“Teachers are and have always been the most important factor in education,” the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development says in its Teaching and Learning International Survey report, published in October.

It adds that “it is imperative that we understand what they are doing…what they can do better and how we can help them”.

They are sentiments few would disagree with. But ensuring that staff are delivering high-quality teaching, and knowing what they could do better, is easier said than done. It is something schools and multi-academy trusts (MATs) know well, but for international school groups, the challenge is another magnitude higher.

International schools are based across nations, teachers come from multiple backgrounds, pupils speak and learn in many different languages, and there are often numerous curricula being taught.

International Schools Partnership (ISP), for instance, has 111 schools in 25 countries with over 20 languages spoken and 18 different curricula. Nord Anglia has over 80 schools in more than 30 countries, and Inspired Education has 121 in over 28 nations.

Ensuring every lesson is maximised

Yet it is clear that these groups - and others like Cognita Schools, Globeducate and GEMS Education - are working hard to grasp the nettle of teacher monitoring, feedback and development, based on the certainty that it is the most important aspect of what they do.

“Ninety per cent of a pupil’s time is spent in class learning with their teacher,” says Mike Lambert, global education director at Inspired Education. “Therefore, this is the singular most important thing we can do to enhance the life chances of the children who are in our schools.”

So, how are these groups ensuring that pupils’ time in class is maximised?

As might be expected, there is no single recipe that all international school groups follow - but many of the ingredients are the same; our interviews with leaders are peppered with references to cognitive load theory, as well as the work of Tom Sherrington, Rosenshine’s 10 principles of instruction, Doug Lemov, Professor John Hattie and Professor Dylan Wiliam.

At Inspired, work has been done to codify “a set of Inspired teacher standards”, explains Lambert. “It’s around setting high expectations, promoting good progress, good subject knowledge of the teachers, good behaviour, well-structured lessons - the nuts and bolts of a good lesson.”

With this, Lambert says it is possible to be explicit to all teachers, regardless of background or location, about what good teaching looks like. “It is no longer this arcane art form assimilated by osmosis…we can be really explicit about what works,” he says.

At GEMS Education, meanwhile, similar work has taken place since the arrival of chief education officer Lisa Crausby, who explained to Tes earlier this year that she has created a “Teach like a GEM” playbook that sets out some key criteria for all teachers to follow.

It’s work that Abeer Sakka, GEMS’ vice-president of teaching, learning and instructional coaching, has been heavily involved in, and she explains to Tes that the goal is to create “a shared professional language across multiple brands, multiple schools, multiple curricula”.

In practical terms, it means techniques like “cold call” (where a pupil is asked to answer a question whether they volunteered to or not) or “turn and talk” (where pupils discuss a question with a partner) are now explicitly taught to GEMS teachers at roughly the same point in the year, based on a shared timeline.

When a technique is the focus of CPD, the expectation is that it will be used in every lesson so pupils and teachers both become experts in its use. To ensure this is happening, instructional coaches who are middle and senior leaders conduct “low-stakes drop-ins” and provide “tailored coaching”.

Autonomy versus oversight

ISP, meanwhile, has its “Learning Improvement Process”, says group chief learning officer Emily Porter. This consists of “nine key areas of focus” for schools, which are all about “having a really clear focus on learning”, including school improvement planning - which is driven by accurate self-evaluation - and the atmosphere of the school - do pupils feel included and safe and therefore able to learn? - and, of course, the learning and teaching itself.

Porter says: “We look at the language of learning across the school - do pupils talk about their own acquisition of learning in a similar way? Do they know how to say, ‘This is really hard for me’?”

At Globeducate, chief education officer Daniel Jones talks about “five high-impact learning and teaching strategies” that staff are expected to follow, covering questioning techniques, engagement and challenge, using assessment to check pupils’ progress, feedback and climate for learning.

He says: “For pupils to excel, we need to have great pedagogy. At the end of the day, we need to train our teachers to know how to teach well.”

Given the vast scales of these groups, it’s understandable that they want to set out defined expectations of their staff - but is there a danger that teachers feel their autonomy is removed?

‘With codification, we create space for teachers to be creative and use their expertise in the classroom’

Sakka says this was a concern when GEMS piloted its Teach like a GEM playbook in nine schools from January to June, but that, ultimately, staff were receptive and saw the rationale.

“Just imagine how much cognitive overload we’re giving our pupils when I call it ‘turn and talk’; another person is calling it ‘think, pair, share’; another person is saying ‘turn to your 12 o’clock buddy’ or ‘shoulder partner’,” she explains.

Sakka adds: “When you introduce codification, there can be this misinterpretation that it’s very prescriptive and could limit teacher creativity and autonomy.

“But actually, it’s the opposite. With codification and clear structure, we create space for teachers to be creative and innovative and use their subject knowledge and expertise in the classroom.”

Finding this balance between prescribed teaching and classroom autonomy is not so different from debates that have raged in England with MATs - and that spectrum of approach is equally visible in international schools.

Adaptive, not prescriptive

For instance, Nord Anglia’s chief education officer, Dr Elise Ecoff, explains its approach is “more adaptive than prescriptive”, adding: “Me telling everyone from the centre what’s going to work in a Year 3 classroom in China or India or Switzerland wouldn’t be something we would subscribe to.”

Given this, she says the group focuses on “each school knowing itself and being able to continuously improve, and this is supported by the sharing of good practice, research-informed professional learning and data that drives impact in the classroom”.

Meanwhile, at Cognita, it has “Teaching for Impactful Learning and Progress”, which has four key drivers: good subject knowledge; the right social and emotional environment, “great organisation”; and for pupils to experience the right amount of challenge.

‘We lose great teachers if we try to drive consistency of pure practice because they’re like a robot’

Dr Simon Camby, group chief education officer at Cognita, says the approach is “more about coherence than consistency” because “consistency sort of implies sameness, and we know it can’t be the same because the context is so different”.

Therefore, “bringing this to life”, as Camby terms it, is up to schools: “We wouldn’t think about that across the globe.”

“When you see a great teacher, it’s amazing - it’s awe-inspiring. We lose that if we try to drive consistency of pure practice because they’re like a robot,” he adds.

Spotting outliers, issues and excellence

Even so, just because you set standards for schools and teachers to follow, regardless of how prescriptive they are or not, how do you know if that is being delivered by teachers in Bahrain or Berlin? Or if those in Singapore are as effective as those in Spain?

You could wait for exam results to roll in and see if any outliers suggest a school has strayed too far from expectations. But that’s a high-risk strategy.

Instead, just as with teaching delivery, each group has its own form of evaluation that speaks to a desire to track and spot areas of concern - and strength.

Porter at ISP says: “We are not waiting until the end point every year to say, ‘Actually, that teacher wasn’t powerful.’ We can make those interventions early in the school year because we’re learning in real time as data is collected throughout the year in every single school.”

To do this, every teacher at ISP will receive five “learning visits” that are guided by four key questions: are pupils learning; how do we know; where and how can we get better; and what actions can we take to improve?

The teacher is not a passive bystander during the visit either. Rather, they collaborate with the visitor gathering evidence and are involved in rating the learning as either high, medium or low impact.

The beauty, says Porter, is that teachers use what they learn from visiting the classrooms of colleagues, and from receiving visits themselves, to “keep getting better” and “to do more of the things that make a difference, and less of the things that don’t”.

The data is also uploaded to a dashboard (there will be 35,000 learning visits across the group in any given academic year) and triangulated with other data - academic data, progress data, feedback data and perceptions data - giving “visibility about where we have real pockets of strength and also what professional development needs to take place”.

The result is “a cycle of continuous improvement for learning and teaching”, says Porter.

Watching across the world

Inspired recently embarked on a similar journey to bring transparency to the quality of teaching and learning in its schools and classrooms with the creation of a grand-sounding “global lesson observation dashboard” that has been running since June.

The long game is that Lambert can “sit at home and effectively survey the world” by looking at lesson observation data, as well as exam results and value-added scores, to see whether pupils are fulfilling their potential - and by extension if teachers are performing well.

Inspired teachers undergo at least three lesson observations a year and are evaluated using a four-point scale: “outstanding”, “performing well”, “areas to develop” or “critical concern”.

There is also a fifth option, “not applicable”, to recognise that “you’re not always going to see everything in every lesson”.

Lambert acknowledges that ratings and gradings can be controversial. He says no overall rating is given to teachers, and the process is about “performance development” - not “performance management”.

‘I can hold the mirror up and be a critical friend, but knowing if something is working or not is the school’s responsibility’

At Globeducate, meanwhile, there are also moves afoot to try to ensure that the teaching strategies it wants teachers to deploy are, in fact, being used to good effect.

As of this year, every school will receive an annual “monitoring of learning” visit, in addition to a more wide-ranging audit every two years that also has “learning” as a key pillar.

Following a “monitoring of learning” visit, a report is provided to each school, and based on that report, training will be provided.

For example, in English Gate School, a Globeducate school in northern Italy, questioning techniques and critical thinking routines were identified as a developmental area for the school. This led to training sessions with teachers and in-class mentoring to help embed best practices.

At Nord Anglia, the emphasis is firmly on self-evaluation, and Ecoff talks about the group being in “constant conversation” with its schools, as opposed to having a cyclical inspection regime.

That emphasis on self-evaluation is really important, says Ecoff, because the group wants schools to “know themselves really well” so that improvement is “continuous and enduring” and not reliant on external intervention.

“I shouldn’t have to say, ‘What you are doing isn’t working.’ That should be and is the school’s responsibility,” she says. “I can hold the mirror up and be a critical friend, but first and foremost, that is the job of the school.”

Data insights and opportunities

But schools aren’t just marking their own homework, Ecoff says - the data has to support the story it is telling, and if it doesn’t, “an intervention has to happen”, she says, adding: “Improvement is never left to chance.”

Camby at Cognita also talks about the importance of self-evaluation, and external and peer review - but says the group also uses pupil feedback to help its teachers improve. Pupils provide their teachers with feedback every year from the age of 7.

“Teachers see all the feedback from pupils, as well as being able to go on a platform where they can see the aggregate feedback. It’s super powerful and our schools really embrace it,” he explains.

Of course, monitoring like this and having reams of data isn’t just about spotting concerns - it can also highlight areas of strength that should be shared.

At Globeducate, for example, schools that receive the highest rating when they are audited become “beacons of excellence” that then share their work with other schools, while the group has also created “professional learning communities” led by “super teachers” who can coach subject specialists in other schools in, for instance, how to get the best marks at biology A level.

Meanwhile, at Nord Anglia, its “University” online training platform allows teachers and leaders to share practice, engage in professional learning communities and take part in collaborative research projects.

Recently, a documentary-style film about a Nord Anglia school that is expert in the use of data was also uploaded to the site so other schools could learn about its approach.

For Lambert, this is where international school groups can really come into their own, by acting as “a kind of knowledge broker surfacing the outstanding practice and connecting the right people together”.

The message is that while international school groups might be somewhat unwieldy, with variety comes huge scope for cross-pollination and for schools to learn from each other.

Now the ability to crunch large volumes of data is making it possible for groups to address issues and identify and spread excellent practice, all with the same goal in mind: to improve outcomes for pupils by providing them with the best possible teaching.