Welcome to the first edition of The Braythorpe Edit.

Every fortnight, I’ll bring together a handful of developments from education, research and policy, and explore what they mean for adopted and care-experienced children, their families and the schools supporting them.

For this first edition, I want to start with something that has stayed with me throughout my career in education.

We know more about children’s needs than we did a decade ago. So why doesn’t that understanding always translate into what happens in school?

As a former school leader and an adoptive parent, I’ve seen that question from both sides of the gate.

1. Implementation starts before delivery

The Education Endowment Foundation has published an analysis of implementation in two mathematics trials.

Its central message: what happens before a programme begins matters, including how schools prepare, communicate and establish the conditions for change.

This isn’t research about adoption or care experience, but it raises an important question for our sector: what happens after staff have attended training?

Schools can invest in professional development. Its impact may remain limited, though, unless adults have the time, clarity and support to change their everyday responses.

I’ve been reflecting on the trauma-informed CPD I’ve attended over the years. Sitting in a classroom, learning how the amygdala works, exploring fight-or-flight responses. Useful knowledge.

But it wasn’t until I began my own adoption journey that I truly started to understand the distance between knowing the theory and putting it into practice.

And I wonder how many schools are still working to close that same gap.

Read the EEF blog:​
​Why successful implementation starts before delivery begins​

2. Kinship care guidance

The Department for Education’s statutory guidance on kinship care is a reminder that children’s family arrangements take many forms.

For schools, it matters who holds parental responsibility, who provides day-to-day care and how a family wishes to be recognised.

So does the language we use.

A routine classroom activity about family, a form sent home or an assumption about who attends a meeting can have unintended consequences.

(And I’ll resist getting started on the number of EYFS activities that still assume every child has a conventional family story!)

My takeaway: inclusive practice includes the everyday assumptions adults make, as well as how we respond when a child is struggling.

Read the guidance:​
​⁠Kinship care: statutory guidance for local authorities​

3. Pupil Premium Plus: funding isn’t the intervention

For 2026–27, Pupil Premium Plus provides £2,690 for each eligible previously looked-after pupil.

It is funding allocated to schools to support evidence-informed approaches, not a personal budget for an individual child.

For schools and families, the more useful conversation is about what the funding is helping to achieve.

There’s still a misconception that Pupil Premium Plus must be spent directly on academic interventions. But for previously looked-after children, improving educational outcomes may also involve strengthening relationships, supporting emotional regulation and creating the conditions in which learning becomes possible.

There’s another question worth asking.

Do we approach these children primarily through what they have experienced and might struggle with? Or do we also recognise the strengths, relationships and experiences they bring?

Is the funding strengthening relationships? Improving access to learning? Helping staff respond more consistently?

What counts is the difference the spending makes.

Read the DfE conditions of grant:​
​⁠Pupil premium allocations and conditions of grant 2026 to 2027​

The distance between knowing and doing

When I was a school leader, I regularly heard that a child had been ‘good today’.

Often, that meant they’d been quiet, compliant and hadn’t disrupted the classroom.

Yet in conversations with parents and the SENCo, a very different picture sometimes emerged.

Neither adult was necessarily describing something that hadn’t happened. They were seeing different parts of the child’s experience.

We have more conversations about attachment, trauma, masking and relational practice than we once did. That’s progress.

But knowing the language doesn’t automatically change what happens when a child is overwhelmed, when a supply teacher takes the class or when something goes wrong at lunchtime.

And it certainly doesn’t mean that a child who appears settled is finding school easy.

The question is whether an adult’s understanding of a child’s needs changes how they respond.

I’ve heard adults worry that responding differently means lowering expectations. That allowing a child to play football after becoming overwhelmed is somehow rewarding the behaviour.

But what if that opportunity to move, reconnect and regulate is precisely what helps the child return to learning?

We need to be willing to question the assumptions behind our responses.

Training can start that process. It cannot complete it on its own.

The EEF’s emphasis on preparation, shared understanding and the conditions for change resonates with what I’ve experienced in schools.

Whether staff have been trained is the first question.

What happens differently because of it is the one that follows.

Changing practice means changing how every adult understands and responds to children.

Not just teachers.

If a child you support finds something difficult tomorrow, would the adults around them all agree on what helps?

That includes the teaching assistant. The lunchtime supervisor. The adult covering a lesson.

If the answer is uncertain, here’s a practical starting point.

Agree on two or three responses that everyone can use consistently.

Check that every adult understands them and feels confident using them.

Then revisit them.

No two days are the same. Ask the child and family what they’re experiencing. Look at whether the agreed approach is happening. Adjust what isn’t working.

Consistency doesn’t mean treating every child or every situation identically.

It means having a shared framework that gives adults the confidence to respond to individual needs.

The aim is support that stays in place when a different adult walks into the room.

Where do you see the biggest gap between what schools understand about children’s needs and what actually happens in practice?

Whether you’re a parent who has lived it, a teacher making changes within a busy school day, or someone working across the adoption and care-experienced sector, I’d like to hear from you.

Just reply to this email.

I read every reply myself, and I want future editions to reflect the questions and experiences that matter to you.