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Latest Blog Posts
- What curriculum do young people need? July 23, 2020
- School reopening? top scientists say not yet May 25, 2020
- Sending England back to work and back to school? May 11, 2020
- Too early to reopen schools : look at Europe April 30, 2020
- Ofsted : unreliable, destructive, beyond repair December 5, 2019
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Tag Archives: disadvantage
Ofsted : unreliable, destructive, beyond repair
Ofsted is clearly beyond repair, and the Election provides an opportunity to close it for good. This will help to stop the mass exodus of teachers from England’s schools. It will help schools concentrate on what really matters: children’s education … Continue reading
Posted in Accountability
Tagged accountability pressures, disadvantage, inspection, Ofsted
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Child poverty – Conservative rule
Britain is one of the richest countries in the world, but with scandalous levels of poverty. Child poverty has grown massively since the Conservative-led government took over in 2010, and is set to increase even more. According to the … Continue reading
Posted in Social Justice, Uncategorized
Tagged achievement gap, disadvantage, politicians, poverty
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Are SATs closing the poverty gap?
Based on an elaborate formula invented by his officials, schools minister Nick Gibb is “proud we’re closing the gap between rich and poor pupils.” A more straightforward measure shows that nothing has changed. Last summer 54% of children eligible for free … Continue reading
Posted in Accountability, Social Justice
Tagged accountability pressures, disadvantage, National Curriculum, poverty
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Demoralisation and failure: what are we doing to children?
In the open letter which a hundred education professors and lecturers wrote to Michael Gove in 2013, and which hit the front pages of national newspapers, the government was clearly warned about what the new curriculum would do. The lists … Continue reading
Posted in Accountability, Uncategorized
Tagged accountability pressures, disadvantage, National Curriculum, testing
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Progress 8 – a biased and misleading measure
Progress 8 was supposed to be a fair measure of secondary school ‘effectiveness’. New research confirms that it is seriously biased against schools with more disadvantaged pupils. It is vital to expose this injustice because scoring ‘well below average’ on Progress … Continue reading
Posted in Accountability, Uncategorized
Tagged accountability pressures, disadvantage, poverty
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Grammar schools and “ordinary working families” again
In our last blog post, we looked into a new and deeply flawed ‘research report’ by former Department of Education official Iain Mansfield. It was written in support of the Prime Minister’s argument that expanding grammar schools across England would … Continue reading
Posted in Social Justice
Tagged comprehensive schools, disadvantage, grammar schools, politicians
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Grammar schools helping “ordinary working families”?
On becoming prime minister Theresa May decided to expand grammar schools in order to benefit ‘ordinary working families’. There is no evidence that this is what grammar schools do. This week a former Department of Education official Iain Mansfield tried … Continue reading
Posted in Social Justice, Uncategorized
Tagged comprehensive schools, disadvantage, grammar schools, politicians, universities
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Test scores and poverty – it doesn’t add up
England’s schools are drowning in data. Everybody is obsessed with accountability statistics, from Ofsted down to the school cat. This obsession with data distorts the way we look at pupils and their education. 300 spreadsheet columns running from A to … Continue reading
Posted in Social Justice, Uncategorized
Tagged accountability pressures, disadvantage, poverty, testing
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SATs tests are still a shocking failure
Despite intensive test preparation and enormous stress for children and teachers, Key Stage 2 SATs tests for 2018 are a disaster once again. Figures published today show that only 64% of children passed Reading, Writing and Maths. That means 1 … Continue reading
Posted in Curriculum, Uncategorized
Tagged accountability pressures, disadvantage, testing
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Progress 8 and the North East
Schools in North East England are under attack again. According to Progress 8 scores, its schools are the least effective in the country, with the highest percentage coming ‘below the floor’. But Progress 8 is a flawed and misleading measure. … Continue reading
Posted in Accountability
Tagged accountability pressures, disadvantage, GCSE, Ofsted, Progress 8, youth unemployment
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Reclaiming Schools 