JL Dutaut | Schools Week

Amir Arezoo’s top edu-blogs of the week, 11 November 2019

Do you know when to use ‘little-and-often’ teaching? @Suchmo83 As cognitive science becomes de rigueur in terms of teaching discourse, it’s pertinent that many are applying pause points to its implementation. Christopher Such gives us good reason: as always, context matters when considering evidence-based practice and that one method is not to be applied wholesale. […]

Funding formula threatens small schools with extinction

As an election looms, funding promises abound, but Thomas Moore is pretty sure that small schools will continue to miss out Earlier this month the Department for Education released a spreadsheet and simultaneously announced a funding boost for schools for 2020-21, following “the prime minister’s pledge to level up education funding and give all young […]

Book review: What Works? Research and evidence for successful teaching

I had Gert Biesta’s seminal Why ‘What Works’ Won’t Work ringing in my ears as I picked up Major and Higgins’s What Works?, so it was with a sigh of relief that I noticed the question mark at the end of the title. That punctuation is important, as the authors emphasise in the introduction. “What […]

Everyone should be asking candidates tough questions

The Headteachers’ Roundtable’s “Big 5” election manifesto gives a new vision of professionalism and trust, restoring confidence in education, writes Ros McMullen The education system is in crisis. Recruitment and retention, funding, special needs provision, accountability and ethical leadership are all at breaking point, but it won’t do to look at these five factors individually. […]

Organising our thoughts about teaching – the work of Mary Kennedy

How we organise our thoughts shapes how we view the world and how we act. At Ambition Institute, we have found that three papers by Mary Kennedy, professor emeritus at Michigan State University, have been incredibly useful in framing our beliefs and actions about the work of teachers and teacher educators. 1: How can we […]

Profile: Nadia Paczuska

I’m standing beside a sugarbeet field somewhere in Suffolk trying to get to Nadia Paczuska’s school. It’s somewhere on the coast and Google has promised a bus from Norwich that has failed to arrive. My frantic calls for a taxi don’t connect as there’s no 3G and the wifi in the nearby country pub isn’t […]

Then and now: how new teachers will be trained

In 2016 the government published its Framework of Core Content for Initial Teacher Training (ITT), a “very important piece of work” that would “ultimately ensure higher standards of education”. But three years later comes a new framework, rushed out months in advance because of the impending election. So, what’s new? JL Dutaut takes a look […]

Robin Conway’s top edu-blogs of the week, 4 November 2019

How can we use the pupil premium to tackle disadvantage. Part one: Changing our approach @littlemissDHT This is the first of three promised blogs and @littlemissDHT is off to a cracking start, outlining why our thinking about the use of pupil premium funding may need to change. Without dismissing anything out of hand, she identifies […]

On the fringes: Preventing exclusion in schools through inclusive, child-centred, needs-based practice

The debate about exclusion from school has permeated political, media and social discourse: from London mayoral candidates who pledge to stop them, to the Timpson review that sets out a series of recommendations, to limited and limiting tweets. Viewpoints are often polarised. Some argue that schools should almost never exclude; others say exclusions are presented […]