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21 August 2026

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Opinion

Is it legal for teachers to sell teaching resources?

Who owns your lesson plans, and who can make money off them? Education consultant Simon Foulkes has the answers You wrote a great lesson plan, but then you find out, by whatever means, that another member of staff has not only used the plan but has actually sold it on to other teachers across the […]

Homework habits: what we have learned at Michaela

Setting the right balance on homework is a tight-rope walk for teachers, but Britain’s so-called ‘strictest school’ has a plan, explains Jo Facer Every school faces the challenge of getting kids to practise what they need to, but without gaming it. Teachers have all encountered pupils who will do the bare minimum to avoid a […]

Silence (from politicians) is golden

England’s government was unusual for not having really bothered about schools until about a hundred years after everyone else. While America and Germany, and just about everyone else in the developed western world, created a network of publicly funded schools in the 19th century, England dilly-dallied. It wasn’t until 1902 that a state board of […]

The latest workforce data shows government should care much more about teacher retention

With a workload problem that has been identified but not addressed, and funding pressures that are biting, are the effects starting to show in teacher workforce figures? On the face of it, this isn’t the case. Figures published this morning show that overall teacher numbers are up marginally, from 456,900 full-time equivalents (FTEs) in 2015 […]

What happened to education policy in the Queen’s speech?

Education was virtually absent from the Queen’s speech, but if this means little will change, it’s only a good thing, says Russell Hobby For education, this year’s Queen’s speech was most interesting for its omissions. Given the weather, it was probably a blessing for all concerned that it was brief, and equally good for the […]

Will the Conservatives really remove the faith school 50% cap?

With no mention in the Queen’s speech, and its chief architect Nick Timothy no longer in post, the Government’s plan to remove the faith school admissions cap might, just might be dead in the water, argues Andrew Copson In September last year, Theresa May announced plans to remove the limits on religious selection at new […]

Should we base education policy on evidence or values?

The former senior DfE civil servant David Bell muses on one of the thorniest philosophical divides in education. Should it really all be about evidence? Just before the general election, I participated in a press conference in which a group of experts looked at the various political parties’ manifestos through a lens of educational evidence. […]

How to make your school more LGBT-inclusive

Lesbian, gay, bi and trans people at school continue to face bullying, discrimination and isolation, argues Stonewall’s Sidonie Bertrand-Sheldon Homophobic language is a huge issue. A shocking 96 per cent of gay pupils hear homophobic remarks such as ‘poof’ or ‘lezza’, and 99 per cent hear the words “that’s so gay” used to describe something […]

Colouring in the curriculum

It would be tremendously enriching for students to add more non-white, non-male perspectives to the curriculum, insists Bansi Kara At the inaugural BAMEed conference, I spoke to a room full of teaching and non-teaching professionals about a few of the arguments used to justify a white, male curriculum. I argued the national curriculum is inherently […]