Category Archives: Learning

Creativity, Enrichment, Learning, Personal Development, Taskmaster, Taskmaster in School, Teaching, Teaching and Learning, Teamwork

WHAT’S SO GOOD ABOUT TASKMASTER CLUB? LEADERSHIP

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Week 5 — Leadership: Guiding, Listening and Adapting

Leadership is often misunderstood as something reserved for a few confident individuals at the front of the room. In reality, leadership is a set of skills and behaviours that can (and should) be developed in young people through practice, reflection and collaboration.

Taskmaster Club offers exactly that kind of environment.

Across each session, pupils take on leadership roles both formally and informally. They communicate ideas, negotiate approaches, make decisions under pressure, bring others with them, and adapt when things don’t work as planned. Leadership here is not about authority – it’s about influence, responsibility and collective success.

What Do We Mean by Leadership in Education?

Educational research increasingly views leadership as:

  • shared rather than hierarchical
  • situational rather than fixed
  • relational rather than positional

This idea of distributed leadership – widely discussed in education research – recognises that leadership emerges through interaction: listening, coordinating, motivating and guiding others toward a shared goal.

Crucially, leadership is not something pupils simply “have” or “don’t have”. It is learned through experience, especially in group-based, problem-rich environments.

Why Developing Leadership Skills Matters

Research and policy consistently highlight leadership as a vital life skill:

  • The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) links leadership-related skills such as self-regulation, communication and metacognition to improved academic outcomes.
    https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit
  • UK educational leadership scholars such as Professor Alma Harris and Professor Christopher Day argue that leadership capacity should be developed early, through collaborative practice and shared responsibility.
  • Ofsted has increasingly emphasised personal development, teamwork, communication and responsibility – all closely tied to leadership behaviours – as part of what schools should be cultivating beyond exam outcomes.
  • Research on youth leadership development shows that pupils who are given structured opportunities to lead develop greater confidence, resilience, and engagement with learning.

In short: leadership skills support success in school, work and wider society – and they don’t develop by accident.

How Taskmaster Club Develops Leadership Skills

Taskmaster Club creates repeated, authentic opportunities for pupils to practise leadership in action.

1. Shared Decision-Making Under Pressure

Teams must make decisions quickly: which idea to pursue, how to use their time, who does what. Someone often needs to step forward to synthesise ideas and move the group on.

Research into leadership development highlights decisiveness and clarity – especially under time constraints – as core leadership skills. Taskmaster Club provides real, low-stakes practice.

2. Communication, Negotiation and Compromise

Leadership in Taskmaster Club is deeply communicative. Pupils must:

  • articulate their thinking
  • listen to others
  • negotiate disagreements
  • compromise for the good of the team

Research on collaborative learning and leadership stresses that effective leaders are strong listeners who create space for others’ voices – not those who dominate discussion.

3. Ensuring Everyone Is Heard

Successful teams are rarely led by the loudest voice. Instead, effective leaders notice who hasn’t spoken, draw out quieter ideas, and help the group weigh different contributions.

This reflects research on inclusive leadership, which shows that teams perform better when leaders actively foster participation and psychological safety.

4. Evaluating and Adapting Approaches

Leadership isn’t just about choosing a plan – it’s about recognising when it isn’t working.

Taskmaster Club tasks often require leaders to:

  • reassess strategies mid-task
  • respond to setbacks
  • adapt roles or approaches
  • keep morale high when things wobble

Educational research links this adaptive leadership closely to metacognition (thinking about thinking) which the EEF identifies as a high-impact teaching approach.

5. Rotating and Informal Leadership

Leadership in Taskmaster Club is fluid. One pupil may lead planning, another execution, another presentation or reflection.

This mirrors the distributed leadership models advocated by education researchers, which argue that rotating leadership roles builds wider leadership capacity and avoids reliance on a single individual.

Why Taskmaster Club Is an Ideal Leadership Environment

Taskmaster Club supports leadership development because it is:

  • Low-stakes — mistakes are safe and often humorous
  • Collaborative — leadership is social, not solitary
  • Time-bound — decisions matter
  • Varied — leadership takes different forms each week
  • Reflective — teams should evaluate both outcomes and processes

Most importantly, leadership is practised authentically, not simulated.

Practical Ways to Make Leadership Explicit in Your Club

If you run a Taskmaster Club, you can strengthen leadership development by:

  • Rotating team roles deliberately (planner, coordinator, presenter, reviewer).
  • Asking teams to identify who helped move the group forward – and how.
  • Highlighting good leadership behaviours in feedback, not just good results.
  • Encouraging reflection on decisions: What worked? What would you change?
  • Valuing listening and facilitation as much as bold ideas.

Final Thought

Leadership is not about standing out – it’s about bringing others with you.

Taskmaster Club gives young people repeated chances to practise leadership in its most meaningful form: guiding discussion, making decisions, adapting strategies, and keeping a team moving forward together. Through communication, compromise and reflection, pupils learn that leadership is not a title – it’s a skill.

And if they learn that while managing a ticking clock, balancing wildly different ideas, and rescuing a plan that’s gone slightly off the rails?
That’s leadership worth developing.

Taskmaster Club materials:

Further posts in the ‘What’s So Good About Taskmaster Club series:

Creativity, Enrichment, Learning, Personal Development, Taskmaster, Taskmaster in School, Teaching, Teaching and Learning, Teamwork

WHAT’S SO GOOD ABOUT TASKMASTER CLUB? PROBLEM SOLVING

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Week 4 – Problem Solving: Thinking Flexibly, Together

Problem solving is one of the most frequently cited “essential skills” in education, and one of the hardest to teach well. It’s not simply about getting the right answer, but about how learners approach unfamiliar challenges, adapt strategies, and apply thinking across different contexts.

Taskmaster Club is particularly powerful here. Each session presents teams with unusual, open-ended problems that must be interpreted, planned for, tested and revised – often under time pressure, often collaboratively, and often with unpredictable results. This repeated exposure to varied problems helps young people build transferable problem-solving habits, not just isolated techniques.

What Do We Mean by Problem Solving in Education?

Educational research defines problem solving as a process, not an outcome. It typically includes:

  • understanding and defining the problem
  • planning an approach
  • selecting and testing strategies
  • monitoring progress
  • adapting when things don’t work
  • reflecting on outcomes and processes

Crucially, strong problem solvers are not those who memorise solutions, but those who can transfer strategies to new situations — a key focus of current UK educational research.

Why Problem Solving Matters (Research & Policy Context)

Problem solving has become increasingly prominent in education policy and research:

  • The OECD highlights problem solving as central to preparing learners for complex, uncertain futures, particularly when problems are ill-defined and collaborative.
  • In England, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) identifies metacognition and self-regulation – closely linked to problem solving – as having a high impact on pupil attainment.
  • UK cognitive science research (including work synthesised by Dunlosky et al., widely used in teacher education) shows that learners improve problem solving when they are explicitly taught how to plan, monitor and evaluate their thinking.
  • Research from the University of Cambridge on dialogic learning demonstrates that reasoning with others improves individual problem-solving ability over time.

Together, this evidence points to a clear conclusion: problem solving improves when it is modelled, practised across contexts, and supported through structured talk and reflection.

How Taskmaster Club Develops Problem Solving Skills

Taskmaster Club is particularly effective because it exposes learners to many different types of problems, requiring flexible application of strategies rather than repetition of a single method.

1. Interpreting Ambiguous Problems

Task instructions are rarely straightforward. Teams must read carefully, clarify meaning, challenge assumptions, and agree on what the problem actually is.

This aligns with research showing that expert problem solvers spend more time understanding a problem before acting — a skill that can be taught, modelled and practised.

2. Strategic Planning and Time Management

Once a task is understood, teams must decide:

  • what their goal is
  • how to use limited time and resources
  • which strategy is most likely to succeed

This reflects research on metacognition, which emphasises planning and monitoring as core components of effective problem solving. Taskmaster Club provides repeated, authentic opportunities to practise these skills.

3. Collaborative Problem Solving

Most Taskmaster Club tasks are approached in teams. Participants must:

  • share ideas
  • justify their reasoning
  • negotiate disagreements
  • compromise and adapt

Research into collaborative problem solving (including studies on dialogic teaching) shows that explaining thinking aloud and responding to others’ ideas strengthens reasoning and improves solution quality. Taskmaster Club embeds this naturally.

4. Trial, Error and Productive Failure

Many Taskmaster attempts fail — sometimes spectacularly. But failure here is informative, not punitive.

Educational research on productive failure shows that struggling with a problem before reaching a solution leads to deeper understanding and better long-term transfer. Taskmaster Club normalises iteration: test, fail, adapt, try again.

5. Questioning and Information Seeking

Successful teams often:

  • ask clarifying questions
  • look for hidden clues
  • check interpretations
  • seek additional information

Inquiry-based learning research consistently identifies questioning as a key driver of effective problem solving. Taskmaster Club rewards curiosity and strategic questioning rather than blind action.

6. Reflection and Transfer

After each task, teams can reflect on:

  • what worked
  • what didn’t
  • why
  • what they’d change next time

Reflection is critical. EEF guidance highlights that metacognitive reflection helps learners transfer strategies to new problems. Taskmaster Club allows this reflective loop into every session.

Why Taskmaster Club’s Approach Is So Effective

Taskmaster Club creates ideal conditions for problem solving because it is:

  • Low-stakes — failure is safe and often funny
  • Varied — problems differ from task to task and week to week
  • Social — thinking is shared and challenged
  • Time-bound — encouraging prioritisation
  • Engaging — motivation remains high

Most importantly, students encounter problems that don’t look like school problems — which is exactly what helps problem-solving skills transfer beyond the classroom.

Practical Ways to Make Problem Solving Explicit in Your Club

  • Ask teams to articulate their plan before starting.
  • Pause mid-task to encourage strategy review.
  • Highlight good questions as much as good answers.
  • Celebrate effective adaptations, not just success.
  • End sessions by identifying one problem-solving strategy teams would reuse elsewhere.

Final Thought

Problem solving is not a single skill but a habit of mind – one that develops through varied practice, collaboration, reflection and the freedom to fail safely.

Taskmaster Club offers young people repeated, joyful opportunities to practise this habit. By tackling strange, unpredictable challenges together, they learn not just how to solve a task — but how to approach problems wherever they appear.

And if they learn that while racing the clock, negotiating with teammates, and defending a slightly ridiculous plan?
That’s problem solving at its best.

Taskmaster Club materials:

Further posts in the ‘What’s So Good About Taskmaster Club series:

Creativity, Learning, Personal Development, Taskmaster, Taskmaster in School, Teaching, Teaching and Learning, Teamwork

Secret Tasks: The Unexpected Key to Obvious Impact

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Last week, I had the pleasure of visiting Southway Primary School, where their Year 6 pupils have been running Taskmaster Club this term.

I was there to learn more about a collaborative project they’re planning with their neighbouring secondary school, TRS, and it’s an idea that’s simple but could well be extremely impactful. Older pupils from TRS will take on leadership roles, running Taskmaster Club sessions for the younger pupils and modelling collaborative teamwork and communication. It’s peer-led, it’s practical, and it’s the kind of initiative that quietly builds confidence in all age groups. I can’t wait to see what happens next and the ripple effect it has across both schools.

But that wasn’t the highlight of the visit.

The Teacher Who Introduced Me to the “Secret Task”

While speaking with a teacher who has been running Taskmaster Club with Post-16 pupils, she shared an adaptation she had made to the format. It was so clever, simple, and bursting with potential that I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

She had introduced The Secret Task.

While all of the teams were working on the same task, she privately assigned individual pupils an extra rule or personal mission to complete during the session. These were designed to shape behaviours, build skills, or push pupils slightly outside their comfort zones – all while keeping the playful spirit of Taskmaster intact.

The sorts of secret tasks she shared included:

  • Make sure your team uses your idea for at least one task today.
  • You must agree with everything everyone says.
  • Do not speak at all during the session today.
  • Sabotage your team’s attempt in some way. If your team win, they lose; if they lose, you gain bonus points; if you get caught, you lose points.

Each one requires a different kind of strategy, awareness, and self-management. And each one develops a different skill.

Why Secret Tasks Work So Well

What struck me most wasn’t just the creativity of the idea—it was the intentionality behind it.

Secret tasks give teachers an opportunity to:

1. Personalise the learning experience

Each pupil can be guided toward a specific behaviour, challenge, or strength. A quieter pupil could have a task encouraging leadership; a dominant pupil could be nudged toward active listening; someone who struggles with teamwork could be steered into building or repairing group dynamics. All while attempting the same task.

2. Strengthen inclusion and adaptive practice

We talk a lot about adaptations, but this is adaptive practice disguised as fun. It gives every pupil a way to participate meaningfully, even if their needs or strengths differ from their peers’. No one is singled out. No one is left out. Everyone plays.

3. Encourage reflection and metacognition

Secret tasks aren’t just playful – they support deeper thinking. When pupils debrief afterwards, they start to notice how behaviours influence the outcome of a team task. They learn to reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and how their own actions shaped the group.

4. Maintain the magic of Taskmaster

Taskmaster thrives on chaos, surprise, and joyful unpredictability. Secret tasks add another layer of mystery that feels perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the format.

An Obvious Impact Through Subtle Means

What I love most is how quietly transformative the secret task can be. It’s a small tweak with the potential for huge impact. When used purposefully, it allows any teacher or facilitator to:

  • build confidence
  • develop communication skills
  • challenge assumptions
  • support social interaction
  • nurture leadership
  • encourage teamwork
  • and gently shift behaviours

…all without breaking the flow of the session or drawing attention to any one pupil’s needs.

This, to me, is inclusive practice at its best: playful, personalised, and powerfully human.

What Secret Tasks Would You Add?

I left Southway feeling inspired – not just by what they’re doing now, but by the possibilities these secret tasks unlock. I’d love to hear other ideas and adaptations people are using in their clubs, classrooms, or youth group sessions.

Sometimes the smallest twist creates the biggest shift. And sometimes, a secret task is the most obvious way to make an impact.

Creativity, Enrichment, Learning, Personal Development, Taskmaster, Taskmaster in School, Teaching, Teaching and Learning, Teamwork

What’s so good about Taskmaster Club? CREATIVITY

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Taskmaster Club is built on unpredictability, play and lateral thinking – exactly the conditions that let creativity breathe. Because the Club’s tasks rarely have a single “right” answer, teams must invent their own routes to success. That open-endedness, combined with a rich mix of music, drama, art and hands-on making, creates repeated, scaffolded chances to practise creative thinking — in other words, creativity isn’t an occasional add-on: it’s the curriculum.

Below we explore how Taskmaster Club develops creativity, what the academic evidence says (with a UK focus), and how these playful tasks nurture the kind of creative thinking young people need today.

Why Taskmaster-style tasks are great for creativity

  1. Open outcomes = generative thinking
    When tasks don’t prescribe a method or final form, teams must ask “what could this be?” not “what must this be?” That shift from replicating a model to possibility thinking is central to creative development: it invites hypothesis, experimentation and risk-taking — the very habits Anna Craft identified as core to creative learning (she coined and championed the idea of possibility thinking). Open University BERA
  2. Constraints actually help creativity
    Paradoxically, tight constraints (time, materials, silly rules) focus creative exploration. Taskmaster tasks often force teams to be inventive within limits — and research across creative pedagogy shows that constraint-driven tasks stimulate fluency and originality by encouraging lateral approaches rather than formulaic solutions. (See examples in creativity collaboratives and school-based action research.) ACE+1
  3. Multimodal practice builds creative flexibility
    Because Taskmaster tasks can require music, drama, visual art, spoken word, or engineered props, students repeatedly practise transferring ideas across modes. This multimodal practice is important: creative expertise grows when learners can move ideas between media, testing which forms best express a concept. The national Creativity Collaboratives and university-school partnerships emphasise this cross-disciplinary approach. Durham Commission on Creativity and Education | Arts Council England
  4. Collaborative creativity is richer than solo creativity
    Teams bring different perspectives and skills; this collision of ideas leads to novel combinations. UK scholars working on creative classroom practice note that well-structured collaboration helps students -externalise ideas, receive immediate feedback, and iterate – turning initial sparks into refined creative products. Professor Teresa Cremin’s work on creative pedagogy emphasises the value of teacher-facilitated but learner-led creative activity, where peer interaction and teacher support combine to sustain risk and exploration.
  5. Low-stakes play creates the behavioural safety to be bold
    Taskmaster Club’s playful framing reduces fear of failure. When “failure” is comical or temporary, learners are more likely to take original risks – which is where real creativity often happens. Research from school collaboratives shows that embedding creative tasks as part of a supportive school culture increases children’s willingness to experiment. University of Exeter News+1

Sir Ken Robinson: Creativity as a Human Right

No discussion of creativity in education is complete without Sir Ken Robinson, whose work transformed how teachers, schools and policymakers think about human potential. Robinson famously argued that “creativity is as important as literacy” — not as a slogan, but as a recognition that imagination and expression deserve the same value as traditional academic skills.

He also emphasised that creativity is not confined to the arts: it is a mode of thinking that cuts across every discipline, powered by curiosity, divergent thinking and the willingness to try something new. Crucially, Robinson championed learning environments where experimentation, improvisation and playful failure are embraced rather than avoided.

Taskmaster Club embodies these principles beautifully. Its open-ended challenges, humorous framing, and celebration of unconventional approaches create exactly the conditions Robinson believed young people need to develop their creative capacities.

What the UK evidence tells us (short takeaways)

  • Possibility thinking matters. Anna Craft’s research established that the move from “what is” to “what might be” is a repeatable, teachable mode of thinking – precisely what Taskmaster-style tasks provoke. BERA
  • Creative pedagogy is most effective when it’s supported, structured and inclusive. Projects like the Creativity Collaboratives and university-school partnerships show that creative teaching yields deeper understanding and longer-term skill development when teachers scaffold opportunities and assessment recognises process as well as product. ACE+1
  • Teacher and peer support amplifies creativity. Teresa Cremin and colleagues emphasise that teachers who model risk, reflect openly, and give careful feedback help students sustain creative efforts beyond momentary sparks. Open University Profiles+1
  • Creativity connects to broader futures skills. National reports and interdisciplinary research (including engineering and design education) emphasise that creative problem-solving is essential for future workplaces — and school-based creative projects are a key route to develop it. Royal Academy of Engineering+1

How Taskmaster Club specifically nurtures those ingredients

  • Regular, varied practice: Weekly sessions give repeated opportunities to ideate, prototype and reflect — crucial cycles described in creativity research.
  • Cross-disciplinary prompts: A single challenge might require story, sound, visuals and a practical build — mirroring real-world creative problems that demand transferable skills.
  • Peer feedback and reflection: Debriefing after challenges turns fun into learning: what worked, what surprised us, what would we try differently next time? That reflective loop is essential for creative improvement.
  • Design for inclusivity: Rotating roles (idea generator, maker, presenter) and mixed-ability teams let different strengths surface; university-school projects show inclusive design increases all pupils’ creative confidence. Birmingham City University+1

Practical tips to amplify creativity in your Club

  1. Value the idea, not just the result. Highlight smart failures and surprising attempts in your feedback.
  2. Introduce micro-constraints. Short time limits or limited materials often spur greater invention than total freedom.
  3. Rotate media. Running a task that specifically requires music or drama helps pupils practise transferring ideas.
  4. Make reflection explicit. Use team reflection time after tasks: what’s one idea we’d keep, one we’d drop, one we’d try differently?
  5. Share and celebrate process. Put up process photos/sketches in school spaces – creativity sees greater uptake when its process is visible.

Final thought

Creativity isn’t a mysterious trait you either have or don’t — it’s cultivated through repeated, scaffolded practice, risk-friendly environments, multimodal tasks and supportive collaboration. Taskmaster Club offers a compact, joyful ecosystem where all of those elements meet. It’s not just entertaining: it’s a practical engine for building future-ready creative thinkers.

Further reading & resources

  • Anna Craft — background and the idea of possibility thinking. BERA
  • Teresa Cremin — creativity, teacher practice and peer-supported creative learning. Open University Profiles+1
  • Creativity Collaboratives / Arts Council England — school–university partnerships embedding creative pedagogy. ACE+1
  • Royal Academy of Engineering — on creativity and engineering education (practical, interdisciplinary creativity). Royal Academy of Engineering

Taskmaster Club materials:

Further posts in the ‘What’s So Good About Taskmaster Club series:

Early Years, EYFS, Learning, Reflections, Teaching, Teaching and Learning

Adventures in EYFS

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Up until this year, the lion’s share of my teaching career has been spent in KS2. It’s been my comfort zone. At Christmas, circumstances led me to become an Early Years teacher two days a week and it’s been some of the best CPD I could ever have had.

I’d heard (and used) a number of phrases over the years, but in recent months I’ve gained a much better understanding of what they actually mean. Phrases like ‘continuous provision’, ‘enhanced provision’ and ‘play-based learning’

Play and practice can be interchangeable really. In EYFS we encourage play-based learning but this sense of play tends to fizzle out as the children move through school. They have to crack on will embedding knowledge and skills and becoming ‘test ready’ and traditionally this has meant the demonstrator and lecturer style of teaching is more prevalent.

Playing instruments, sports and games is fun, practising them is less so. But, what’s the difference? Playing music in a group of friends, with an audience is infinitely more enjoyable than practicing scales. Playing in a football match is always more enjoyable than working on drills. Practicing skills are, of course, important, but maybe we should be giving our pupils more opportunity to practice skills being taught, through play. School shouldn’t be all fun and games, but they should help children learn and they might just do a bit more of that if they are engaged and enjoying themselves. As with the examples of music and sport above, by offering opportunities to play together with others, the motivation to practice any skill is increased. Increased motivation must surely lead to increased attainment.

Assessment in Early Years seems to be quite different as well. I think you are just meant to spend time with the children while they are in the provision, ask them some questions, model interactions and see what they can do. Is this a better way of assessing children’s knowledge and understanding, rather that a test? Possibly. But that’s not where the system is at the moment at all so our pupils wouldn’t be best prepared for what comes in later school years.

Two terms in EYFS has been fun, but my brief spell in Reception has come to an end and now I make the obvious next step and take on Year 6 for the first time. It’s not so much about going back to the style of teaching and learning that I have more experience with, rather it’s about taking what I’ve learnt over the last two terms and applying it when working with older children. I’ll certainly be making a conscious effort to incorporate play into the learning opportunities I design for our pupils.

P.S. – As far as I can understand, ‘continuous provision’ is the stuff that’s always out and ‘enhanced provision’ is when you enhance that stuff with a particular focus for a session(s) or week or whatnot.

P.P.S – There is a whole subculture around Tuff Trays. Facebook groups filled with creative ideas. Fascinating stuff.