About Us
The Right Learing Company
The Right Learning Company was started by Huw Duggan 2019. Huw started his teaching career in 2004 as a learning support assistant in a difficult inner city school in Leeds. He has since held a number of roles in various local authorities and worked in both England and Wales. Huw is passionate about education driving social mobility and closing the gap. He making learning engaging and improving teaching pedagogy, and raise standards through coaching.
Huw was head of the Sanctuary, the learning arm of a cohort one teaching school, Strategic Advisor for the Central South Consortium and is a qualified team Inspector for Estyn.
Other Experience and National Profile
Huw has a broad and balanced portfolio of experience at a regional and national level including:
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Sitting on a number of national advisory panels including working with Sir Alasdair Macdonald ( Pupil Development Champion) on the closing the gap group;
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Working on the 'Troops to Teachers' programme for the DFE;
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Creating a unique 'Schools Direct' Programme with the University of Huddersfield, which has become their blue print;
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Leading the NQT provision for Oldham MBC, which involved writing and leading training, quality assuring students and placements and running the teaching pool for over 900 NQTs;
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Chairing various steering groups on closing the gap;
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Being a certified facilitator and quality assurance consultant for OLEVI;
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Writing and quality assuring programmes for OLEVI:
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Key work setting up the Hub system in CSC JES and introducing 'the 'Outstanding Teacher Programme' and the 'Improving Teacher Programme' to the region;
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Planned for, and successfully introduced the 'Voice 21 Project' to CSC JES, through the 'Valleys Project';
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The role of consultant for Focus Education;
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The role of consultant for Collective Learning.
Huw decided to set up the Right Learning Company in 2019 with the misson of preparing learners for the challenges of the twenty first centuary and to close the achiev
According to Daniel Pink , author of A Whole New Mind and other best selling books on business and human behaviour, argues that Historically the worlds educations systems have prioritised the skills of Left Brian over that of the Right.
For example - you are reading these words from left to right, which means the right brain is controlling the muscles in your neck whilst the left side of the brain is making sense of the text. Reading in western cultures is a highly L-Directed activity.
Historically the curriculum in the west requires pupils to retain facts, learn process logically with the aim of ultimately passing exams, so that they can move on to the next stage of education. This is again L-Directed thinking .
The idea of Intelligence (IQ) is seen as a Indicator of an individuals ability to undertake a job. Take medicine or education, both are professions that require a high level of L-Directed thinking . However a teacher or a doctor with no empathy or emotional intelligence (R-Directed thinking) will be ineffective in their Jobs. In fact many medical colleges in the U.S. now actually evaluate applicants empathy as part of the application process. Or as Daniel Goleman puts it the level of (EQ) the candidates have. What if our Education system was more geared towards the skills of the right brain ? Would we have more independent , enquiring, resilient learners ? At the right learning company we think this is best done by helping school leaders to develop the pedagogy of their staff , and teach children a curriculum that includes all the skills of the right brain.
Our Inspiration
"SAT-ocracy"
Daniel Pink goes further in his book and asserts that this pressure put on teachers and pupils to pass exams has resulted in a "SAT-ocracy" or in the case of Britain a "GCSE-ocracy", if not a "TEST-orcary".
In other words pupils who are trained to pass exams , but who do not have leadership, organisation, presentation skills , able to deal with problem solving and higher order thinking.
Despite all the changes promised by governments to address this issue we still have a system so full of accountability that pupils are taught to pass exams, rather than the necessary skills to become an effective learner. This results in pupils that are dependent and lack resilience. This is one of the biggest areas for school improvement in the UK at the moment . How do we improve the resilience of our pupils?
Like wise the skills that have the greatest impact on accelerating pupils progress according John Hattie , are those linked to self determination and metacognition. learning to learn. If we look at the Educational Endowment Tool Kit it is strategies that promote R-Directed thinking which have the greatest impact.
Why do we Teach like this ? When really learning happens like this ?
So what ?
At the Right Learning Company we are passionate about helping schools to develop their curriculum's and Pedagogy to ensure they not simply teaching pupils to pass exams.
But rather developing school leadership, pedagogy , and a curriculum that will ensure that we are creating learners that have the necessary skills, knowledge and resilience to be highly effective to drive the economies of the future. These learners will have to deal with technology not yet imagined, learn and learn skills, work in jobs and careers yet to be invented and deal with the problems they will inherit from future generations.
Finally at the Right Learning Company we would like to do this whilst having a little fun. After all learning is . . well Fun !