points and those identified as being at risk of not making enough progress are supported in a timely manner and interventions are impactful.

Next time

Over the course of the next four articles – due to be published weekly (return here for the links), I will explore each of the 4Ps in turn and will convert the theory into practical strategies.

Follow Matt on X @mj_bromley for more teaching tips like these.