Expert Contributor | Schools Week

“Little extras”: A failure of presentation, not policy

Philip Hammond could have scored a win today by announcing new capital funding for schools – but he packaged it up all wrong, laments Jonathan Simons There was the abolition of the 10p tax rate in 2007. There was the 75p pension increase in 1999. And there was the omnishambles budget in 2012, with pasty […]

Is the policy of academy re-brokerage improving outcomes?

School re-brokerage is becoming an increasingly important feature of our school system, but what impact does this have on pupil outcomes? Jon Andrews takes a look at the data While it may have seemed that the debate about school structures had moved on, with Angela Rayner’s speech to the Labour Party conference, and the uncharacteristically […]

Is it legal for councils to fine schools for excluding pupils?

The desire to achieve a reduction in exclusions is plainly to be welcomed, but councils can’t just impose a fining system – schools would have to sign up to it, explains Russell Holland Gloucestershire County Council has recently made headlines for proposing to “fine” schools £5,000 for permanently excluding a child. The reality is that […]

Amir Arezoo’s top blogs of the week 15 Oct 2018

On the sacred and profane of powerful knowledge @edsacredprofane A microcosm of wider debate on social media, online educational discourse is rife with binaries: “traditional” versus “progressive”, “inquiry” versus “direct”, “knowledge” versus “skills”. Done in the correct way, this is not actually a bad thing, in that if we use such binaries to challenge “accepted” […]

Talent architects: how to make your school a great place to work

This book is for you if you want to make your school “the best place to be”: the best place to work for staff and headteachers, the best place to learn for pupils, or the best place to volunteer as a governor. It will equip you with practical ideas and simple techniques, as well as […]

How can we encourage effective collaboration in the classroom?

Helping students work well together is just as important as the end result, explain Ruth Johnson and Ayesha Ahmed In a world facing complex challenges, from climate change to Brexit, teamwork and problem-solving are ever more important skills for young people to develop. But with zero-sum social-media rows too often the norm in public debate, […]

A nerd’s guide to today’s key stage 4 data

NFER’s chief social scientist picks apart today’s Progress 8 results… Today’s release of provisional GCSE data makes very interesting reading. On the whole, the government may be pleased as most of the headline accountability measures show small improvements at the national level compared to last year. We’ve dug into the results a little, to see […]

Did free schools really get the best progress scores?

Free schools came top as the best-performing “type” of school in this year’s Progress 8 tables, but were their scores really good enough to assert that with confidence? Becky Allen explains… Today appeared to be a good day for free schools, with mainstream free schools achieving a Progress 8 score of +0.24 across the sector. […]

Lessons Learned? A life in education

It’s with trepidation that I agreed to review Brian Lightman’s book Lessons Learned?, so conscious was I that this book is the distilled experience of a lifetime. Lightman’s early life has shades of Michael Rosen’s: lives interrupted by the war and an emphasis on professional skills, the portable asset. With such a background, Lightman could […]