I saw @markmccourt.bsky.social share a ppt once where he did factorising quadratics before expanding too which I liked!

Yes, I think so! I think the progression would be year 7 thinking of 3 lots of x+2, then year 8 moving into the area model. Where factorising first feel more intuitive than making the lengths 2x and (3x+4) with algebra tiles as your using x squareds to make the lengths 2x