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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.

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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 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

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Details:

  • Suitable for all teachers and school leaders - primary, secondary, post-16, special schools and alternative provisions

  • 4 in-person days plus 2 online clinics

  • Location: Central London - venue TBC

  • Cost 

    • £1250 early bird (book before Friday 27 Feb)

    • £1350 full price

  • Includes:

    • A  3-year subscription to the Making Change Stick professional learning suite for all staff at your school (worth over £950)

    • A 1-year individual ‘access all areas’ subscription to the Botheredness resources (worth over £100)

    • Signed copies of Botheredness and Making Change Stick

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Dates:

 

SUMMER TERM 2026
 

  • Fri 1 May, 9.30-3.30pm – in person (+ social)

  • Fri 19 Jun, 9.30-3.30pm – in person (+ social)

  • Tue 14 Jul, 4-6pm – online clinic

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AUTUMN TERM 2026
 

  • Fri 18 Sep, 9.30-3.30pm – in person (+ social)

  • Wed 14 Oct, 4-6pm – online clinic

  • Fri 20 Nov, 9.30-3.30pm – in person (+ social)

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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

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BOOKING FORM

MEET YOUR FACILITATORS

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Hywel Roberts is a teacher, writer, storyteller, humourist and ‘world leader in enthusiasm’. He is as at home working with children on the carpets of their classrooms as he is in front of hundreds of headteachers on the conference circuit. 

 

Hywel contributes to the national conversation around education at school and university level. He is also a well-respected and widely published author and columnist. Hywel contributed to BBC Bitesize acting as a content provider and script doctor during the pandemic in 2020. 

 

Hywel's 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…

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Dr James Mannion is a teacher trainer, author 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 Rethinking Education, an organisation dedicated to helping schools embed evidence-informed practices in complex, real-world environments. He has worked with thousands 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 (with The Real David Cameron) of the Rethinking Education podcast, which has had over 600K downloads to date. 

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