Differentiation: Are high expectations enough?
High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation. Charles F. Kettering Last night someone retweeted a tagline from a post I wrote earlier this year: "Teach to the top, support at the bottom". Inevitably perhaps, someone else took great exception to the word 'support' and asked why those at the bottom shouldn't be taught. Why should they have to suffer support while everyone else got taught? This [...]
Perverse incentives and how to counter them
Call it what you will, incentives are what get people to work harder. Nikita Khrushchev Back in the good old days when the great unwashed could simply be shipped off to the colonies with nary a second thought, transportation of convicts was in the hands of private companies. These companies were compensated based on the number of prisoners shipped. As long as they were signed and sealed, no one cared over much [...]
5 questions to guard against availability bias and made-up data
The cost of bad data is the illusion of knowledge - Stephen Hawking What's more likely to kill you? A shark or a hot water tap? We've all heard stories of killer sharks, but as yet Spielberg hasn't made a thriller about killer plumbing. We reason based on the information most readily available to us. We assume that the risk of dying in a plane crash is greater than the risk [...]
Ofsted: The end of the (lesson grading) affair
Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen. Ralph Waldo Emerson Back in 2011 I started to decide that grading lessons was wrong. I wasn't exactly sure how to justify this decision beyond the fact that I could see how it warped teaching, made lessons unbearably superficial and put everyone thought an awful lot of completely unnecessary stress. Since then I have put together, what I [...]
How can we increase breadth and challenge?
Over the past few days as sorry tale has unfolded. The new GCSE English literature specifications have been announced in draft form, full of sound and fury, signifying... nothing. The current GCSE lacks rigour and breadth and challenge. You're welcome to argue with this, but I think it's broadly true. Exam boards compete for business by positioning themselves as the 'easiest to get a C in' and schools, unsurprisingly considering [...]
Wanna play fantasy GCSE Literature specifications?
The exam boards have played their hands and they're relying on jokers rather than aces. GCSE English literature is a race to the bottom: with the overwhelming concern seemingly being how to retain schools' business by offering the most predictable, easiest texts. The biggest shock for me has been the suspicious consensus on what constitutes the canon. Every single board is specifying Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice, while Jeckyll and Hyde and A Christmas [...]
Who's to blame for the new English literature GCSEs?
The sound and fury surrounding text choices for GCSE English literature just won’t go away. The exam boards got their digs in first with Paul Dodd of OCR claiming Gove wanted to ban US authors because he "had a particular dislike for Of Mice and Men and was disappointed that more than 90% of candidates were studying it". Gove then struck back saying neither nor anyone else had banned anything: [...]
The curse of cursive: Are we fetishising joined up writing?
Back in 2008 I had for a Head of English position. At one point during the morning, candidates were asked what aspect of English education was most important to them. I honestly have no memory of what I came up with, but I do remember another candidate saying that for him it was handwriting. He failed to make the cut. Handwriting really doesn't matter that much in most secondary schools. As [...]
A round up of some of my favourite posts so far this year
I was going to that thing where you round-up some of your favourite blog posts in the hope of getting a few more hits, but couldn't muster the enthusiasm. Instead, I thought I'd rip off some of the best posts I've read this year from some of the most interesting education bloggers out there. It's by no means a definitive list; I haven't spent much time honing it - these are [...]
Whose English literature is it anyway?
Have you heard? Education Secretary, Michael Gove has personally intervened to ban the only books worth teaching in the entire canon of English literature. Twentieth century American classics like To Kill A Mockingbird, A View from the Bridge and Of Mice and Men (Not to mention one of my personal favourites, The Catcher In The Rye.) have been summarily removed from English classrooms. Only, he hasn't. Here's what he has actually [...]
Should Ofsted judge 'quality of teaching'?
We all know, that as well as giving an overall grade, Ofsted give schools an individual judgement against 4 criteria: attainment, behaviour & safety, leadership & management, and quality of teaching. Theoretically it would possible to possible for a school to different grades for all four areas in one inspection. To my knowledge this has never happened. The correlation between some judgements is a lot stronger than others. There is fairly weak correlation between [...]
Making Meaning in English
Learning Spy CPD
*NEW* Intelligent Accountability
#Cleverer
#PsychBook
#WrongBook
The Secret of Literacy
The Perfect English Lesson
Join Over 10,000 Subscribers Learning from David Didau
Become Part of David Didau’s Network and Further Your Teaching Career.
