IMPLEMENTING BOTHEREDNESS

Overview

This six-part programme supports teachers and school leaders to create a culture where learning feels alive – where children lean in, care about their work, and genuinely get stuck in.

It brings together two powerful strands:

The pedagogy of ‘botheredness’: Using imagination, connection and story to warm up abstract knowledge and make the curriculum matter.
Implementation and improvement science: Applying tried-and-tested tools and strategies to embed these ideas consistently and sustainably across a whole school.

The programme blends inspiration with implementation know-how: helping you re-energise teaching and learning, while also strengthening the clarity, routines and shared understanding needed to create a culture where care and investment happen routinely in busy, real-world classrooms.

The programme is for anyone hoping to enhance their existing practice and for leaders who want to move on from cultures of compliance towards cultures of participation, optimism and joy.

We will:

Explore the core principles of ‘botheredness’ – professional imagination, story, stance, and helping students feel that education is done with them, not to them
Develop practical ways to warm up curriculum content so that abstract knowledge becomes vivid, meaningful and memorable. These transferable tools will change the way we understand ‘lived’ curriculum
Look at how to move pupils from simple ‘engagement’ to genuine investment, where curiosity deepens and motivation grows
Use tried-and-tested implementation tools to identify what needs to change and design a coherent, workable plan to make it happen
Support leaders to create the conditions in which staff feel confident, valued and involved – because bothered adults make bothered children
Help you build a culture where joy, connection and warmth sit alongside clarity, consistency and purposeful routines

Details

Suitable for all teachers and school leaders - primary, secondary, post-16, special schools and alternative provisions
4 in-person days
2 online check-ins
Location: Central London - venue TBC
Cost
- £1250 early bird (book before Feb half-term)
- £1350 full price
Includes:
- Signed copies of Botheredness and Making Change Stick
- A 1-year subscription to the Making Change Stick professional learning suite for all staff at your school (worth over £750)
- A 1-year individual ‘access all areas’ subscription to the Botheredness resources (worth over £750)

Dates

Summer term 2026

Friday 1 May – in person, 9.30-15.30
Friday 19 June – in person, 9.30-15.30
Tuesday 14 July – online check-in, 16.00-17.30

Autumn term 2026

Friday 18 September – in person, 9.30-15.30
Wednesday 14 October – online check-in, 16.00-17.30
Friday 20 November – in person, 9.30-15.30

By the end of the programme, you will have:

Developed a clear understanding of the pedagogy of ‘botheredness’ and how it can transform learning
Designed curriculum experiences that move students from engagement to genuine investment
Learned practical ways to use stories, imagination and stance to humanise and warm up abstract knowledge
Applied implementation tools to plan, sequence and evaluate improvements
Created the conditions for staff buy-in by involving people early and leading transparently
Built a school culture where curiosity, connection and joy are part of everyday learning
Taken giant strides toward creating a lasting whole-school culture where learning feels alive and everyone gets stuck in

BOOKING FORM

MEET YOUR FACILITATORS

Hywel Roberts: Teacher, writer, storyteller, humourist and ‘world leader in enthusiasm’

Hywel Roberts has been a teacher for over thirty years. He is as at home in front of hundreds of headteachers on the conference circuit as he is when working with children on the carpets of their classrooms.

Hywel contributes to the national conversation around education at school and university level. He is also a well-respected author and contributes regularly to a variety of publications. Hywel contributed to BBC Bitesize acting as a content provider and script doctor during the Pandemic in 2020.

Books include his award-winning book Oops! Getting Children to Learn Accidentally, Uncharted Territories (written with Dr Debra Kidd) and, most recently, the best-selling Botheredness. He has also contributed fiction to a prison-based literacy reading programme developed by The Shannon Trust.

Hywel holds an MA in Education and Poverty. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching. He also part-owns a commercial cask ale brewery with some pals, but that’s another story…

Dr James Mannion: Teacher trainer, government advisor, author… and purveyor of sci-fi rock musicals

Dr James Mannion is a teacher trainer and government advisor who specialises in learner effectiveness, oracy, and implementation and improvement science. Formerly a teacher and school leader for 15 years, James holds an MA in person-centred education from the University of Sussex and a PhD in self-regulated learning from the University of Cambridge.

James is the author of Fear is the Mind Killer (2020, co-authored with Kate McAllister) and Making Change Stick: A Practical Guide to Implementing School Improvement (2025) and leads Making Change Stick, an organisation dedicated to helping schools embed evidence-informed practices in complex, real-world environments. He has worked with hundreds of schools, multi-academy trusts and government agencies in the UK and internationally, supporting leaders to design, implement and sustain meaningful, lasting improvements.

James is an Associate at Oracy Cambridge, the Chair of the Education Policy Alliance, and the co-host of the popular Rethinking Education podcast, which has had over half a million downloads to date.