Opinion

We’ll only get sustained school improvement when we start to treat teachers and school leaders as masters of their craft rather than furnish them with flat-pack solutions, writes Chris Kirkham-Knowles Thirty-two years ago, my first year of teaching was signed off by a local authority adviser who gave me professional development advice I’ve never forgotten. […]

The lockdown diary is back and this term’s first instalment catalogues the cluster-farce that led to its announcement

Special schools could be forgiven for thinking the department is ableist given that they are routinely treated as less important than their mainstream peers, writes Dr Lauran Doak Amid the widespread frustration of families and teachers struggling with the Department for Education’s rapidly changing COVID-19 education contingency plans, none can be more justified than those […]

Applying metascientific methods to education research reveals some worrying biases but simple steps can help us navigate our way to a more secure grasp of its results, writes Baz Ramaiah There have been some pretty provocative article titles in the history of science. But few come close to John Ioannidis’ 2005 essay “Why most published […]

The prime minister sounded an optimistic note tonight but it will take a lot more to alleviate our fears and begin to set things right, writes Mary Bousted This is a crisis point for the nation, and a great deal of what got us here can’t simply be blamed on new strains of the virus. […]

Over the past few weeks, three of our schools, all hard-hit by covid-related absence in the autumn term, participated in a pilot to administer rapid lateral flow tests to pupils and staff. We set up at short notice, with little initial guidance, and it was logistically demanding work. Here’s what we learned…   1. Use […]

As a new term begins and mixed provision looks likely to continue to be the norm, Helen Newies shares her top tips for effective blended learning Consolidate your platforms It is far too easy to take a ‘more is better’ approach and sign up for a dozen different platforms, but the schools we have seen […]