Fostering creativity in the classroom: Scaling creative thinking across a multi-academy trust

This article has been published as part of the Rethinking Curriculum project, kindly funded by The Helen Hamlyn Trust.

Jane Fearnley OBE, CEO of Willow Tree Academy

Context

 Willow Tree Academy is a four-school primary academy trust based in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. Our schools serve communities experiencing significant disadvantage, with many of our children living in poverty. We offer a bespoke step-out social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) provision for children within our trust schools and beyond. The LEAF (Leading Endeavours for Aspirational Futures) Centre plays a key role in this work, offering tailored support for children with social and emotional needs rooted in trauma, adverse childhood experiences, and other complex life circumstances.

At Willow Tree Academy, we want every child to leave us as a confident, successful young person who is proud of who they are and ready to take their place in the world. Our schools focus on delivering ambitious learning, where nurturing personal development and building emotional resilience are fundamental to success. To achieve this, our behaviour and inclusionAn approach where a school aims to ensure that all children are educated together, with support for those who require it to access the full curriculum and contribute to and participate in all aspects of school life teams work closely with school staff to ensure every child feels safe, valued, and supported.

Staff development is a central pillar of our trust. We offer high-quality professional development, coaching, and leadership programmes for colleagues at every stage of their career. We invest in our people because we know that confident, well-supported staff make the greatest difference to children’s lives.

We believe that every child, regardless of background, deserves access to a rich, vibrant, skills- and knowledge-based curriculum, alongside consistently high-quality teaching every day.

Civic leadership and the trust-wide challenge

As part of the Rethinking Curriculum’s Fostering Creativity in the Classroom programme, we embarked on journey to reframe our understanding of creativity and its place within our trust. The facilitator training provided as part of the programme was fundamental to our own professional development as senior leaders. Through this training, and our subsequent facilitation of the programme, we deepened our knowledge and understanding of what it means to develop and sustain a creative curriculum.

From this work, we have begun to use the OECD design criteria (Vincent-Lancrin et al., 2019) to support practitioners across our trust in fostering creativity within their classroom practice. This involved bringing together teachers and leaders from thirteen schools, spanning four multi-academy trusts. The diverse group of leaders and teachers represented a wide range of expertise, skills, experiences and perspectives. Participants’ roles ranged from early career teachers to headteachers and trust leaders, encompassing every stage of educational leadership. We were also keen to include our international partner school, Tanghu Elementary School Chengdu, China. Despite being 5000 miles apart, our partnership revealed that we face similar challenges, leading us to a joint enquiry question:

How can creativity be fostered within the classroom?

What quickly became apparent was the consistent and genuine thread that united this wonderfully diverse group of professionals—a shared commitment in bringing something different to their teaching and curriculum design, with the aim of equipping pupils with the knowledge, skills and dispositions needed to thrive in an ever-changing world.

Starting points

When reviewing curriculum design across our schools, we noticed a common trend: the pressure of high-stakes assessment often caused teachers to lean into safe, highly scaffolded, and convergent lesson designs. Although we are proud of our creative, cross-curricular approach, we found that teachers often struggled to identify the connections necessary to design sequences of meaningful and coherent lessons that developed and challenged pupils’ critical and creative thinking skills. As a result, coaching and mentoring from senior leaders was often required. At a leadership level, this challenge sometimes resulted in a ‘do it for them’ approach, which inadvertently limited opportunities to build teacher confidence and ownership. We recognised the need to move towards a more empowering model by encouraging practitioners to ask the question:

How can I engage my pupils in authentic learning experiences that enable progress in both content knowledge and skill development, while also nurturing imagination and innovation?

When embarking on the facilitator training, we brought considerable collective experience and expertise in curriculum design, but also lots of unanswered questions and frustrations. As we began our work together, several key challenges emerged:

• Inconsistent definitions: The meaning of creativity varied considerably among our primary practitioners and leaders, resulting in differing interpretations, expectations, and approaches.
• Lack of scalable assessment: Without an objective way to track progress in creative thinking, it was difficult to measure the impact of our curriculum intent, nor to ‘know’ the impact of our curriculum on pupils’ (and staff’s) ability to think creatively.
• Teacher cognitive load: We needed a framework that enhanced and strengthened existing subject disciplines, rather than introducing an additional layer of complexity or administrative burden for teachers.

These challenges highlighted the need for a shared framework through which creativity could be understood, developed and embedded across our schools. We were seeking an approach that was both theoretically grounded and practically applicable — one that would enable us to articulate our curriculum intentions more clearly and support pupils and staff in developing their creative thinking in meaningful and measurable ways.

Embedding the OECD framework

To ensure pedagogical rigour, we anchored our strategy in the OECD Framework for Creative and Critical Thinking (Figure 1). This rubric splits creativity into four distinct, teachable habits of mind. From a trust perspective, we mapped these dimensions across all key stages to create a continuum of growth:

Figure 1: Curriculum rubric informed by the OECD Framework for Creative and Critical Thinking (Vincent-Lancrin et al., 2019), used to guide curriculum development across the trust.

Implementation strategy: The Willow Tree Academy Trust rollout

Scaling this work across multiple schools required a deliberate, phased implementation strategy grounded in sustained professional development and cross-Trust collaboration. This included:

• Establishing trust-wide professional learning communities: We established cross-trust subject networks that enabled genuine co-construction of curriculum and practice across primary settings. Teachers and leaders from different phases and schools worked together to design units of work that explicitly developed the OECD dimensions of Inquiring and Imagining. These networks created space for shared enquiry, professional dialogue and the development of a consistent language for creativity across the Trust.
• Embedding formative rubrics: A clear distinction was made from the outset between formative and summative assessment. The OECD-aligned rubrics (Vincent-Lancrin et al., 2019) were introduced as diagnostic tools to support learning, rather than as mechanisms for accountability. In subjects such as mathematics, pupils were recognised not only for arriving at correct answers, but also for demonstrating originality of method, flexibility of thinking and iterative problem-solving. This shift supported a greater focus on the learning process as well as outcomes.
• Cross-school moderation and shared understanding of progression: Teachers from across the trust engaged in regular moderation sessions focused on pupil work and learning outcomes. This process was critical in developing a shared understanding of progression in creative thinking. Through discussion of evidence from subjects such as writing, science and design technology, colleagues built consensus around what high-quality creativity looked like in practice. This strengthened professional confidence in identifying and valuing attributes such as reflection, ideation and originality.

Collectively, these approaches fostered a culture of collaboration, shared ownership and professional trust across our trust. Creativity was no longer positioned as an additional initiative; but increasingly understood as an integral component of high-quality teaching, curriculum design and assessment.

What’s different? What’s changed?

The implementation of learnings from the Rethinking Curriculum’s Fostering Creativity in the Classroom programme has led to significant and multifaceted changes across our school communities, affecting pupils, staff, and parents. The impact has been evident not only in classroom practice and curriculum design, but also in the wider professional culture and shared understanding of creativity across our trust.

Transformation of teaching and staff culture

• Teacher flourishing and retention: The programme contributed to the development of a thriving and positive professional culture, fostering joy in teaching and strengthening staff commitment to their roles. Teachers reported a greater sense of autonomy and trust, enabling them to respond creatively and effectively to pupils’ needs.
• Teachers as lifelong learners: Staff described renewed enthusiasm for their own learning and professional curiosity, frequently exploring new ideas and sharing these with pupils. In doing so, they modelled the dispositions associated with lifelong learning.
• Professional growth: The work reinforced the importance of teachers’ own creative development as a foundation for nurturing creativity in pupils.

Curriculum and environmental changes

• Innovative curriculum design: Colleagues were given opportunities to reflect upon, plan, and redesign elements of their curriculum, placing skill development at the heart of learning and establishing authentic cross-curricular connections that supported innovation and deeper understanding. This represented a shift away from ‘doing what has always been done’ towards an approach characterised by experimentation, reflection, and adaptation. It also created opportunities to assess creativity through the use of rubrics, enabling teachers and pupils to assess progress, reflect on learning, and understand the impact of creative approaches.
• Supportive learning environments: Learning spaces were reimagined as environments in which pupils felt safe to take risks, engage their senses, and celebrate each stage of the creative process. These environments fostered confidence, curiosity, and a willingness to experiment, helping to establish a culture in which creativity could flourish.

CPD and cultural change

• Professional development: We implemented structured twilight training sessions designed to equip teachers and school leaders with practical tools to support curriculum innovation. Staff engaged in professional learning that explored the definition of creativity, broke down barriers to being creative practitioners, and introduced global frameworks like the OECD Framework for Creative and Critical Thinking (Vincent-Lancrin et al., 2019) and the Five Creative Habits of Mind (Lucas et al., 2013).
• Collaborative planning culture: The training strengthened a culture of collaboration, where colleagues shared their own most creative lesson plans and collectively audited upcoming units of work. Teachers critically evaluated existing plans, working together to increase the density of creative components, shifting lesson planning from an isolated task to a shared, reflective exercise.
• Systemic framework integration: A significant cultural shift was achieved by establishing a common pedagogical language across the trust using the CIPID framework (Collaborative, Inquisitive, Persistent, Imaginative, Disciplined) (Lucas et al., 2013). Rather than treating creativity as an abstract concept, the trust integrated structured next steps into standard operational workflows, encouraging teachers to utilise the framework in lesson planning and following up with reflective feedback sessions.

Impact on pupil outcomes

To evidence impact, pupil progress was tracked on a termly basis using matrices adapted from the OECD rubrics (Vincent-Lancrin et al., 2019). Cross-school moderation used a portfolio sampling method to audit pupil outcomes against the CIPID criteria. This data was contextualised through structured pupil voice interviews— with a particular focus on disadvantaged learners—and cross-referenced with internal academic and behaviour data.

• Enhanced academic performance: Participation in creative approaches to learning— including learning beyond the classroom, oracy, drama, music, performance, and other creative tools and techniques—supported pupils’ development in core subjects by strengthening memory, motivation, and problem-solving skills. This was reflected in improved resilience, attainment outcomes, and classroom behaviour.
• Improved wellbeing and confidence: Pupils demonstrated increased confidence, a stronger belief in their own abilities, and higher self-esteem. Many described creative approaches as providing greater ownership of their learning. Teacher observations also indicated increased levels of pupil confidence, resilience, and engagement.
• Social equity: A creative focus provided opportunities for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds to access experiences that might otherwise have been unavailable to them. In this way, creative approaches helped to broaden participation and enrich pupils’ cultural and educational experiences.

Teacher feedback

Leading staff CPD and driving whole-school monitoring for the Rethinking Curriculum programme has been a brilliant step in my own professional growth. In Year 6, where there is a large amount of pressure for assessments and data, this training has helped me move away from overly scaffolded lessons. Instead, I’ve focused on using the OECD rubrics as a supportive, everyday tool to celebrate how children solve problems and think outside the box, rather than just chasing the correct answer. Guiding other teachers through this process through tailored staff meetings and observing this creative language develop across our classrooms has really built my confidence as a leader.

ECT feedback

Using my understanding of what Rethinking Curriculum has delivered has been a great toolkit to have for my own professional practice. As an ECT, it has been a great support tool to have whilst considering my own planning and looking at alternative ways for the children to think about their learning. In Y3, where learning is often heavily modelled and scaffolded, it has been amazing to take a step back and allow the children to problem solve through their own problem-solving techniques. Using a case study provided by the course, I was able to see the children’s thoughts and problem solving through a range of discussions. It was fantastic to watch them think outside of the box within their learning and outcomes.

Leader feedback: Headteacher

Being part of the Fostering Creativity programme has allowed me to reflect on the creativity within our current teaching strategies and curriculum and has supported me to identify opportunities to support our children in being creative and having ownership of their learning. The dialogue and collaboration between colleagues, guided by the facilitators, has been invaluable and provoked my thinking in areas of our curriculum that I wouldn’t have considered in that way before.

Leadership recommendations

For trust and school leaders seeking to develop their curriculum through this lens, our experience highlights four key principles:

• Meaningful change takes time and must be authentically led by school leaders. Practitioners require the space and permission to explore open-ended approaches, test new ideas, and refine their practice through trial and reflection. While early experimentation may feel uncertain, this process is essential in balancing secure knowledge acquisition with creative exploration.
• The rubrics are most powerful when used to support learning rather than judge it. By embedding creative frameworks strictly within formative assessment and self-reflection, leaders can preserve the conditions necessary for curiosity, risk-taking, and honest professional dialogue. When creativity becomes a high-stakes metric, the willingness to experiment quickly diminishes.
• Creativity is not uniform; it manifests differently across disciplines. Practitioners should be trusted to interpret and apply the framework in ways that honour the unique nature of each subject, while remaining firmly aligned with the overarching trust vision.
• The assessment of creativity requires careful consideration. To support this, the OECD assessment rubrics and creative frameworks (Vincent-Lancrin et al., 2019) should be integrated into existing teaching models as formative tools. Leaders must clearly establish when, where and how it is appropriate to evaluate creative habits, ensuring this process runs alongside—yet remains distinct from—the assessment of core subject-disciplinary and substantive knowledge.

References

Lucas B, G Claxton and E Spencer (2013) Progression in Student Creativity in School: First Steps Towards New Forms of Formative Assessments, OECD Education Working Papers, No. 86, OECD Publishing. Available at: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2013/01/progression-in-student-creativity-in-school_g17a2218/5k4dp59msdwk-en.pdf (accessed on 17 July 2026)

Vincent-Lancrin S, González-Sancho C, Bouckaert M, de Luca F, Fernández-Barrera M, Jacotin G, Urgel J and Vidal Q (2019) Fostering Students’ Creativity and Critical Thinking: What It Means in School. Paris: OECD Publishing. Available at: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2019/10/fostering-students-creativity-and-critical-thinking_3ffa73e4/62212c37-en.pdf (accessed on 15 July 2026