iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 16/06/2026

The cognitive overload some teachers experience is enough to leave them drained of brain power by the end of the day. That day in day out for years is enough to make anyone leave. open.substack.com/pub/joel1201...

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 11/02/2026

When I came for my interview in March 2024, I wanted to work with pupils with a similar background to myself and improve their life chances. Every single member of staff at Dixons Croxteth knows why we get up every day: to improve the education of every pupil. I am incredibly proud to work here.

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 11/02/2026

This is my favourite part of the report. The school when I joined just over two years ago is not the same one I work in today. The school was given a closure notice after two Inadequate reports and today we have a school where pupils feel valued and safe.

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 11/02/2026

This is something I am incredibly proud of. Working in a turnaround school is tough and whilst we do not work for Ofsted, it is amazing to have our hard work recognised. Every single member of the school community has worked so hard over the past three years to achieve this.

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 04/02/2026

These have a chokehold on male teachers!

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 31/01/2026

"all behaviour is an unmet need"

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 29/01/2026

Everyone with a Plan 2 student loan has known it was a poor deal. For a large portion of the population the marginal tax rate is 9% higher. They aren't student loan payments if interest makes it so it never stops. It's a graduate tax. Stop calling it anything else.

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 18/01/2026

New Post 📝 Throughout the years, I have seen a smorgasbord of sometimes non-justifiable asks of a teacher in a 60-minute lesson. Here I show some of what I have been asked in the past alongside a plea to leaders to consider the cognitive load of their teachers. Link Below

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 13/01/2026

Student loans are an issue and as those with a Plan 2 student become a larger proportion of the population, it is going to be a much larger talking point. I don't hate what I got for my student loan, but by god I hate the idea of paying it until I'm 52. open.substack.com/pub/joel1201...

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 13/01/2026

Student loan interest is back in the news again, and rightly so. About 18 months ago, I wrote a blog post about the impact student loans have on take home wages and how it's getting worse. Back then, I said my student loan debt was £70,000. Today:

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 12/01/2026

New Science Story Post 📝 Would you swallow a pathogen to prove the medicine wrong? From smallpox to the "accidental" discovery of the cure for ulcers, this is the story of the scientists who used their own bodies as a lab. open.substack.com/pub/joel1201...

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 01/01/2026

For those ~25% of teachers, January is usually a good time to have a look at TES. There are better schools out there. tes.com/jobs

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 28/12/2025

First Substack Post📝 In order for me to identify where I could have improved in a lesson, I have created my own vision of my perfect lesson. Here I narrate through my perfect lesson and why I use it as a measure for all my lessons. Link below.

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 01/12/2025

I absolutely love having a brand new lab! This is now our third refurbished lab in 2 years and it has been a pleasure to teach and do Practicals with students

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 30/11/2025

Does anyone have these AV1 robots in their school? They essentially are a camera in your lesson where a pupil streams from home. Personally, I would flat out refuse to have this in my classroom but I'm curious...

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 27/11/2025

Are student loan repayments a graduate tax? In short, by 2030, yes. Due to the freezing of student loan thresholds until 2030, the national minimum wage will be £400 short of the threshold for repayments. This means anyone with a student loan in 2030 will be paying back 9% above the threshold.

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 16/10/2025

I fully get that preteaching Tier 3 words before they're used is best for understanding. However, just looking at AQA B6, it is impossible to preteach all of these words whilst also teaching actual content. This is one topic out of 24 on combined... The curriculum is too big!

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 16/07/2025

Thank you so much to @alexjquigley.bsky.social for coming to visit us for our awards evening. Your speech to our pupils was sincere, insightful and exactly the message they needed to hear, especially coming from a former pupil. It was also a pleasure to finally meet you!

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 07/07/2025

The weirdest one for me has to be this 👇 Why on earth is that on the GCSE?

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 03/07/2025

4/ Unemployment. Looking at OECD data, unemployment is drastically lower in all countries when education level is higher. UK gov data again shows this yet again that if you want unemployment to decrease, you increase education levels.

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 03/07/2025

1/ A school is a place of learning. Not a place to fix all societies ills. The most deprived areas in the country need a route out of their deprivation. If we look at the social determinants health, many of them are difficult to change for a child.

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 24/06/2025

If I'm honest, I hate most analogies. The worst one is the bucket of water for limiting factors. A pupil once asked me why anyone would make a bucket like that and I've been unable to look past it ever since.

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 02/06/2025

An error on my part. The positive is highlighting (without a highlighter) useful clues or markers towards the answer. In the don't, I meant highlighting as a method of summarising or picking out key info from a text. E.g. 👇 😅

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 02/06/2025

7/ In this question, I show my actual thought process. Metal is a good conductor, this means heat transfers well. I also include references back to demos they have seen (Al ice cube demo) to support their recall.

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 02/06/2025

6/ In this 6-mark question from 2024, I am not giving the students the answer, but instead highlighting as much of the information I can get from my own memory to support my answer. I would usually then show the pupils how I plan the answer before allowing them to complete it

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 02/06/2025

5/ This is very similar to what I get students to do during my revision sessions with them whilst attempting to pull out as much as possible from the question. For example, in the question below, I have not just annotated for the question, but for a lot more than is being asked.

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 02/06/2025

4/ Another interesting point is how these are used in MCQs. Students are highlighting key terminology, writing down definitions for words in the question and eliminating incorrect answers. All incredibly useful!

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 02/06/2025

3/ For questions that appeared on both higher and foundation papers, the higher students were more likely to annotate - sometimes 20% more likely! But the bit that really sticks it out for me, is the students that annotate the most, get the higher grades.

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 30/05/2025

I've just got access to Google Veo so here is a springer spaniel going skydiving.

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 21/05/2025

8/ And then there is employment. In almost every single region, FSM pupils are ~10% less likely to be employed at 28 than their non-FSM former classmates.

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 21/05/2025

6/ Again, going back to university degrees, the results are fascinating. 39% of non-FSM pupils in London get an undergrad. ~10% higher than almost every other region.

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 21/05/2025

5/ Just looking at Maths and English alone...

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 21/05/2025

4/ And then there is Attainment 8. The difference between regions in the UK and London is staggering. What gets me the most is that outside London, they are all fairly similar - showing how widespread the issue actually is!

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 21/05/2025

3/ This is heartbreaking. Young people should not be victims of geography. They should have the same opportinity wherever in the UK they are born. Even just looking at the dispartiy in wages. A young FSM individual in the North East takes home £5000 less than their non-FSM counterparts.

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 21/05/2025

1/ Those who are in reciept of FSM are half as likely to go to university than non-FSM (16% compared to 32%) Looking at a separate gov report not going to university has long-term impacts to earnings. Those with no GCSEs only increase due to minimum wage social-mobility.data.gov.uk/intermediate...

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 21/05/2025

I am currently reading the Sutton Trust Opportunity Report, and here are some of my key highlights from the report. First of all, the impact that geography has on outcomes in the UK cannot be ignored. /🧵 www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/u...

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 15/05/2025

The testing effect is of course a real thing, but when the knowledge gets significantly more complex, it doesn't have the same effect. This may work fine at KS3 but moving into KS4 and KS5, I just cannot justify the time spent testing and marking. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 18/04/2025

I was having such a lovely half term...

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 29/03/2025

Cool as hell but not the best view because of the clouds Taken through the solar filter for my phone

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 26/03/2025

Does anyone have any idea why the 'data from other services' link has vanished from almost every get info about schools page on .gov?

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 26/03/2025

I see people in the UK driving around in a full on GMC truck and wonder why they need that, how are they driving that on our tiny roads, what are they transporting, and is it a dead body?

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 26/03/2025

This one was actually an interesting read and whilst it mentioned that it took in demographic data it just didn't do anything with it, which to me felt like a waste. So much more information could have been gleaned from this study that may have actually been useful 5/

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 26/03/2025

A few months ago, I went on a crusade around interactive WB. (Waste of my time. Learnt nothing.) Not a single article I read mentioned the context in which this groundbreaking tech of the early 2000s was improving outcomes. Many mention just one school, no context at all 4/

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 26/03/2025

The sheer amount of work Dallimore has done in regards to questioning is staggering and genuinely impressive but again, context. This specific example is uni students but again, context is missing. What about these students? What about their background? 3/

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 26/03/2025

A meta analysis from the 1980s discussing the importance of the type of questioning. High cognitive questioning improves outcomes. Great. Cited thousands of times. However, what were the school contexts? High disadvantage? Private? What about parental disadvantage? /2

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 25/03/2025

Saw this on TikTok. A principal giving up his desk/office for a mobile desk allowing them to be more visible around the school... What are your thoughts?

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 10/03/2025

Guess what chemical I used today... 👍

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 01/03/2025

Had an amazing day at #TTRConnect thanks to @ttradioofficial.bsky.social for the opportunity to present how science teachers can bring Hinterland into the classroom

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Joel Kenyon @joel120193.substack.com · 27/02/2025

Really interesting data to peruse from @thenfer.bsky.social The variation in the rates of teachers leaving within five years of qualifying is interesting and a lot starker than I thought. There is so much school workforce data here looking over the past decade! www.nfer.ac.uk/key-topics-e...

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