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25 April 2026

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Opinion

How to tame the dragon of AI in education

Artificial intelligence isn’t a threat to education – it’s an opportunity, says Stavros Yiannouka, as long as we’re careful about how we use it The world is both fascinated by and fearful of artificial intelligence. Very few of us understand the technology behind it and even fewer can clearly articulate its social, political, and economic implications. […]

Primary-secondary transition: it’s more than drum workshops

Every month a school from the Research Schools Network – run by the Education Endowment Foundation and Institute for Effective Education – shares a research-based initiative it has implemented Transition is big business at our school. Transition events begin with Year 5 visiting the school every few weeks for Crime Scene Investigation or drum school […]

How to use specialist teachers effectively in your school

Specialist teachers should be woven into the DNA of your school, not tacked on as a patch, says Jules Daulby It always strikes when I visit special schools how few interventions outside of the classroom they have. You may, as a mainstream leader be thinking “well, that’s obvious, the specialisms permeate through the school because, […]

How should schools deal with claims of over-age students?

With media headlines alleging that a “30-year-old” had been spotted in a year 11 class, we asked a lawyer to explain how the age of asylum seekers is determined, and how schools should handle such claims Recent headlines have alleged that there was an adult seeking to attend school, claiming to be a child. How […]

Will allowing part-time teaching mean we run out of teachers?

Would more part-time and flexible working for teachers be a good or bad thing for teacher supply? Carole Willis looks at the data The teacher supply challenge in England’s secondary schools continues to grow. This week we launched our new report on teacher retention at an event chaired by journalist Laura McInerney. One of the key recommendations […]

The NHS has a ten-year funding plan, so why doesn’t education?

Next year’s spending review will be a golden opportunity for the government to set out a strategic direction for education and skills spending, and to ensure a system fit for the 21st century, says Robert Halfon Our National Health Service is rightly lauded, but it is not the only sector that impacts the lives of […]

How to avoid project failures in the classroom

Back in 2007, Nassim Nicholas Taleb published The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, a pretty wordy and convoluted tome (makes an excellent doorstop) that pointed out that rare or unlikely events do happen, events such as the 2008 financial crash. Events that we often believe we “couldn’t see coming” before they happened. […]

Silent corridors: what’s all the fuss about?

In response to recent heated debates over the use of silent corridors in schools, Tom Bennett wonders what all the fuss is about A nation erupted as it was revealed last week that a school had been found guilty of child torture on a systematic scale last seen in the poorhouses of Oliver Twist. Please […]

“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 […]