Centralised Resources: How to Spend Less Time Planning and More Time Teaching

In every school I’ve worked in, the departments have started centralising their resources within a year or two of my arrival. The reasons for this shift may differ, and the level of enthusiasm from staff can vary, but I’ve always been a strong advocate for it. So, why should every department embrace centralising resources? Let me explain why I believe it’s a powerful strategy that not only benefits teachers but more importantly, our students.

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Centralising resources involves creating a comprehensive repository of lessons and materials for every topic taught within a subject. These resources are designed with a consistent structure, ensuring that they deliver effective, high-quality lessons accessible to the widest range of students. The goal is to provide all students, regardless of their starting point, with the tools they need to achieve.

One common critique of centralised resources is the perception that they are overly prescriptive and limit teachers’ professional autonomy. However, an effective strategy for centralising a department’s resources is to design them to meet the needs of our most vulnerable while allowing flexibility. Centralised resources should not be rigid scripts for delivering identical lessons to every student. Instead, they should serve as a foundational ‘base’ of best practices, strategies, resources, and explanations. Teachers can then adapt these materials with minor adjustments to suit their specific classes, again, ensuring all students achieve the same goals regardless.

For me, the concern about losing teacher autonomy often stems from a misunderstanding of the purpose behind centralised resources. These materials should be created with the understanding that the PowerPoint, or whatever platform is used, is not the lesson, the teacher is.

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In my department, we have centralised lessons for all topics in KS3 and KS4, each designed around a consistent set of questions that students use to demonstrate their understanding of the content. These lessons include clear explanations, models, Hinterland, and best practices to guide students toward successfully answering these questions. Importantly, teachers have complete freedom to adapt these resources to suit their classes. However, if a teacher’s adaptations prove particularly effective, they are expected to contribute these improvements to the central repository for everyone to benefit.

Heads of Department should understand that for students to consistently demonstrate their understanding across different classes, they need to be able to answer the same core set of questions as their peers. While this approach has occasionally sparked debate when introducing centralised resources, the focus must remain on the ultimate goal: ensuring students can demonstrate their learning to meet the expected outcomes. Without consistent questions across classes, how could we reliably assess whether students have achieved the desired outcomes?

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For teachers who have been in the career for many years, you often already have a bank of resources that you yourself use that is designed around your style of teaching. You refine these year upon year as you move through your career and the changes become more minute and eventually, you can teach, basically, without any resources in front of you. 

My question to this is: How do you know that resource is the best it can be?

This may sound deliberately antagonistic, however, I believe the question is valid. You could say that you have been observed using this resource and the feedback was great. It could be suggested that your outcomes are good and that is a reflection of your resources but, could it actually just be your teaching? Could those outcomes increase further? Again, could that resource be… better?

We have all observed lessons in our subject area where a teacher delivered a concept in a way that feels entirely novel. It makes you wonder why you hadn’t thought of that approach yourself and inspires you to incorporate it into your own teaching. While this is a valuable experience, it shouldn’t rely on the chance observation of a lesson to discover such an approach. Instead, these ideas and strategies should be discussed, shared and accessible to both teachers before either of them steps into the classroom.

As teachers, we should always strive for improvement, and collaboration is a powerful way to achieve that. Regardless of how long we’ve been in the classroom, engaging in this process allows us to refine our practice and deliver better outcomes for our students.

Two minds are better than one, and ten are even better. When multiple staff members collaborate to create a resource, the result is often far superior to what any individual teacher could produce alone. While it’s true that “too many cooks can spoil the broth,” fostering a collaborative culture where resources are openly discussed and evaluated for their effectiveness should become commonplace.

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During my PGCE, I was in a school that had begun the process of centralising their resources but I, a lowly trainee teacher, was not allowed to use them. I had to create all of my lessons from scratch. The reason for this? I hadn’t earned my ‘stripes’ yet.

This has always puzzled me, even from the very beginning of my teacher training. Why would someone who has never stood in front of a group of students be expected to know where to even begin when it comes to producing a resource? Instead of being tasked with creating resources from scratch, why not provide a ready-made resource to deliver? This would allow trainees to focus on how the learning is delivered, rather than spending hours figuring out what the resource should look like.

This meant that I would constantly receive criticism of my resources – not my actual teaching which meant I valued the feedback poorly. How the hell was I supposed to know if it was good? I have never taught before! Never mind the fact the last time I had heard of a covalent bond was back when I was 16 years old myself!

A student teacher spending hours searching through TES for something to cannibalise to make something they think is good is a complete waste of their time. They should instead be focusing on what makes a good teacher and that is not a resource.

During my first classroom teacher job, I remember laboriously spending hours and hours collating PowerPoints, exam questions, gap fill tasks and spending absolutely no time on my explanations, delivery, behaviour management or even my subject knowledge. This made me a less effective teacher.

If I had been provided with the resources to deliver a good lesson, I could have spent this time developing myself to ensure it was a great lesson – this is significantly more valuable.

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Finally, my final point. A teacher’s time is precious.

Many proponents of non-centralised resources claim it develops teachers, new and old, expands their subject knowledge and makes them understand their curriculum. To this, I say: give them the time and they will do this significantly faster and to a significantly higher standard.

As I’ve emphasised, it’s not the resource that makes the lesson, the teacher does. Teachers play a vital role in delivering rigorous learning. However, their effectiveness hinges on having the time and capacity to focus on what truly matters: the quality of their teaching.

Rather than spending countless hours crafting lessons or designing PowerPoints, a teacher’s energy should be directed toward activities that directly improves their instruction. This includes developing models to explain concepts, researching practicals and demos, and honing their subject knowledge. These activities help teachers build confidence, deliver more rigorous lessons, and respond effectively to students’ questions and misconceptions.

Moreover, all teachers should dedicate time to deepening their understanding of pedagogy. By exploring evidence-based strategies and reading around the latest research, they can better tailor their teaching to meet diverse student needs. Any time spent creating a lesson, that has been made thousands of times before, is time not spent developing them as a teacher.

Ultimately, the goal of centralising resources is to free teachers from the repetitive work of planning so they can focus on their professional development and the craft of teaching itself. By leveraging centralised, high-quality materials as a baseline, teachers can prioritise what makes the biggest difference: subject knowledge, expert explanations, and pedagogy.

Setting up a centralised system is not without its challenges; developing a cohesive theme and shared language across an entire curriculum takes time and effort. Our department began this process over a year ago, and we’ve only just completed our centralised lessons. However, the impact has been profound. It has shifted the focus from what is being taught to how it’s being taught. This shift will undoubtedly enhance both student understanding and outcomes.

Ultimately, that can only be a positive change.