Opinion

Five Things the New Are You on Slide 8 Yet? Report Can Teach Us About Learning in Schools

In the latest episode of the Mindful Learning Podcast, I spoke with Dr Sarah Pearce and Dr Anna Traianou about their groundbreaking new report for the National Education Union, Are You on Slide 8 Yet?.

(And yes, I have to confess — in the recording, I mistakenly called it Next Slide Please! The actual title, Are You on Slide 8 Yet?, comes from one of the most chilling teacher testimonies in the study.)

You can read the full report here:
👉 Are You on Slide 8 Yet? Full Report (NEU, 2025)

The research, which surveyed 1,655 teachers and interviewed 40 across England, explores how standardised curricula—pre-packaged lessons, often presented as PowerPoint decks—are transforming classroom life. What Dr Pearce and Dr Traianou found should make every parent, teacher, and policymaker stop and think.

Here are five key things their report can teach us about the state of learning in schools today.

1. Teachers are being told to “deliver” lessons, not teach them

Dr Sarah Pearce explained:

“Packages of materials are more or less ready for a teacher to teach. Nine times out of ten, they’re PowerPoint slide decks. In some extreme cases, they include scripts of exactly what the teacher should say.”

She continued:

“We had teachers telling us things like, ‘We have a senior leader standing outside the door checking that we’re all on the same slide.’ One teacher asked, ‘What happens if the children aren’t getting it?’ and the senior leader replied, ‘Just carry on to the next slide.’”

The title of the report, Are You on Slide 8 Yet?, comes directly from these stories. It captures the way teaching has become a mechanical “delivery” of pre-set content, with little space to respond to students’ understanding.

2. Children’s needs are being ignored in the name of consistency

Pearce summed up the problem starkly:

“Teachers told us they weren’t allowed to adjust lessons when pupils didn’t understand. If the children didn’t get it, it almost didn’t matter. They had to keep going.”

This rigidity, she explained, means that able students are bored, struggling learners are left behind, and those with special educational needs are particularly neglected. The human element—the moment-to-moment responsiveness that defines real teaching—is being stripped away.

3. Teacher autonomy has collapsed—and workload hasn’t improved

Professor Anna Traianou highlighted one of the most striking findings:

“Teachers using standardised curricula reported a reduced sense of professional autonomy—a reduced sense of decision-making and of their ability to exercise professional judgement.”

She added that, contrary to popular belief, “we found no difference in workload between teachers who used standardised curricula and those who did not.”

In other words, scripted lessons haven’t freed teachers’ time; they’ve simply replaced creative planning with stressful compliance.

4. Pupils are losing chances to talk, think, and create

Pearce observed:

“The biggest casualty is talk. The room for children to work in groups has been curtailed massively. It’s direct instruction, whole-class teaching, everybody sitting in rows, only talking to the teacher.”

Traianou added:

“Students’ own experiences are no longer valued. There’s no room for discussion or conversation in the teaching sequence promoted by these packages.”

The result? A generation of children being trained to memorise rather than think—obedient but disengaged.

5. This isn’t just educational—it’s political

As Traianou explained:

“The post-2014 curriculum is a political project. We need to ask what kind of society is being imagined through this model of teaching.”

Pearce added a troubling observation:

“There’s a bit of a ‘have and have-nots’. Teachers in more successful or private schools have far more freedom, while others are following rigid slide decks. It’s worrying which children are getting a liberal education and which are getting a more authoritarian one.”

This inequality of freedom is one of the report’s most sobering findings.

Where Next?

Both researchers hope this report sparks a national debate.

“Please, get this out there,” Pearce said. “People don’t know this is happening.”

Traianou and Pearce are now beginning new research into AI-driven curriculum tools and their implications for autonomy and pedagogy. They’ll be discussing this further at a Centre for Identities and Social Justice seminar at Goldsmiths on 3 December 2025, featuring Michael Rosen and other key voices in education.

Why This Matters for Mindful Learning

As I reflected during our conversation, mindfulness in education is about presence, autonomy, and reflection. When teachers are told to “stick to the slides,” and children are told to “stay on task,” we lose the heart of learning—curiosity, dialogue, and compassion.

The Are You on Slide 8 Yet? report reminds us that teaching and learning must remain human acts of understanding, not mechanical acts of compliance.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of the Mindful Learning Podcast to hear the conversation in depth with Dr Sarah Pearce and Dr Anna Traianou.
📖 Read the full report here: https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/38749/1/NEU3679%20Are%20you%20on%20slide%208%20yet_%20Full%20Report%20(Digital)%20+QR.pdf

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