Why hire expertise if it isn’t going to shape practice?

by Amanda Archbald

Someone asked me recently why schools hire experienced practitioners and specialists if their insight is not consistently taken into account.

It is an uncomfortable question because most schools would confidently say that they value expertise. They invest in it, they appoint for it, and they speak about it with intention. Yet, in practice, there is often a quiet disconnect between the expertise a school holds and the way the school actually operates.

This is not usually about individuals choosing not to listen. It is more structural than that.

Schools are not struggling to hire expertise. They are struggling to use it.

In many settings, specialist roles sit in unclear positions. They are expected to influence teaching and learning across the school, yet they are not always embedded within the conversations where decisions are made.

This creates a familiar pattern. Specialists are consulted once plans are already in place. Their input is treated as advisory rather than integral. They carry responsibility for outcomes, but do not always have the authority to shape the conditions that lead to those outcomes.

Over time, this shifts how their role is perceived. Not as something that defines practice, but as something that supports it.

There is also a persistent misunderstanding around what specialist support is for.

Inclusion teams, language specialists, and intervention leads are often positioned as a form of additional help for teachers. They are asked for resources, strategies, or in-class support. All of this has value, but it keeps the focus on supplementing existing practice rather than refining it.

The expectation becomes that specialists will bridge gaps for pupils, instead of addressing why those gaps exist in the first place.

Once a role is framed in this way, expertise becomes something that can be drawn on when needed, rather than something that should routinely inform how teaching is designed and delivered.

Even in strong schools, there is another layer to this.

Expertise challenges established habits.

When a specialist asks a department to adjust practice, it is rarely a small technical change. It often requires teachers to rethink what they prioritise in the classroom. In multilingual settings, for example, it means making language explicit, not assumed. It means recognising that verbal fluency does not equate to academic proficiency. It means accepting that pupils who appear confident may still require structured support to access the curriculum fully.

These are not minor adjustments. They ask teachers to shift their understanding of what good teaching looks like.

Resistance, when it appears, is not always about disagreement. Often, it is about protecting a sense of competence that has been built over time.

Alongside this, many schools hold a significant amount of expertise, but it sits in parallel rather than in alignment.

There may be strong leaders for inclusion, assessment, curriculum, and language development. Each brings valuable insight, yet without a coherent structure to connect these roles, their impact becomes fragmented.

Leaders hear multiple perspectives, but without clear alignment, those perspectives do not consistently translate into classroom practice. The result is not a lack of expertise, but a lack of coherence.

This has real implications for pupils.

When specialist insight is not embedded into whole-school practice, needs are often misread. In multilingual contexts, this is particularly visible. Pupils who are verbally fluent can appear secure, while underlying gaps in reading, writing, and academic language remain unaddressed.

Assessment data can be misinterpreted. Support becomes reactive rather than planned. By the time the need is fully recognised, the gap has widened.

So the issue is not whether schools listen.

Most do.

The question is whether listening leads to change.

For expertise to have impact, it has to be positioned within the structure of the school, not at its edges. It needs to be part of how decisions are made, how teaching is defined, and how accountability is shared.

This means being clear about where specialist roles sit within leadership. It means ensuring that their insight informs planning, not just implementation. It means moving from a model where expertise is consulted, to one where it is embedded.

Every school holds expertise.

The difference lies in what they choose to do with it.

And that choice is what ultimately shapes the experience of every learner in the classroom.