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26 April 2026

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Opinion

What about the pupils caught in the middle?

Should we make the GCSE pass rate harder? Click here for schools minister Nick Gibb’s response to Mark The numbers deemed a fail by the government at GCSE are likely to increase 15 to 20 per cent in summer 2017. That will mean a lot more resits in a system already under tremendous strain. And […]

Four guiding principles of a good assessment system

The confusion, debate and disagreements that have followed the move away from levels are necessary if teachers are to work out the best assessment system for their school A “necessary stage of confusion” is how one commentator recently portrayed the move away from the national system of levels to monitor progress. It seems an apt […]

Forget (most of) your post-election blues

Funding cuts, a recruitment crisis . . . what is there to be happy about? Well, the quality of the profession and the initial signals the government is sending about how it will work with it So, the job of steering the school system through its most difficult challenges for a generation falls to Nicky […]

How many schools should we be trying to help?

The question may not be how many coasting or failing schools need help, but how many we have the resources to help Since the Conservative return to power in May, the papers have been full of Nicky Morgan’s promise to get tough on “coasting” schools. Attracting fewer headlines, but still important, was the government’s commitment […]

Twenty-seven years on from the national curriculum

Will the 2015 drive for curriculum entitlement succeed where 1988 and the national curriculum did not? We’ve been here before. A government re-elected; impatient to press on with education reform; concerned about the way schools respond to change; determined to implement radical curriculum and assessment change. This time it is the proposal that the EBacc […]

Ofsted needs to recognise the role of governors in its new framework

School leaders who help other institutions “turn around” are to be recognised as “exceptional” with a letter from Ofsted, it was announced on Monday when the inspectorate’s Common Inspection Framework was launched. Headteachers have already discussed the ins and outs of this change, which will also see a copy of the letter going to the […]

Ofsted Reforms: Is this the right way to inspect, or respect, schools ?

Earlier this year Ofsted claimed “the reforms we will introduce in September 2015 are intended to enable us to inspect the right things in the right way”. That was a rash claim – based on two highly contestable assumptions. First, that there is one right way to inspect and, second, that after almost yearly revisions […]

Hold a child’s hand and walk him through the curriculum

The curriculum starts off as a document: it’s then up to teachers to turn it into something that will resonate with them –and their pupils I’m not a proper teacher because I don’t work full or part time in one institution. I don’t have the long-lasting relationships with a GCSE class anymore and I miss […]

Our specialist approach to alerting our pupils to extremism

The emergence of extremist ideologies should be taught within academic disciplines such as history. Only then will pupils understand the root causes and have vital reference points The Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015 that comes into force on July 1 mandates all schools with a duty to prevent the radicalisation of young people. Many […]