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14 November 2026

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Opinion

How school leaders can be sucked into dodgy dealings

Before I became a teacher I briefly worked for KPMG, one of the world’s largest auditors. It was shortly after the fall of Enron, itself one of the world’s largest accountancy firms, after its senior leaders were discovered up to their necks in fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy, among other things. The fall of Enron […]

Free schools: do their outcomes justify the cost?

There’s not enough evidence yet to see whether free schools have worked, says Tom Richmond, but what we do now know is quite how expensive the project has been When Toby Young, the director of the New Schools Network, said last summer that free schools were “the most successful education policy of the post-war period”, […]

The reception year isn’t all about learning to read

The UK’s dogmatic approach to teaching reading does a disservice to the different ways and speeds at which young children learn, writes Jan Dubiel Ofsted’s recent Bold Beginnings report was controversial for several reasons, not least because it appeared to suggest that the core purpose of the reception year is learning how to read. Literacy […]

Education ministers need to stop arguing about skills

It is beyond tedious to watch two ministers argue in public over the meaning of the word ‘skills’ when they could be fixing education, writes Laura McInerney One of my favourite questions to ask people is this: “If you were invisible for the day, what would you do?” It always throws them off. Sometimes they […]

Progress 8 is biased towards grammar schools – here’s the solution

The school progress measures were a step in the right direction, but in their current form they can only partially correct for intake ability, writes Tom Perry As we have known for decades, and the data clearly shows, raw attainment scores such as schools’ GCSE results say more about schools’ intakes than their performance. The […]

Universal Infant Free School Meals – what has the impact been so far?

Some parents and school leaders believe free lunches are having positive effects on the lives of infants and their families, but the costs to schools may become unsustainable unless the government keeps an eye on how much money it provides, writes Peter Sellen, who co-authored the EPI’s new report In September 2013, the previous coalition […]

How can the DfE use EdTech to reduce teacher workload?

Justine Greening was making progress on using EdTech to alleviate workload – here’s what she’d achieved so far, and what’s still left to do, says Atif Mahmood The DfE’s own research has identified workload as the “most important factor” behind teachers who leave the profession. I meet with heads of department and headteachers daily, all […]

How did ‘child-centred’ dogma get established in schools?

Mary Woolley interviewed 13 veterans of history teaching, in an effort to discover how teaching has changed over the last 30 years. This is what she learned. The role and approach of teachers in classrooms is frequently contested, particularly in the history education community. Advocates of direct instruction emphasise the place of the teacher at […]

How schools should handle snow days

Every time an English school is forced to take a day off for bad weather, the usual suspects ooze out of the woodwork and make a fuss about the terrible effects of kids missing lessons. So why don’t we follow what they do in the states, and add a day at the end of July? […]