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The Formative and Middle Years

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There are phases in a child’s education that matter more. The formative Early Years, and the first 1000 days from conception, offer the chance to give children the Best Start in Life: a life-changing influence before destinies begin to harden.

The Middle Years, or Early Secondary Years, follow the key stage transition, when school approach significantly changes and adolescence begins to influence identity, confidence and learning. It can be the confirmer of destiny.

If we are to close gaps, we need to constrain our focus so that our expertise is focused in the phases that offer us the most influence on children’s lives. The children who carry the greatest disadvantage need us most at these pivotal times, when our leadership can still change the course of their lives.

The Formative Years

The first 1000 days from conception and through Early Years fundamentally influence, but not irreversibly, the future success of all children. Whilst the attainment and developmental gaps open around birth and widen ahead of Nursery, these are not irretrievable; early years offers a one-off window to close these gaps. This is our greatest opportunity to offer all children their Best Start in Life and to achieve greater social justice.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? (Mary Oliver)

The economics also work: investing money, time, resource and focus into the Early Years significantly reduces downstream costs to society; more importantly, closing gaps and applying equity in these formative years will last into adulthood.  

It is this investment that lays the gauntlet in each of the following years to ensure that the catch up leads firmly to keep up and the best schools do that. It is who they are and they consider it inconceivable that they would fumble the gap-closing secured by colleagues in Early Years. Catching up is harder than keeping up.

The Middle Years | Early Secondary Years

The Early Secondary Years are the great confirmer of destiny, and rarely reversible. A time where gaps re-open or widen to the point of no return. We know that being under-resourced has a long-term drag on children: if schools are passive in the Early Secondary Years, children will step back, the hope built through primary education begins to fade, and an external locus of control reduces agency and opportunity.

The following brilliant extract from Mary Myatt is exactly why the Middle Years, the Early Secondary Years, are the opportunity to inspire lives, to enact a phase of education that, for too many children, acts as the great confirmer of destiny:

“…This is why ambition in these formative years matters so profoundly. Done well, we raise the intellectual pitch, we present pupils with demanding texts, with carefully sequenced ideas and genuine opportunities to think like historians, scientists and mathematicians. In doing so we don’t just prepare them for future exams, we open our whole world up to them.” (Mary Myatt, 2026)

And this considers the application of equity and the importance of the Early Secondary Years on those who rely of schools to open doors:

At the heart of this is a burning question about equity. A curriculum that lacks coherence or challenge does not fall equally on all pupils. Those who arrive at secondary school already fluent in the language of academic success and with expert support at home can compensate for what is missing in school. Those who rely on school to open doors, who need school the most, cannot. An ambitious Key Stage 3 is therefore one of the most significant moves towards true inclusion a school can make, not through rhetoric, not through more add-ons or interventions, but through the daily experience of expert teaching of a rigorous, thoughtful curriculum.” (Mary Myatt, 2026)

Much more important than that…

If your life depended on it …. you would (…achieve the required level of urgency, prioritisation and focus to close gaps)

We know that the most effective schools enable all children to catch-up and keep-up, achieving sector contrasting outcomes in Year 6 and continuing to close gaps in the Early Secondary Years. These schools typically do normal things incredibly well, seek to close any gap regardless of context, enact a curriculum deeply informed by assessment, with high expectations and with constrained and unswerving focus on high quality education. These schools struggle to talk about specific gap-closing strategies, because gap closing is what they do, it is their identity. They apply equity as normal, specifically gifting what each child needs, a deep understanding of pupil performance and an ability to not be distracted from it.

 “Some people believe football closing the disadvantage gap is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.” (Bill Shankly)

Leadership of constraint and prioritisation

Closing the disadvantage gap and prioritising these pivotal phases of education requires leadership to deploy constraints and restraint; a level of prioritisation that orients attention and rewards gap closing. Schools and Trusts must resist chasing anything and everything, to dancing to all the tunes, so that they concentrate on what they are good at and directing their attention into the phases that carry the most hope for under-resourced children.

chase two rabbits, catch neither.

The hackneyed, yet true Hedgehog Concept (Collins) prompts us to remember why we exist as educators and to focus our energies on what we are best at – using education to transform lives, principally through the interaction of curriculum, assessment and pedagogy.

David Epstein (2026) points leaders toward the importance of seeking a greater understanding and deployment of constraints to achieve greater and sustained impact:

  • Constraints sharpen focus: when everything is possible, priorities blur. Clear constraints force people and organisations to decide what matters most.
  • The right limits improve creativity: Constraints push people beyond default solutions. They create the conditions for deeper problem-solving and more original thinking on well-defined problems and challenges.
  • Too many resources can create waste and complexity: an abundance of resource and time leads to over-engineering, distraction and weak discipline.
  • Leaders should design useful boundaries: Good leadership is not just about removing barriers; it is about setting intelligent limits: timeframes, decision rules, scope and priorities.
  • Progress often comes from subtraction, not addition: improvement may come from stopping, simplifying or narrowing work rather than adding more initiatives.

“The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self… the anguish into which an unrestricted freedom plunges… I have no use for a theoretic freedom. Let me have something finite, definite… my freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles.” (Igor Stravinsky)

Inspiring lives with greater opportunity and choice

The formative and middle years of education are life changing. We must, therefore, employ greater urgency, make a deeper investment and increase our focus on the quality of provision in these phases. This requires both constraint and constraints to harness our attention and place value where we have the greatest leverage to close gaps. So that we gift the Best Start in Life to all children and increase their life chances in the Early Secondary Years. Securing greater agency for children as they journey toward adulthood.

Inspiring lives with greater opportunity and choice.

Dan Nicholls | July 2026

Igniting identity | circumstance and happenstance

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Our self-identity forms over time, shaped by our experiences and interactions, particularly in our formative years. It is not a uniform development of self, but rather one that is punctuated disproportionately by high impact moments. These sit in our backstories, having ignited our identity and shaped who we have become.

These moments are often subtle, quiet experiences of awe and wonder: a sudden realisation, both unsettling and exciting, that the world and our role in it is not what we thought. In these moments of alchemy, brief serendipitous collisions create a hiatus between our old and new self-image.

“…in moments of alchemy, brief and serendipitous collisions, the beautiful texture of interwoven lives. There are many seeds of genius in the world, we must nurture as many as we can.” Helen Lewis

Circumstance and happenstance

The development of self is determined by our context, upbringing and by the influential adults and peers that we look to through childhood: an on-going influence of circumstance through our formative years.

But much, arguably, is happenstance, serendipitous moments that build our self-image. Brief events, often remarkably small, that disproportionately shape our lives. Rather awkwardly, they are often surprisingly quiet, private moments of self-realisation that are invisible to the provider.

“The smallest act in the most limited circumstances bears the seed of boundlessness, because one deed, and sometimes one word, suffices to change every constellation.” Hannah Arendt

Yet for some children the vagaries of life’s happenstances are less frequent, less influential or much less accessible. It also depends on a child’s circumstance and their pre-disposition to act on these moments. Whilst our childhood sets the conditions and the circumstances that influence our predispositions, the brief moments, the happenstances, disproportionately explain who we become.

Predispositions

Will, Should, Might, Could, Won’t, Can’t

Our context and circumstance, whether consciously or unconsciously, determine our predispositions and the strength of our self-agency. For any given aspect of life we align to one of the following dispositions:

•I Will  …. I fully expect to do this, unswerving, predestined, locked in, self-fulfilling.

•I Should … Highly likely, people like me do things like this (reinforced by peer status).

•I Might … Entirely possible and within my gift, requires a step forward, focus and resourced adults.

•I Could … It is possible, but could be difficult to achieve – requires ignition, support and must be followed by resource.

•I Won’t … People like me don’t do this, locked out, keys hard to find, and not sought, no capacity or resource, unable to see the future or be part in it.

•I Can’t … Not possible, nobody like me does things like this, psychologically and materially forbidden.

If you are under-resourced and have experienced much less privilege, then too often your agency is limited to the bottom few dispositions. This offers a form of immunity to moments of ignition and even if ignited a lack of resource to follow your triggered passion. In a world of privilege, however, you occupy the top few dispositions: emboldened to accessible experiences and open to life-changing moments. And yet, ‘ambition’ is equally distributed, but enhanced or stifled from birth and perhaps before birth.

“If you are lucky enough to be born in a world made in your image, you probably think of a failure as an obstacle on the path to eventual success. If you are a marginalised person in any way you internalise that failure more closely.” Elizabeth Day

Moments of wow… igniting identity

Regardless of who we are there are moments we witness that change our passions, our identity and motivation for what we wish to become…

“But the moment that changed everything came on 29 July 1992 … the Barcelona Olympics. Chris Boardman was about to go in the final of the men’s individual pursuit. I sat in front of the TV and watched him … Four and a bit minutes later, Chris had overtaken his German counterpart and become Britain’s first Olympic cycling gold medallist in 72 years. I was 12 and knew straightaway I wanted to emulate his feat. Another 12 years later I did just that.” Bradley Wiggins

…or influential adults who we are desperate to emulate…

“When I’m 13, my mum gives me a load of photos that she’s found. There he is, in his cycling kit, racing. It’s a definite “Wow!” moment, like he’s been brought to life in my hands. Those photos become my greatest treasure. The closest connection I could have with my father was by following in his footsteps” Bradley Wiggins

…or experiences that ignite our identity…

“My love for cinema began at a very early age, as early as I can remember… I was just a little kid in a darkened theatre, and I remember that beam of light just cut across the room and I remember looking up, and it seemed to just explode on the screen. … and suddenly, the world was so much larger than the one that I knew … it opened my eyes. It opened my imagination to the possibility that life could expand far beyond the boundaries that I then perceived in my own life.” Tom Cruise

“Making films is not what I do, it is who I am.” Tom Cruise

Owning the future

How far are children able to focus on the future? If you exist in an under-resourced world where you seek to survive the day, the week, your effective horizon is limited, perhaps irrelevant to you: there is no bandwidth to contemplate your future. This fundamentally forces you toward the weaker predispositions, I Won’t and Can’t, and breaks the connection between recognising that the efforts of now are an investment in next. The future will act on me.

Resourced children are able to make the investments now, fill their lockers and are typically compelled to do so, supported to strong dispositions, I Will and Should. I create my future.

To be or not to be

To be or not to be, that is the question that children wrestle with as they navigate the world. We know, though, that some children have much less capacity to be, forced into a not to be mindset. Growing in a world that tips the odds against you, denies a starting disposition, or ladder to, ‘Will, Should, Could’ and restricts the under-resourced to ‘Can’t and Won’t’. Only the application of equity can offer a ladder and break the cycle.

Lockers filled with belief

In every aspect of a child’s life, a child holds a locker of self-belief. Advantaged children have bursting lockers, filled by circumstance and opportunity, narrated by resourced adults, affirmed through experience. The lockers of under resourced children are sparse, short on belief, encouragement or affirming experiences. When they look to their lockers for self-confidence and self-belief they are encouraged, perhaps compelled, to step back, to not take risks and internalise the failure. We must be better at filling the lockers of under-resourced children.

“When you are born into wealth and privilege, you inherit a plan that outlines the paths ahead, indicating the shortcuts and byways available to reach your destination … If you enter the world without such a map, you are bereft of proper guidance. You lose your way more easily.” Elif Shafak

Chasing status

What you become depends largely on who you find yourself with. We measure status on those around us, typically the 5 peers that we spend time with that we look to and derive our own sense of status. Our belief in what is possible is shaped by our peers, and our schools are the crucible for these interactions.

Our verbal quota

“…we speak about 16,000 words a day, that is a lot of chances to tease, complain and criticise, but also to encourage, inspire and comfort. I know I can do a lot more good with my verbal quota.” Matt Woodcock

In every interaction, exchange and conversation our words are a powerful force for good (or ill). We never know for certain the weight of our words on a child, but we do know that children are adult-watchers, seeking to decode the world around them. Awkwardly or helpfully, in every interaction our words always carry weight and have influence, intended or otherwise. Often just 13 words deliver a self-belief that becomes unshakable and propels a dopamine-soaked desire to follow a passion:

“…I was introduced to a club coach, Stan Knight. Immediately he took hold of my wrist. “I’ve never felt a pulse like it,” he said. He looked me in the eye – “You’re going to be the best cyclist this country has ever produced.” … I liked the fact he had belief in me… Stan didn’t tell me I was special because of who my dad was. He told me I was special. Me.” Bradley Wiggins

Inspiring lives

“I began to realise how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it full speed, Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all else become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good.” Roald Dahl

As educators we chose to inspire lives – and yet we spend little time understanding how children exist in the world or how their lives unfold through their circumstance and happenstance. How do we ensure that curiosity, hope and ambition is a feature of all childhoods not just those that are privileged?

Perhaps we should maintain a greater sense of awe and wonder, of possibility and back it with the application of equity and protect the flickering flames of hope, so that more children can embrace an interest with both arms. If we are to ignite a child’s self-identity, so that they have agency into their adulthood, we must create greater opportunity and apply the equity that will give all children the choice to follow their dreams.

...inspire lives with greater opportunity and choice.

Dan Nicholls | December 2025