To make personalised learning truly effective, teachers need to underpin this with the process of setting goals together with each student. This allows teachers to discover their difficulties and needs while encouraging them to own and take an active interest and responsibility for their learning.
“We flip it [the learning] away from me as the teacher towards you as the student,” Mr Puttock said.
“Personalised learning allows me to get to the root of what you need rather than what I want to give you.”
And gone are the days where it is simply accepted that a student is particularly strong in a subject and permanently weak in another, Mr Puttock said.
“Of course students have their individual strengths but these develop and evolve in time,” he said.
This is because personalised learning recognises progress isn’t a straight line, students are not ‘bad’ at a subject, rather they may not be very good at it yet.
Once students understand this, it starts to develop a growth mindset.
“We take teaching down to an individual level. So I’ll know what it is that you need to help you achieve,” Mr Puttock said.
“If we know you’re not very good at maths we’ll ensure you’re brought up to what a healthy, numerate global citizen is going to need — it’s the complete opposite of one size fits all. Personalised learning allows you to fly in the things you’re already good at but helps you with the things you’re not yet good at.”