Learning Walks: Primary vs Secondary

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It's easy to assume a learning walk is a universal tool. Same approach, same questions, same process.

But anyone who's walked through both a Year 2 phonics session and a Year 10 chemistry lab knows:

Primary and secondary classrooms are very different worlds.

To get meaningful insight — and build trust — your walk-through approach has to reflect that.

Walking in a Primary Setting

In a primary school, the classroom is its own ecosystem.

You're likely to see:

One adult teaching all subjects across the week
A strong sense of community and personal routines
Phonics, guided reading, and hands-on learning
Classroom environments used actively for learning (e.g. working walls, phonics displays)
Pupils at very different stages of social and emotional development — sometimes even within the same year group

That means your learning walk questions might include:

Are pupils accessing the vocabulary they need to succeed?
How is early reading being prioritised and modelled?
What kind of talk is happening — is it exploratory, instructional, collaborative?
How are routines adapted for younger or more vulnerable learners?

And tone is everything:

🎒 If you're doing a KS1 walk, tread softly — it's their world, not yours.

Secondary schools run on subject expertise, tight schedules, and varied classroom cultures.

You're likely to encounter:

So in secondary, learning walks might focus on:

And critically:

How does the environment support depth, focus, and challenge?

In both settings, the aim is the same:

But how you walk, what you look for, and how you feed back should be tailored to the setting.

That's how you build genuine insight — and avoid creating a tick-box culture that doesn't reflect the reality of each phase.

A learning walk isn't a form — it's a lens.

And that lens needs adjusting when you're walking through phonics one hour and physics the next.

Know your context. Know your questions.
Walk with purpose — and phase-appropriate understanding.

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