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Introduction
In 2008, I qualified as a Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) Practitioner. Technically, this means that I can offer my services as a practitioner professionally and charge willing clients for my service to support them in their needs and aspirations. I have never done this nor am I considering it for the future. Rather, I completed the Practitioner course because I wanted to improve the ways in which I worked with students in difficulty and the ways in which I would support them and their parents.Within that learning, I developed a lot of skills around managing neuroses, phobias and negative behaviours, classic considerations that might be discussed on a leather couch with one’s eyes closed. But the part that sticks out the most in my mind is the work that I did in goal setting. Don’t worry, this is not an acronym-based post where I write all about SMART targets for GCSE or A-level PE courses. Rather, I want to write about the critical process of planning goals backwards. You see, most people make their goals like this:
But this is not the most effective way to set one’s goals. Better is to do it like this:
At first glance, this will seem very strange to most people. It doesn’t seem to make sense that we would start with the very end of the process. But this is the key. Moreover, it’s not just a matter of starting at the end. No! One has to feel and sense the end. One needs to –quite literally– feel what it is like to be in that specific, success position.
Before we get deep into this process, I want to mention a couple of key ingredients. Firstly, the goal has to be of critical importance. It has to be 10 out of 10. Generally speaking, goals that are of lower importance will not be achieved through this process, just as they are so uncommonly achieved through any other process. I will come back to this point later. Secondly, when you picture and sense and feel your goal, your end, you must –and I mean must– be in that moment. For example, a person who imagines their success position and describes it with words such as “I probably would feel like…” or “I imagine it would be like…” will not succeed. And this leads me to one of the most important parts of this post. I will write it in big letters so that readers realise how important this is to goal setting:
The subconscious makes no distinction between reality and imagined reality.
This statement really matters. It matters for visualisation. It matters for mental rehearsal. It matters for positive thinking. It matters for negative thought stopping. It matters –most crucially for this post– to goal setting. This will become clear as you read through this post.Finally, before we really get into the weeds, I want to put one other statement into large text:
The subconscious does not comprehend the negative.
This, again, really matters. For example, a person who targets “Not smoking (anymore)”, as far as the subconscious is concerned, is simply targeting “Smoking”. A person who targets “Having no stress” is simply targeting “Stress” from the perspective of the subconscious. In these two cases, a person should be targeting “Being smoke-free” and “Being stress-free” for the best results.
So, let’s make this PE-teaching specific. Let’s say I was working with a Head of PE or an aspiring Head of PE and their broad and, at this stage, generic goal was to improve the performance of their A-level PE course in relation to added value. How might the conversation go? The following conversation is with a Head of PE at a large 6th form college with an annual cohort of 90 A-level PE students and a teaching team of six teachers teaching across year 1 and year 2 A-level PE.
A goal setting conversation between James Simms and a Head of PE
James: What do you want to achieve?
PE teacher: I’d like to improve the added-value performance of our A-level PE course.
James: Wow. Fantastic. That’s a great goal. Tell me what added value means to you.
PE teacher: It means that every student does better, or worse, than expected compared to standardised tests that they have done. When it comes to A-level PE, it's in relation to their GCSE grades.
James: Amazing. This sounds really important. How important is it to you, to your students and to your team?
PE teacher: It’s important, for sure. To be honest, my performance management is based on this, and the success of my staff and the destinations of my students at university or equivalent literally depend on this.
James: I get it. Good for you! So, out of 10, how important is the goal?
PE teacher: I’d say maybe a seven out of 10.
James: Interesting. So it sort of doesn’t matter whether it happens or not? I mean, it’s only at a 7/10 so, presumably, you are willing to accept it doesn’t happen.
PE teacher: No, it definitely matters, but I was thinking that eight, nine and 10 out of ten were maybe more related to family and health and all those types of things.
James: I absolutely agree, but we are here to talk about work. It is your professional environment we are discussing. If we were to put to one side your family’s well-being and happiness for a second, as important as that is, what is the importance of this goal?
PE teacher: I think it becomes a 9/10-type thing.
James: OK, that makes sense but I want to take you back to what you said earlier: You mentioned that your students’ university places were based on this. You mentioned that your own career progression hinges on it. You mentioned that the success of your staff depends on this outcome. So, why is it only 9/10?
PE teacher: Well, yeah, it’s critical. I mean, it is what we are collectively judged for so we need to achieve it.
James: Good. I agree. And am I right in thinking that if you achieve this, if your students achieve this, if your staff achieve this, each of their collective home lives and families will do better, progress more and have more opportunities?
PE teacher: Without a doubt. To be honest with you, it is probably the achievement that I personally need to make in order to move to the next level. I want to achieve this for my family and their future too. It’s not just about the students.
James: Well said. There is nothing wrong with personal and familial ambition. Be bold, my friend. Now, given all that you have said about yourself, your students, your staff, your family and your professional future, how important is this?
PE teacher: It’s 10/10. In fact, I could argue that, professionally, it’s 11/10.
James: Good for you. This really matters. It’s 11/10 importance professionally.
| You may notice that I pushed and pushed to have the PE teacher acknowledge the goal as 10/10 minimum. This really matters. The PE teacher is right in that well-being, health and happiness are more important, and I will build this into the conversation later because they obviously care about it. They are not the ruthless, step-on-anybody type of person. This is a family-oriented individual and I will use this to our advantage later. |
James: So, I want to move us forward in time to a moment where you would know, for sure, that the goal had been achieved. What evidence would you need to see, hold, feel or hear in order for you to be confident that the goal had been achieved?
PE teacher: Well, I’d probably need two to three years of data that showed our added value was consistently high.
James: So, your goal is about a two-year trend? A three-year trend?
PE teacher: Yeah, three years, I would say.
James: Good. And what is this data? I mean, what measures do you use?
PE teacher: I base added-value success on A-level PE on our ALPS scores.
James: Good. I know ALPS well, so I understand where you are coming from. When you receive your ALPS report, where are you?
PE teacher: In the past…
James: Stop! Where are you?
PE teacher: Well, normally, I would be in my office…
James: Stop! This really matters. Where are you?
PE teacher: I’m in my office and I’m sitting at my desk looking at the computer. The email for the ALPS report arrived this morning.
James: Excellent. Before we get to the report, tell me about the office. Tell me about the things you can see. Tell me about what you can hear, smell and sense.
PE teacher: It’s a Thursday and it’s August. It’s muggy today and the room feels really sticky.
James: Good. Tell me more about the room.
PE teacher: I imagine being also…
James: Stop! You are alone, right?
PE teacher: Yes, I’m alone. I came in today before term starts because it’s a week after results day 2028 and I want to do some analysis, so that I can give my team some accurate updates when I see them next week.
James: Good. Tell me more about the room, the computer and the email.
PE teacher: The walls seem to have been painted. I’m amazed because the team left the office in a right state when we finished in July. There is a used coffee cup next to me that has gone a bit furry.
James: What colour is the fur?
PE teacher: It’s white. The fur that builds up on the bottom of a dried-up coffee cup.
James: What can you hear?
PE teacher: There seems to be work going on. I can hear some builders or maintenance people. I can’t see them. I keep hearing the sound of a van or a lorry reversing, but it's just in my periphery. I have also heard a few footsteps in the corridor, but I’m trying to keep myself to myself today, so the door is closed despite the heat.
James: Tell me about the computer.
PE teacher: I’m looking at it. I seem to remember that it’s an Acer…
James: Stop! What brand IS the computer?
PE teacher: It’s an Acer.
James: Colour?
PE teacher: Black but the sun that shines through the skylight has turned one corner of it slightly grey.
James: What’s on the screen?
PE teacher: It’s an email titled ALPS report for A-level PE.
James: What happens next?
| You may notice here that we are going from the future to the further future. This is important because I need to get the PE teacher to the moment when they know the goal has been achieved. |
PE teacher: I click the email and then I click on the report to open it.
James: How do you feel as the report loads?
PE teacher: Quite excited because it feels like the hard work has been done and this is just the reveal. I’m also nervous because I really care about this and I know how hard my team has worked to achieve it.
James: Go on. What happens next?
PE teacher: The report has loaded and I start to read. I’m tempted just to scroll down to the thermometer images but I want to be confident to use the report correctly.
James: What do the very first words say?
PE teacher: “This is the added value report for {name} college A-level (GCE) PE. It indicates that in 2028, an added value score of 1.1 was achieved. Furthermore, the three-year trend in added value is 1.1. In 2028 the added value score of 1.1 makes this centre amongst the top 2% of all centres in the world. Furthermore, due to the last three years' added-value scores being 1.2, 1.1 and 1.1, making an aggregate of 1.1, means that this centre is in the top 1% of all centres for A-level (GCE) PE.”
James: Wow! Congratulations. That is amazing. How do you feel?
PE teacher: Fantastic. I’m so proud. I’m so proud of the students. They did all the work and all the learning. I’m so proud of the team and I feel so blessed that we have achieved our goal together!
James: You should be proud. Now, I want you to take your time with this bit. We’re sitting here in the PE office in 2028 with a three-year trend of results that are staggering, but you started this journey way back in 2025. Tell me, what was the first, the second and the third steps that you took back then?
PE teacher: Hmmmm… Let me think. Well, firstly, when we got our results in 2025, the team and I sat down and reflected honestly on what we wanted to achieve. I told them that I believed we had the capacity to go really big and I set out a vision for them. At that time, we were doing well. We were sitting on an ALPS of 3-4, which is good. We had the fundamentals right but we needed to push. I told the team this, and I set a target to hit between 2-3 in 2026 and 1-2 in 2027. I told them that whatever changes we needed to implement would be supported and resourced, within reason.
James: What was the exact date of that meeting?
PE teacher: Wednesday 1st September 2025 at 09:30 in Sport 1 classroom.
James: Wow, you remember the day and the time?
PE teacher: I do because it was exciting and the team was fired up.
James: You held that meeting. What was the next step?
PE teacher: The latter half of that meeting was a discussion of how we were going to achieve it. I had read about the diverge-converge model of problem-solving over the summer, so I tried it out. I asked the team what barriers there were to achieving the goal, and we discussed it in detail. We ended up with three or four things that had to change immediately.
James: What were they?
PE teacher: The first one surprised even us. We realised that our entry requirements were too high.
James: Too high?
PE teacher: Yeah, too high. If you consider that our goal was to add value, one of the barriers to this was that the candidates we were working with all had to have a minimum average GCSE score of 5.5 and had to have 4s in English, Maths, science and a 6 in GCSE PE. This was a mistake, as we were creating the conditions where growth in performance was limited. We decided that, if we were to lower the average score to 4.8, accept students who had not studied GCSE PE at all and accept students who might be doing one GCSE resit in English or Maths, we would have far more space above the students to move into.
James: Wow. That’s really fascinating. Was there anything else you did around enrolment?
PE teacher: Yep. We interviewed every candidate and ensured that this was the right personal choice for them. Within those meetings, we made robust plans for each student as to how they would add marks to their practical performance. We were insistent that each student showed us how they were going to improve in their sport, either within the college structures or within club performance or both. This was critical, as it set the right standards from the beginning.
James: That’s really interesting. It sounds like you established your course similar to an A-level in music, say, where students have to have a grade 6 or 7.
PE teacher: Not quite. We did not enrol people based on their current sports performance level, but rather the structure they were putting in place to improve their performance level. We had no issue with a school second-team-level netball player joining A-level PE, as long as we could clearly see the trajectory of practice, training and competition, which allowed them to add a few marks over two years.
James: It sounds like this was really positive for the students too.
PE teacher: Absolutely. It’s how it should be!
James: So, enrolment changed. What were the other initial changes made in 2025?
PE teacher: The team and I identified the importance of out-of-lesson learning and a clear in-game assessment model in order to ensure that students were growing and improving all the time. You see, as it turns out, the way to create added value in ALPS is to create and measure added value week by week.
James: So, tell me about the out-of-lesson learning. Can we call it homework?
PE teacher: Yeah, homework. That’s what we call it. We invested in TheEverLearner.com platform and that was critical because it meant that we could get the right ratio of student learning time to teacher setting and marking time. This was not sustainable in 2024-2025 because teachers had to really fight to get homework set, back and marked. It was so slow! From 2025, we established that if a teacher were to spend one minute setting, reviewing and marking a homework task, this task should elicit 20 minutes minimum of high-quality learning per student. We call this the 1:20 ratio and it makes homework highly sustainable over time.
James: Fascinating. What types of homeworks were they??
PE teacher: We ensured that the students did thousands of quiz questions with immediate feedback over time. We also made sure that students were studying key concepts before each lesson by watching and making notes on TheEverLearner.com tutorials so that more lesson time could be spent working with AO2 and AO3 skills.
James: I get it. Now tell me about the assessment model you implemented.
PE teacher: We got really lucky here. One of the aspects of change that the team and I agreed on was that assessments needed to be both regular (so that the data was live and volatile and led to change) and interleaving older learning content with newer content. We actually got started making our own structure and then I read a blog post that changed everything (Centralised Assessment Model and its place in PE departments). The EverLearner’s Centralised Assessment Models were launched in September 2025, and it was one of the key ingredients because they were centrally designed and written assessments that strategically incorporated previous learning through the assessment cycle. What's more is that if you want to tweak an assessment or two, you can. But, more or less, we implemented those assessments and things seriously took off from there.
James: In that initial six weeks of the course back in 2025, what did you and the team notice that was different?
PE teacher: So much. Firstly, I noticed that there were more conversations about NEA. Because we held those interviews and focused on the NEA and performance aspects, teachers and students were monitoring and planning for this more closely.
James: What else?
PE teacher: There was a data flow. All of a sudden, I had centralised data for every group, every homework and every assessment. Every assignment on TheEverLearner.com was tracked and reported and every assessment produced individual diagnostics as well as cohort reports. I would tell from week one if any student, group or whole class was “off-process”.
James: Was it not like this before 2025?
PE teacher: Honestly, no. It was quite common that the only data that I would receive would be teacher-created assessments that could be different from group to group. I couldn’t really act on it very well. I had to request homework completion percentages from teachers rather than just view them, and I had no idea whatsoever where a group’s knowledge strengths and weaknesses were. That all changed from 2025.
James: What were the biggest barriers in the first six months?
PE teacher: I had one colleague who was a little reluctant to change. I listened to their concerns and I understood them. I asked them to go with it for a year and see where we were. Once those results came through in 2026, all dissent fell away. In fact, it happened before then because the progress was clear.
James: As you sit there in 2028, looking at that report from ALPS, I want you to imagine that another Head of PE is sitting with you. Maybe they want advice on how to achieve the same things. What three things would you tell them?
PE teacher: Easy! Firstly, get TheEverLearner.com and realise that it is a learning platform for week-by-week learning. This is a no-brainer. Secondly, establish your out-of-lesson learning policy. Thirdly, ensure your assessment model is both live and produces volatile data and that it interleaves newer material with older.
James: I find this interesting because all of those things seem achievable. I noticed you didn’t mention enrolment there. Why not?
PE teacher: In my opinion, that part is so obvious that it doesn’t need advice. You know what was amazing was that in September 2026 and 2027 we actually started to actively recruit students with lower average GCSE scores. I mean, we literally went looking for them. We weren’t daft. The students needed to have a sporting and movement interest, but it was rare that a GCSE average was a barrier. I’m really proud of this because it meant that we were serving a much broader range of our community.
James: And what now? It’s 2028 and you have the world of A-level PE at your feet. What happens next?
PE teacher: I’m going to begin a movement. I am going to share my ideas about excellence in PE teaching and learning. I am going to establish a website that targets the exact space between a PE teacher and their PE students. “The impact zone”, I’ll call it. Then, in a few years, when the movement is established and hundreds of thousands of PE students are learning in similar ways to those described above, I’m going to write a blog post about how goal setting can change one’s (professional) life so that others can realise how the journey started: It started with the end in mind. 🤯
James: What shoes are you wearing during our conversation today in 2025?
| It is absolutely critical that the NLP state is changed or snapped out of before the session ends and this is why I ask this rather odd question. |
PE teacher: Errr, what?
James: What shoes are you wearing?
PE teacher: Trainers. Hoka. Blue.
James: Thank you. I want to remind you that the journey that you just went on was real to your subconscious. It happened. It wasn’t just imagined. It happened. Thoughts?
PE teacher: I know what I need to do.
End of conversation between James Simms and a Head of PE
Thank you for reading. Have a lovely day.
James