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22 April 2026

Tag: education policy

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 […]

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 […]

Will small schools be able to breathe a big sigh of relief?

In a week of big news – threatened strikes, parent boycotts, backbenchers shouting about academies – there has been one quiet sigh of relief. And one awkward question. Buried in the middle of her speech at the weekend’s union conference, Nicky Morgan promised that “no good small school will close” due to “structural changes” – […]

The motorway model of mental health risks

What have you been working on? We’re interested in the characteristics of schools linked to pupil mental health risks and are trying to research what those factors might be. We measure specifically a cognitive function called “steering cognition”. If you think of a pupil as a car, steering cognition (which is unrelated to IQ) regulates […]

Character education: teaching through subjects

Dr Tom Harrison, Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, University of Birmingham What have you been working on? The Teaching Character Through Subjects publication and programme of activities – funded by one of 12 character grants handed out by the Department for Education – is built on our prior research at the Jubilee Centre into […]

To reduce teacher workload, the DfE should lead by example

The timing of the publication of the workload principles and the recommendations will do little to change policy, says Ross McGill You could be pardoned for missing the publication of the workload principles from the Department for Education (DfE). Why? Because it was Easter and many teachers had long-forgotten their lesson plans and marking. Yet […]

The government has abandoned the reception progress measure, but schools should not

I’m struggling to get caught up in the heat of debate over the government’s recent decision not to use the results of this year’s reception baseline testing for the purpose of comparing pupils’ progress. Why? Three different assessments were never going to provide comparable results, and comparability is, seemingly, at the heart of this decision. […]

‘Teachers are being treated like crash test dummies’

Levels created a misleading set of criteria from which teachers taught in limiting ways. But people were too optimistic as a landscape with “standards” looks anything but rosy These are the worst times I have known in education. Too many people stirring the education pot have made for a turbulent few years, full of disorientation […]