I often think back to when I first started teaching 8 years ago. I had a vision for my classroom: I wanted mini-whiteboards, pupils paying attention without raising their hands, and a perfect line outside before I welcomed them in. I even I had this absolutely crazy idea for a classroom reward system that, I believed, would revolutionise my behaviour management (it didn’t).
The sheer amount of effort it took to get these routines in place was immense. And I failed.
However, there was one exception: a whole-school policy on pen colours. Now, I have my own opinions on making pupils use five different coloured pens in a lesson (I think it’s a ridiculous waste of time, that focuses teacher effort on management rather than teaching), but, paradoxically, this routine was the easiest to implement.
Why was it so easy?
Because every single teacher was wrangling these pen colours, six times a day, every single day. The pupils grew accustomed to the routine, and seasoned teachers managed it like second nature. Eventually, I got the hang of it too. It became automatic, freeing me up to focus on what actually mattered. Teaching.
I then left that school… But anyway.
This experience gets to the heart of a huge, often invisible, barrier to learning: cognitive load.
Consider the pupils’ daily journey.
Timmy leaves Mrs Hodge’s room, where she wants him to come straight in, write ‘Do Now’ answers in their books, and raise their hands to contribute. As Timmy walks down the corridor to Mr Smith’s lesson, another mental checklist begins. ‘Right, Mr Smith… he’s the history teacher… what are his rules? Line up? Yes, line up. Do Now on the mini-whiteboards? I think so. And definitely no hands up, he doesn’t like that.’
Timmy’s limited working memory, which should be gearing up for Mr Smith’s history lesson, is instead clogged with procedural details. He is spending mental energy trying to remember the how of the classroom before he can even engage with the what of the lesson. When they inevitably get it wrong, they might get a sanction, potentially derailing Timmy’s behaviour in his history lesson.
This mental exhaustion isn’t limited to the pupils. As a teacher trying to establish your own bespoke routines, your cognitive load is immense. The first five minutes of your lesson become a frantic game of multitasking.
Similar to Timmy, my own internal monologue often sounded like this: ‘Are they lining up correctly? Remind James to be quiet. Okay, they’re coming in… why are half of them just sitting down? Tell them to get their books out. Three are already chatting. Remind them of the rule. Right, the Do Now… is anyone actually doing it? Let’s review their answers. James has his hand up, well that’s wrong… Do I give him a warning? He’s clearly got the answer right, why would I sanction him for that?’
I was so busy managing the machinery of my classroom that I had no mental space left to do the actual job.
This is precisely why centralising these routines is so critical. It dramatically reduces the cognitive load on everyone.
When pupils know that in every single classroom, they enter silently, collect their books, and start the Do Now on a mini-whiteboard, their mental workspace is freed. You could even have PowerPoint slides with a common design, so pupils aren’t spending mental energy figuring out where to find the title or the task (like we do). They can dedicate all their focus to learning.
For the teacher, the change is transformative. My current school focuses on routines so I am no longer a micromanager of my classroom. I can walk around the room focusing not on if students are using their whiteboards, but on what they are writing on them. I have the capacity to circulate and teach from the second they enter the room.
But perhaps the most important part of all this is the sense of teamwork it fosters among the staff. In a school without shared systems, every classroom door closes and each teacher becomes an island, fighting their own battles and reinventing their own solutions. This creates inconsistency. With centralised routines, that isolation dissolves.
Suddenly, we are all speaking the same language. An experienced teacher can offer genuine, practical support to an ECT, not with vague advice, but with specific strategies tied to a system they both understand. The conversation shifts from “Here’s what I do in my room,” to “This is how we do the ‘Do Now’ routine.”
Responsibility becomes shared.
I recently discussed this with a colleague from another school who argued that whole-school routines remove teacher autonomy. It’s a criticism I hear often, but I fundamentally disagree. I don’t believe my primary role as a teacher is to be a relentless inventor and troubleshooter of classroom procedures. Spending my energy designing a routine, testing it, and then overhauling it when it inevitably fails.
These shared routines don’t restricts my autonomy, they handle the logistical heavy lifting, freeing me to focus on the teaching.
Anything that streamlines that process and reduces stress for both me and the pupils in front of me is not a threat, but a tool.
Reflecting on my early years in the classroom, I see now that my frantic attempts to manage my own little kingdom were inefficient and counterproductive. The constant need for students to switch between different expectations in every lesson creates a staggering cognitive load that acts as a direct barrier to learning.
By centralising our core routines we remove that barrier. It provides students with the calm and predictable environment they need to engage deeply with their subjects. It empowers teachers to move beyond the role of procedure-enforcer to become bloody good teachers. And most importantly, it transforms a collection of individual classrooms into a unified team, collectively dedicated to the one thing that truly matters: learning.
inquestion. 