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CONTACT US Word from the Head – 12 September 2025
Dear Parents,
It has been a pleasure to welcome another three groups of parents into school this week to catch up with us, meet form tutors and think about the year ahead. For Year 11, the chance to start thinking in depth about their A level choices and life in the Sixth Form made Tuesday a really exciting evening – there was a real buzz around the school as they went from department to department investigating their options. For Years 8 and 9 that’s still some way off, and it was great to talk to you all about what’s on the horizon for them this year.
One thing we have talked about at all our Welcome Evenings is The Learning Pit, a concept that illustrates what learning truly feels like. We have been working on developing Fearless Learners for several years now at Channing and this is a really useful visual representation of what we mean when we talk about this core aspect of learning.
The visual was created in the early 2000s by James Nottingham, who came in and spoke to staff on our INSET day before the start of term. He has worked closely for many years with Carol Dweck, famous for encapsulating the concept of the Growth Mindset, and The Learning Pit builds on that work and those of other leading educational researchers. With James Nottingham’s permission, we have created our own version to use at Channing.
Many people imagine learning as a steady climb up a ladder, but in reality, it’s more like tumbling into a muddy pit before you can climb back out again. That dip, or struggle, is not a sign of failure; it’s the most productive part of the learning process. However it is also one that many people – including Channing students – would sometimes prefer to avoid. As Mr Boardman and I explained to them in last Friday’s assembly, when they are in the Pit students may feel lost, confused, annoyed and frustrated. They might well think, “This is not as easy as I thought” or “Why did my teacher do this to me?”.
In fact we push students into the Pit intentionally, not because we are cruel but because we know that this is where true learning occurs. Dylan Wiliam, one of the top education researchers in the world, says: “If students don’t have to work hard to make sense of what they are learning, they are less likely to remember it in six weeks’ time.” The goal is to encourage students to step out of their comfort zones, which will cause a temporary dip in performance.
Elizabeth and Robert Bjork, researchers from California, refer to this as ‘desirable difficulty’. When students wrestle with a problem, their memory strengthens and their understanding deepens, leading to better long-term retention. You may have heard me use Professor Guy Claxton’s lovely phrase ‘intelligent floundering’ to describe this process. Indeed Jo Boaler of Stanford University adds that the most productive classrooms are those where students “struggle, fail, and still feel good about it”.
And that’s the joy of the Pit. After the initial confusion, students begin to climb out. The feelings of frustration are replaced with determination, as they think, “I need to work hard at this,” followed by understanding, as they say, “I think I’m getting it,” and finally, “Eureka! I understand it now”. Our role as teachers is to support students in getting out of the Pit, not to give them all the answers right away. Giving students the answers would suggest we don’t believe they can work it out for themselves. Instead they need to use everything they already know, ask questions and make links and connections to find their own way out.
We have shared the following advice with students to help them when they are in the Pit:
- Work at it: Students should stay focused, organise themselves, take risks and be 10% braver.
- Reframe it: Instead of saying “I can’t do this,” students should try saying, “I can’t do this yet” or ‘I can figure this out”.
- Help each other: We encourage students to help their classmates by asking questions and pushing them to explain their reasoning, rather than by simply giving them the answers.
We want to encourage students not to dodge the Pit but to search out the hard things that make them struggle, to jump in and wrestle with them. Because every time they climb out, they are not just learning a subject; they are learning to keep going, how to think harder and how to believe in themselves. This is what ultimately leads to Girls Enjoying Success (and yes, they did roll their eyes at that bit!).
For your part, when your child comes home and tells you that she was really struggling in a lesson and the teacher refused to help, please do ask her about her experience in the Learning Pit first, before emailing her teacher with a concern that she’s not getting enough support. None of us like to see our children frustrated and the temptation to step in and smooth things out for them remains strong at all ages (believe me, I’ve been living this at home recently too!). However when we do that we suggest that we don’t trust them to be able to sort things out for themselves: “You can figure this out” is a really powerful response.
As an aside, this morning I was talking to some Year 7 mothers who mentioned that they were feeling a bit nervous about the start of homework next week. A parent from an older year group reminded me of a Tooled Up resource which I shared some years ago in Word from the Head, 45 Positive Phrases to Say to Your Child at Homework Time. That, and these 10 tips for encouraging focus at homework time, might be of use to you in finding the balance between your input and their independence when it comes to homework. If you’re not yet logged into Tooled Up, all the information you need is in the section below.
Staff have also spent a little time in the Learning Pit at the start of term as we got to grips with a new piece of software. We are pleased to introduce SOCS (School Online Communication System), our new digital platform designed to streamline communication and organisation across our school calendar, co-curricular programmes and sports fixtures. You may already be familiar with SOCS from other schools: it provides a centralised hub where you can easily view forthcoming events, track your child’s participation in clubs and activities and sign up your child for paid activities and trips. In addition, it gives access to up-to-date information on sports fixtures, including team sheets, match locations and real-time results.
We encourage all of you to explore SOCS and take advantage of the clarity and convenience it offers. The school calendar can be filtered to just events for your child(ren)’s year group(s) and includes links to all key documents. It will also provide you with instant news and updates should there be any last-minute changes to your child’s fixtures or activities. You just need to use the email which the School holds for you in order to set up an account and full details are given in the section below. Once you’ve activated your account, you will be able to access all the information relevant to your child(ren) and sync their calendars to yours. For those of you with children on both sides of the hill, please be aware that the Senior School is going online with SOCS this term with the Junior School following in January.
Finally this week, you will all have heard me celebrating the wonderful A level results achieved by the Class of 2025 this year. With over 95% of grades at A* to B, we have outperformed many of our local competitors and I am delighted to be proving that it is possible to twin inspirational teaching with a pastoral-first approach. I have always believed we can be a kind, warm, community-minded school and an academic powerhouse. Even more exciting is that our approach has been recognised this week with the news that we are finalists in the Girls’ School of the Year category at the Independent Schools of the Year Awards. While we are keeping our fingers crossed for the awards evening on 12 October, the nomination alone is a reflection of the success of what we do here at Channing. Thank you for making that choice for your child.
Year 7 are out on their Stubbers trip today – I look forward to hearing how much they enjoyed it (and how wet they got!) on Monday. I hope all of you have a restful weekend at the end of a tiring first full week of school.
With best wishes,
Lindsey Hughes
Headmistress
