Twelve weeks
Play, Deliberately Designed: The Enquiry
One day on site. Six enquiry sessions. One case study. Twelve weeks.
Most schools believe in play. Far fewer have designed it.
Book a call
Two rooms next door to each other run differently. One adult sits and watches, another teaches inside the play, a third tidies. Nobody has decided, in writing, which is right.
The Enquiry starts there, with one question your team chooses and answers with evidence they collect themselves.
Two readers
What each of you gets out of it
For your Early Years Lead
- Your Lead names the question. It comes from their rooms, not from us.
- Six hours of thinking time across the term, with someone who has led the phase and been the person being inspected.
- One change at a time, so nothing lands on top of an already full week. Nobody prepares folders and nobody performs.
- Written evidence of their own impact, in language leadership accepts.
For the Head
- One named improvement inside a term, with a before and an after you can see.
- A written case study your board reads in five minutes.
- An independent view of a phase you were never trained to teach.
- Quality held in a system rather than in one teacher, so it survives the August staff change.
- Evidence that holds up when someone looks closely, whether that is a board member, a parent or an inspector.
Twelve weeks
How it runs
Before we start
Discovery call with you both. We agree the area, and we fix the fortnightly slot so it survives the term.
Day one
One full day in your rooms. Time with children, with your team and with you. We name the question together and record where you are now.
Weeks 2 to 12
Six enquiry sessions of one hour, one every fortnight. Trial, look, adjust. Your team collects light evidence from what they already see.
Week 12
What changed, and what holds after we leave. Your written case study follows within three weeks.
If you want it
What comes after
Some schools stop at week twelve with their question answered, and that is a complete piece of work.
Schools that want the whole setting designed move on to Play, Deliberately Designed. Four days on site building environment, pedagogy, resources, culture and assessment alongside your team, then ten moderation reviews across the year so the systems hold after we leave.
You decide once you have seen what your own evidence says, and your enquiry fee comes off the price.
See the programmeThe fee
Fixed, and agreed before we start
A fixed fee
Agreed at the discovery call and confirmed in writing before any work begins. No day rates.
Travel is separate
The school covers flights, accommodation and meals for the visit, agreed in writing before booking.
It credits forward
If you go on to Play, Deliberately Designed, your enquiry fee comes off the price.
Twenty minutes on a call tells us both whether it fits, and what it would cost for your school.
Book a callQuestions leaders ask
Six hours across a whole phase. Is that enough?
The six hours are not the work. The work happens in the eleven weeks between them, done by your own team in your own rooms. The sessions are where somebody who has done this before stops them going down the wrong road for a fortnight.
Why one question rather than a full improvement plan?
Schools imagine improvement as coverage, so one question sounds like one seventh of the work. Provision comes apart at one joint, and everything downstream inherits it. When planning follows the child, observation starts to matter, and when observation matters, assessment stops being a filing job. Choose the joint and the rest moves with it.
Who chooses the question?
Your Early Years Lead does, after the day on site. That day exists so that we are looking for the joint rather than for a topic.
Will this feel like an inspection to my team?
No. We watch normal sessions and talk to people. Nobody prepares folders and nobody performs.
We already have an improvement plan. How is this different?
Most schools have one, and most cover several areas and run out of road by half term. The cost is not the unfinished work. It is what the team learns, which is that plans here do not land. A team that carried one change all the way through, and watched the evidence move, believes the next one.
What do we end up with?
One named improvement with a before and an after, a written case study your board reads in five minutes, and the cycle your team ran to get there. Notice, change, look again, adjust. That last one is yours permanently. It will not redesign a whole setting, and anyone telling you a single question can do that is selling you something.
Twelve weeks from now, you either hold evidence that your play is designed, or you hold the same question.
Twenty minutes on a call tells us both whether it fits.
Book a callThe Enquiry is a development project, not an inspection. No inspectorate is involved, and we never predict a grade.