Policy and practice… are the tried and tested ways always the best? Are innovative new ideas always appropriate?
Marking your own work – why high stakes accountability depends on school autonomy
The UK education system is just about the most accountable in the world – The combination of a high-stakes inspection system, a series of public exams and tests which are analysed and compared to other schools, a governance structure that allows for high levels of challenge and intervention, and a media that often displays a…
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The Goldilocks rule of Multi Academy Trusts
As we are beginning to emerge from the pandemic, many people are asking big questions about our education system – is the curriculum fit for purpose, what is the purpose of exams and assessment, how should we manage accountability, and, perhaps most fundamentally, how should our system be organized to cope with the challenges of…
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This is the moment…
After a year of relentless bad news, there’s now a real sense of a corner being turned and a promise of better times ahead. The desire to return to the familiar rhythms of life before the pandemic is palpable, whether that’s sitting in a pub, going to a concert, or packing for a holiday abroad.…
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How to recover from Covid learning loss – Guaranteed!
Whenever the long term cost of the pandemic is considered, we soon come to the impact on children, blighted by the disruption to their schooling which has lasted for almost a year, and looks set to cast a shadow long into the future. There have been countless suggestions about how we should help children ‘catch…
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Performance Management to Professional Growth
Given how much is written and debated about improving school performance, you could be forgiven for thinking that it depended on a form of alchemy – a mystical collection of ingredients that only a few people truly understood. Governments and systems leaders have tried to find the elusive formula that will unlock school improvement, and…
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Putting the Horse before the Cart
There are many parts of our lives that have been disrupted at best or completely destroyed by this pandemic – a drink in the pub with friends, going to a concert, having your nails done (less of a problem for me personally) – but one of the least lamented has been the scrapping of exams for…
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The year the Blob grew teeth
On the 1st January 2020, I posted a blog entitled ‘Reasons to be Cheerful – Why I’m feeling optimistic about teaching in the 2020s’. It’s fair to say that it didn’t age well, so this year I’m avoiding the temptation to make predictions. Instead, I’m taking the opportunity to look back at the previous year in…
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Don’t Panic – Why trying to catch-up will leave us further behind
I’m writing this as the national conversation about education seems to be focusing on life after Covid-19 for the first time since the crisis started. We have quite rightly been so focused on the immediate issues of safety and protecting the most vulnerable that beyond a vague sense that everything will be different, it has…
Keep readingCould we live without GCSEs?
The first thing to say about the cancellation of GCSE exams is that I understand the dismay and disappointment of the young people and their teachers who have worked hard to prepare for this summer’s exams. There is a sense that the compact between students and the education system has been broken. The principle that…
Keep readingSplendid isolation? Why I’m struggling to pick a side
I have to be honest, I am a little nervous about entering the behaviour discussion that seems to dominate education at the moment. A few weeks ago, I tweeted that the following: ‘#edutwitter behaviour debate is so dispiriting. On a subject so complex, multi-layered and context-driven, how have we ended up with such a simplistic…
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