I have always enjoyed learning and intellectual challenge – whether wrestling my way to understanding through writing, dismantling challenging texts, engaging in robust argument, or working to understand patterns in data. Perhaps that is why I have loved teaching as a profession, because I get to engage constantly in knowledge, learning and growth.

In schools, we rightly attend to wellbeing to support young people navigate complex terrain around anxiety, social media, identity and expectation. Yet there is a risk that in our desire to care, we inadvertently soften the intellectual core of schooling, mistaking ease for kindness. In some contexts, the language of care has drifted toward the minimisation of difficulty. Struggle can come to be seen as something to be eliminated rather than intrinsic to learning.

In fact, a sense of competence and mastery is foundational to wellbeing. Students who experience themselves as capable thinkers, who are trusted with complexity and supported to persevere, develop academic self-efficacy that buffers stress and builds resilience. Cognitive challenge can be a source of meaning and reward.

In a conversation with Professor Erica McWilliam on The Edu Salon podcast, Erica pointed out “the pleasure of the rigour” – that there is satisfaction in tussling with ideas and learning new things, despite, or perhaps because of, the hard cognitive work that may be required. There is enjoyment in grappling with complexity, in the stretch of learning, in the play of ideas. The work is hard, but the hardness is part of the appeal.

In January I visited schools in London and New York City to examine how leading independent schools are navigating contemporary challenges while remaining anchored to purpose and academic excellence. Some schools were unapologetic about the centrality of intellectual rigour to the schooling experience, seeing joy and rigour as companions rather than opposites.

For example, St Paul’s Girls’ School focuses on intellectual seriousness and teacher autonomy to inspire a culture of learning. Student-run clubs ranged from the Dissection Society to student-led groups on niche academic interests. A noticeboard advertised a lunchtime lecture on the ‘Feminism of Board Games’. Down the corridor, students were presenting on the history of silent letters to the Linguistics Society. In a classroom, students were arguing energetically about a historical interpretation, their exercise books open, pens moving, highlighters deployed. There was a steady hum of intellectual absorption. Teachers spoke with genuine delight about being able to indulge subject passions alongside students.

Wimbledon High School has introduced explicit expectations around digital restraint: students’ time on devices should not exceed roughly a quarter to a third of their learning time. The result is palpable, with classrooms reminding me of teaching 20 years ago – full of rich discussion, meaningful collaboration and considered analogue methodologies. In the lessons I visited, discussion was robust, students worked things out on mini- or wall-mounted whiteboards, and teachers described renewed energy in their teaching.

At Brearley School, a self-described ‘school for the intellectually adventurous’, one student told me that she had chosen that school because she could ‘be a nerd’ about her academic interests without apology. Teachers described their pleasure in going down academic ‘rabbit holes’ with students when classes veered off course in a kind of intellectual off-roading.

Back home, at my school, this year I have recommitted to classroom walk-throughs or sit-ins. It is filling my cup to experience classes in which teachers are passionate about their subjects, intentionally drawing students along a journey of curiosity, knowing, doing and understanding. While students are immersed as learners, as an observer I can see the expert and deliberate enactment of pedagogy as teachers lead students from where they are to what and how they might know next.

In each of these contexts, academic rigour is a form of respect – for disciplines, for students’ capacities, and for the work of teaching. These schools, including my own, work deliberately at culture design, ensuring that high expectations are accompanied by strong pastoral ecosystems. Counsellors, advisory groups, student voice forums, and explicit conversations about belonging and equity sit alongside demanding academic programs that sing with knowledge and zing with challenge.

The core business of teaching and learning can be set alight by a culture in which teachers are excited and energised by the work they do, and where students are supported to think deeply and expected to do the cognitive work. In schools we can remember to share in the growth enabled by getting things wrong in pursuit of understanding, and the delight of figuring something out. In schools we can normalise intellectual enthusiasm, celebrate effortful thinking, and reclaim joy in rigour.