JL Dutaut | Schools Week

Profile: Richard Gerver, School Libraries Association president

His global success began with putting a library at the heart of a school turn-around. Now Richard Gerver is out to bring that success to more schools. By JL Dutaut With all the talk of school closures and the digital divide, innumerable column inches have been written about laptops and dongles. Much less about books. […]

Three traps the edtech strategy must avoid at all costs

The Covid lockdowns have provided a golden opportunity for government to work out a well-thought-through strategy for edtech, writes Mark Anderson Three national lockdowns in, by and large most schools and trusts are making a good go of blended learning. It’s been challenging, even for those who have been successfully using edtech for years, to […]

Schools teach and care. We ought to value both

The return to school without exams presents a golden opportunity for schools to practise what they value, write Rebecca Boomer-Clark and Jake Curtis Our organisations support some of the country’s most vulnerable teenagers – the very children who, sadly but unsurprisingly, have been hardest hit by the pandemic. Together, we have been considering what seeds […]

Once open, schools must stay open for good

This lockdown has been a nightmare. The government must throw everything at making sure schools stay open, writes Qais Hussain The prime minister’s announcement that I and my peers can return to school on March 8 is perhaps the best news I have received throughout this pandemic – better even than my GCSE results. Truth […]

Boris Johnson’s ‘big bang’ is a big risk

The prime minister’s decision for a ‘big bang’ full reopening on 8 March makes no sense, writes Mary Bousted Throughout this awful pandemic, the National Education Union has followed the science and been proved right time after time. We tracked the spread of Covid in schools and colleges and the disruption it was causing to […]

Can you really find research to back up any opinion?

Counter-intuitively perhaps, being research-informed does not negate engaging in debate. Cat Scutt explains why The Chartered College of Teaching has recently launched its Certificate in Evidence-Informed Practice, which culminates in teachers engaging in some of the most complex debates in education. In a way this might seem strange – surely acting based on evidence negates […]

Fear is the mind killer by Mannion and McAllister

Ed Finch finds a book that makes a great case for ‘learning to learn’, provided you’re happy to give up doing something else If you’ve been a teacher for a few years you’ll have been on the receiving end of INSET on helping pupils ‘learn to learn’. The word ‘metacognition’ was used a lot. Maybe […]

Robin Conway’s blogs of the week, 22 February 2021

The benefits of centralised resources, ‘catch up’, post-Covid reform, what expertise is not, knowledge vs skills and how ‘Clubhouse’ could transform teachers’ social networking are this week’s top blogs, as chosen by Robin Conway Kick-Starting the Virtuous Cycle of High-Quality Centralised Resources @MissSayers1 In this piece, “(passionately) boring teacher” Miss Sayers advocates convincingly for […]

What academy finances can tell us about the future of the sector

Despite a slow-down in academy sector growth overall, some have clearly out-performed others. Who? How? And what can we learn from this? Pam Tuckett finds out Decision-making during the pandemic has been challenging. However, trust boards appear to have adapted quickly to the demands of pandemic leadership, and MATs have shown remarkable strength and flexibility […]