Coaching as a Right, Not a Remedy

There is a persistent and damaging idea in some schools that coaching is something you offer to teachers who are struggling. It sits somewhere between capability and performance review, wearing the uniform of support but carrying the scent of consequence. Staff learn quickly to read the signal. *Would you like some coaching?* becomes a question with only one safe answer, and the practice itself becomes something to be feared rather than welcomed.

This is a problem we have created in the profession. And it is a problem we now need to undo, particularly in light of the renewed inspection framework.

Since November 2025, Ofsted has been explicit in ways the old framework was not. Staff wellbeing and workload now sit formally within the Leadership and Governance judgement. Inspectors are asking directly how schools invest in the professional growth of their people. The tone has moved to *done with, not done to*. Report cards have replaced the single headline grade, with provision assessed against the expected, strong and exceptional standards across multiple areas. Whatever view one takes of the detail, the direction of travel is clear. Schools are being asked to demonstrate a culture of sustained professional development, not an archive of annual observations.

That culture cannot be built on remediation. It must be built on entitlement.

What elite performers expect

No serious athlete in would tolerate being asked to perform at the highest level without a coach. At international level, coaches are not a sign of weakness; they are a condition of the work. The question a young professional footballer asks is not whether they will have a coach, but how good the coaching is, how often it happens, and whether it is tailored to them. The idea that coaching would be reserved for players failing to meet expectations would be met with bewilderment.

Teaching is at least as complex as elite sport and considerably more consequential. Yet we accept that a qualified teacher might go an entire career without sustained, personalised coaching. We provide scaffolding for the first two years and then, for many staff, it is quietly removed. What replaces it tends to be an annual observation, a review cycle, and whatever informal support a generous head of department can offer between marking and meetings.

Coaching should be a right, not a remedy. It should be something every teacher expects as a condition of the profession, not something administered to those in difficulty. If we want a coaching culture to flourish, the signal has to be unambiguous: everyone gets coached, because everyone deserves to keep developing.

Who does the coaching?

The honest objection is always the same. Where does the capacity come from?

This is a priorities question, not a capacity question. Schools find time for what they have decided matters. We find time for duty rotas, parents’ evenings, data drops and moderation because these things have been made non-negotiable. A coaching culture requires the same decision at SLT level.

The most underused resource in this conversation is the middle leadership layer. Heads of department, heads of year and curriculum leads are, in practice, the engines of school improvement. They set the weather in their teams. They know what lessons look like in their subject. They can tell the difference between a technique that will transfer and one that will not. Positioning these leaders as the coaching workforce does two things at once. It brings coaching close to the classroom, which is where it belongs. And it gives middle leaders a structured way to know their teams, which makes every other part of their role easier: quality assurance, line management, CPD planning, succession.

This does not remove the need for training, time and a clear coaching model. It places the work in the hands of the people best placed to do it.

Keeping it all in one place

A good coaching culture falls apart if nobody can find it. Conversations happen in corridors, notes get lost, and the excellent peer observation from autumn term exists only in the memory of two people. Schools then have to rebuild the picture each time a new leader asks how teaching and learning is being developed.

This is one of the reasons we built the Observations feature inside Starlight. It allows a coach to capture notes from a live, human observation and record them alongside any AI-generated reports for the same teacher, so the full picture sits in one place. When the observation is logged with the type marked as *coaching*, it becomes visible to organisational admins. Starlight Leads can then export that data and read the coaching picture at whole-school level. It informs CPD priorities, surfaces patterns across departments, and helps senior leaders see where their professional development investment is actually landing.

There is a second design choice worth mentioning. When an observation is logged, the coachee receives an email reminder to record their own written reflection against it. That reflection then becomes visible to the coach when they next open the record. This small loop matters. Coaching is only as powerful as the coachee’s engagement with it, and a short reflection, recorded close to the event, is one of the most reliable ways to turn an observation into a change in practice.

The human-in-the-loop principle

The temptation with any AI tool is to hand the work over. We think that is the wrong instinct.

The best use of Starlight always begins with a human. A coach observes their coachee. Together they co-construct the focus for development, whether that is questioning depth, pacing in the first ten minutes, stretch for the most able, or something else entirely. That focus is logged in the Actions area of Starlight. Over the following weeks, the coachee can record lessons and use Starlight autonomously, and the platform looks specifically for evidence of progress against the agreed focus in the transcripts. Progress is plotted over time, not as a grade, but as a development trace. When the human coach returns for the next check-in, they have the AI evidence and the coachee’s own reflections already in front of them. The conversation is richer, the next step is clearer, and the cycle continues.

This is coaching at scale without surveillance. It is insight rather than inspection. It keeps the human relationship at the centre and uses the AI to sustain momentum between check-ins, which is where most coaching cycles quietly die.

A cultural shift, not a policy tweak

The schools that will thrive under the renewed framework will not be the ones that fill folders with evidence. They will be the ones who can demonstrate a lived coaching culture: frequent, respectful, evidenced, and available to every teacher, not just those in difficulty.

That begins with a decision. Coaching is a right, not a remedy. It belongs to every professional in the building. We owe our teachers at least what an elite athlete would demand as a minimum, and our pupils are the ones who benefit most when we deliver it.

Spark Insight with Starlight and make coaching a right.

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The Insight Engine is written by Adam Sturdee, co-founder of Starlight, the UK’s first AI-powered coaching platform, and a senior leader with responsibility for teaching, learning and coaching. This blog is part of a wider mission to support educators through meaningful reflection, not performance metrics. It documents the journey of building Starlight from the ground up, and explores how AI, when shaped with care, can reduce workload, surface insight, and help teachers think more deeply about their practice. Rooted in the belief that growth should be private, professional, and purposeful, The Insight Engine offers ideas and stories that put insight—not judgment—at the centre of development.

🔗 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-sturdee-b0695b35a/