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22 May 2026

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Opinion

How can we get young people eating healthy food at lunchtime?

What’s your research about? The factors that underpin young people’s food and drink purchases in and around schools. The study, which was funded by Food Standards Scotland, looked at seven state secondary schools in Scotland, where pupils were allowed to leave the grounds at lunchtime. The schools were in five local education authority areas with […]

Be functional, not faddish, and keep it simple

New school buildings are a difficult brief: they must be flexible, functional, welcoming and poised for change. Educators can meet that challenge if they start with a checklist of do’s and don’ts, says Craig Smailes Schools are, by their nature, subject to changing needs. Populations change, educational methods evolve and technology continues to alter the […]

The real challenge awaits for Cameron and Morgan

The government may have made a u-turn on forced academisation, says Lucy Powell, but its misguided fixation with school structures remains David Cameron and Nicky Morgan have been forced into a humiliating climbdown. However they try to spin it, they have made a major concession by dropping their target to force all schools to become […]

Less of a U-turn and more of a Z-turn

Do you remember last Saturday? It was boiling hot and the world was sunny – not least because Nicky Morgan had announced on Friday afternoon she wouldn’t be making all schools into academies after all. Except, it wasn’t that straightforward. (It never is). At 6.30am on Saturday I therefore found myself explaining to listeners of […]

Does an elite education benefit health?

Dr David Bann, Lecturer/Research Officer, Centre for Longitudinal Studies, UCL Institute of Education What have you been working on? Trying to better understand health inequalities in society using longitudinal data – in this case, data from a British study which began in 1970 (the 1970 British Cohort Study). In particular, how the education system relates to later […]

Myopia and daylight in schools: a neglected aspect of public health?

Dr Richard Hobday, Independent Researcher What have you been working on? I’ve been researching the impact of building design, in particular, hospitals and schools, on peoples’ health. Educational philosophy and medical thinking have historically had a major influence on the layout of school buildings and from the end of the 19th and into the 20th […]

How to make teacher training more attractive

Many subjects devalued by Progress 8 are undersubscribed in this year’s training intake. To boost recruitment, Oliver Beach suggests, schools should use new entrants’ skills beyond the classroom We’d all like to see graduates running down university corridors to bag a place in schools. Imagine: economics grads stomping down corridors, carrying Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations […]

Break a habit and tap the potential of key stage 3

In a week when primary tests are dominating the headlines, Ed Cadwallader asks what happens to the “wasted years” of key stage 3 National curriculum levels have been scrapped following the recognition that the thinking behind them was flawed. The argument is that we should not consider progress to be a series of ordered steps […]

Skills or knowledge: which is more important?

Skills and knowledge are often viewed as separate ingredients of the learning cake, like eggs and flour, added in different proportions depending on the recipe. But, says Heather Fearn, you need one, then the other becomes possible I have a question. When planning what to teach do you: A – Aim to teach mainly knowledge B – […]