It’s GCSE results day and the headlines are dominated by news of a ‘drop’ in top grades. But what do examination grades actually mean? Do they mean that students have reached a certain standard or are they a ranking of how a student compares to their peers? The answer in England is a bit of […]
The key basics that all teachers call for are continuity, stability and an end to constant change, yet we’ve had five Secretaries of State in the past year and nine since 2010. The recent swapping of seals of office makes six Ofsted inspection frameworks in ten years, or the six different names for the DfE […]
No school can be better than its teachers. One of the few positives to come out of the pandemic has been to prove beyond all doubt, as parents valiantly struggled with home tuition, the importance of trained, experienced and committed professional classroom teachers. And yet, the profession is approaching crisis point. Even before the additional […]
Boys passing round nude photos of their classmates, girls being touched inappropriately in school corridors and a culture of sexual harassment so pervasive that children see little point in reporting it – Ofsted’s ‘Review of Sexual Abuse in Schools and Colleges’ makes for disturbing reading. It should go without saying that schools have a legal […]
‘Levelling up’ is a key priority for the government, and nowhere is it more urgently needed than in education. Trying to raise standards in schools in deprived non-metropolitan areas is long overdue but there is no single, magic bullet solution. That said, there are successful strategies that are proven to work. Schools such as Mossbourne […]
Did Churchill promote intolerance and discrimination? That’s the concern that has led a school in Sussex to decide it’s no longer appropriate for one of its houses to be named after the wartime leader who defeated fascism. According to the local paper, The Argus, a letter was sent to parents, saying that: “Churchill could be […]
