JL Dutaut | Schools Week

Review: Big Gay Adventures in Education by Daniel Tomlinson

Despite many reasons to like this Big Gay Adventures in Education, Branwen Bingle says it’s not love at first sight. There will be a second date, though I wanted to love this book for a range of personal and professional reasons. In early 2016 I wrote a blog post for the Cambridge Primary Review Trust […]

Naureen Khalid’s blogs of the week, 25 January 2021

Separation of powers, accountability, responsibility and humanity are Naureen Khalid’s top picks of the topics from this week’s education blogs Should the chief executive be appointed as a trustee? @katiecpd While governors and trustees take a strategic view, a school’s executive team has responsibility for its operational leadership. The role of the board is […]

In conversation with… Ian Livingstone

Ian Livingstone has a unique outlook as a best-selling gaming pioneer. This September, it will be the vision for an unconventional new school. By JL Dutaut The pressure to give education a 21st-century make-over has been relentless for decades. Driving this pressure are self-styled ‘disruptors’ – successful technologists with an eye on shaking up schools. […]

Let’s make school streets safer for good

The creation of car-free school streets would be a huge help in combating the high levels of air pollution children experience, writes Siobhan Baillie For all the immeasurable disruption lockdown is causing to children’s lives, there is a silver lining for their health. With school attendance substantially reduced, children are less exposed to the high […]

Hope amid despair

Gerry Robinson opens her lockdown diary to record the past week with year 10 poetry still echoing in her mind

Ofqual’s proposal simply doesn’t make the grade

Its intentions are reasonable, but it’s hard to see any positive outcomes from Oqual’s proposal, writes Tom Richmond “I am afraid your grades were almost derailed by a mutant algorithm,” said Prime Minister Boris Johnson last August following the exams fiasco of the preceding weeks. Five months later, the unenviable (and arguably impossible) task of […]

A sudden desire to trust teachers hints at a poisoned chalice

After months of dithering and conflicting messages, the government’s latest noises on trust in teacher grading look likely to put them in the firing line, writes Alison Peacock When the secretary of state announced exams would be cancelled this year, he said he wanted to place his trust in teachers. In September 2020, The Chartered […]

Will the current lockdown ease financial pressures on schools?

A new report by the NFER shows that regardless of lockdown all schools are struggling with Covid-related schools and the poorest are faring worst, writes Jenna Julius Since the beginning of the pandemic, schools have been taking additional safety measures to protect pupils and staff, mitigate the spread of infection and provide support to […]

Review: Secondary Curriculum Transformed. Enabling All to Achieve

Zoe Enser’s review finds a book on curriculum with too much breadth and too little depth Secondary Curriculum Transformed begins with the premise that secondary schools in England are currently getting their curriculum wrong. Our system of a “knowledge-rich” national curriculum leading to a “gold-standard Ebacc”, they argue, limits “human skills” of creativity and critical […]