teacher training | Schools Week

Things to do before you buy 3D printers

First, train your staff. Then plan your curriculum – and think about leasing. It makes it easier to budget When I started as a graphic design teacher we used Camm-2 machines, where computers helped to direct machines. By the time I left, 10 years later, I was working alongside 3D printers and laser cutters. In […]

Carter Review: let independent body design teacher training

A review of teacher training in England has recommended that future training courses should be designed by an independent body – and education secretary Nicky Morgan has agreed. Headteacher Sir Andrew Carter was last year appointed to review all aspects of initial teacher training (ITT) and recommend where improvements could be made. The report, published […]

Rewarding luck is not a formula to beat disadvantage

The Pupil Premium Awards benefit schools that had a little more talent and a lot of luck Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, when asked to report his ‘favourite equation’, offered the following: Success = talent + luck. Great success = a little more talent + a lot of luck. He illustrates this with an example from […]

Do we need autism-specific schools?

All children and young people deserve an inclusive and fulfilling education. But mainstream schools are not always the answer for those with autism who must have access to a range of provision Autism is a spectrum condition so, while all children and young people with the lifelong disability share certain difficulties around social communication and […]

Why teachers are catching the Teachmeet bug

Some whole-school CPD can be misjudged, irrelevant and, often passive. Teachmeet provides the perfect antidote… Teachmeet comes in many guises. The first I attended was a gathering of 10 teachers in a classroom. At the second there were 60, this time on board HMS Victory in Portsmouth. However, both gatherings were defined by the very […]

Developing enterprising skills can never be a quick-fix

Global Entrepreneurship Week is a good start, but it’s not enough to teach young people all the skills they need to be entrepreneurs Global Entrepreneurship Week is back; a mid-November flurry of enterprise and entrepreneurial activity. It will be a week in schools of competitions, challenge days and trade fairs. Enabling Enterprise will be busy too: […]

School-based teacher training of more benefit than university route find researchers

Schools think they benefit more overall from school-based teacher training than university-based routes, a new survey by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has found. The IFS survey into the net cost of the different training courses was based on responses from 291 primary schools and 196 secondary schools. Click here to download the report. It […]

Creating a toolkit to help raise teaching standards

UK heads joined school leaders from around the world in Washington to explore ways of developing professional learning and providing effective feedback. Earlier this week, I was fortunate enough to be among 24 UK headteachers who travelled to Washington DC for the Teacher Development Summit organised by the Sutton Trust and the Bill and Melinda […]