Nicky Morgan | Schools Week

The Education Excellence Everywhere White Paper: Everything you need to know

Nicky Morgan today revealed her white paper for education to drive “Education Excellence Everywhere”. Here is everything you need to know: Recruitment Looks like we have some sort of recognition about the teacher recruitment problems. The paper says recruiting is becoming more difficult and the government “recognise the challenge is increasing” 1. The National […]

Morgan’s primary assessment video misses the point

Education secretary Nicky Morgan has released a video to explain the government’s plans for primary assessments. Brian Lightman has watched it, and has some thoughts. I watched Nicky Morgan’s video about the new primary assessments with great interest. It was helpful to receive a clear explanation of the government’s rationale in implementing these tests. The message of this video […]

Teachers won’t welcome an ‘apprenticeship’ route into the classroom

Last week we had a poke at Nicky Morgan for being in slow-motion. Slo-Mo, we nicknamed her, and said she needed to get her skates on with some reforms. But, like the headteacher who says at 2.30pm on Friday that “things are remarkably quiet today” inevitably finds herself confronted with a fight five minutes later, […]

Editorial: Nicky Morgan needs to change the record on times tables check

Once upon a decade ago, I told my friend that if a DJ at a regular event we ran continued to play rubbish music I would be forced to take over myself. Only, I didn’t send the text to my friend. I sent it (accidentally) to the DJ. He flounced and I was left sheepishly […]

Moral character is built by more than sport

Research suggests that widely held beliefs about the character building nature of sport are wrong, with students who take part in music, choir or drama outside school responding better to moral dilemmas than those who do not In May this year education secretary Nicky Morgan invested more than £500,000 in a schools project which, despite […]

National teaching service should deliver dedicated teachers, not ‘superheroes’

Things have turned upside down. Too often, teachers and school leaders roll their eyes as ministers announce their latest idea. ‘Patronising’ is often the adjective of choice. But not this week. This week it’s some of the teachers (none of whom work in a rural or coastal schools – how would one get their soy […]

The case against allowing grammars to expand

Only 38 per cent of adults would support the building of more grammar schools. That’s what a YouGov Poll for the Times found last November. Despite this lack of enthusiasm, education secretary Nicky Morgan has bowed to a noisy campaign to allow Weald of Kent Grammar School to establish a satellite grammar at Sevenoaks. The […]

‘Extending childcare must not become another burden on schools’

Extending out-of-hours childcare is a good idea in principle – but the government needs to clarify its proposals, including the age range it has in mind and who will foot the bill There has been a lot of discussion at the Conservative conference this week about the importance of giving young people the skills and […]

Finding NiMo’s sparkle is easy. Her policies less so.

Anyone who ever endured the pain of sweating over a piece of work only to have it disappear off the computer at the last minute will have empathy for Nicky Morgan this week. Toiling hard, she was the government minister with the most number of fringe events at the Conservative party’s annual conference. As I […]