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Back to School Part 5: Marking

2014-08-25T17:23:42+01:00August 24th, 2014|assessment, Featured|

This series of #backtoschool blogs summarises much of my thinking as it’s developed over the past few years and is aimed at new or recently qualified teachers. Each area has been distilled to 5 ‘top tips’ which I hope prove useful to anyone embarking on a career in teaching. That said, I’ll be delighted if they serve as handy reminders for colleagues somewhat longer in the tooth. Marking is a chore. Whether or not it has a measurable impact of pupils' outcomes is arguable; that's not the reason we do it. The reason we spend so much time marking is a combination of we're [...]

Back to School Part 4: Planning

2020-09-02T14:06:11+01:00August 23rd, 2014|Featured|

This series of #backtoschool blogs summarises much of my thinking as it’s developed over the past few years and is aimed at new or recently qualified teachers. Each area has been distilled to 5 ‘top tips’ which I hope prove useful to anyone embarking on a career in teaching. That said, I’ll be delighted if they serve as handy reminders for colleagues somewhat longer in the tooth. So far in this back to school series we've covered establishing clear routines, building relationships and an awareness of the need to make language and literacy explicit in lessons. This next post concerns itself with the time consuming business [...]

What does John Hattie think about education?

2014-08-22T00:12:59+01:00August 22nd, 2014|Featured|

If you don't yet know, BBC Radio 4 have lined up a series of 8 interviews with the leading lights of the education world. In the second programme of the series, Sarah Montague interviews professor John Hattie on 'what works' in education. Here it is. Whatever your opinion of effect sizes and meta-analyses, Visible Learning has changed the way many of us think about teaching and Hattie has become one of the most respected and widely known academics in the field of education. For those too busy or too uninterested to invest 25 minutes of their lives actually listening to the broadcast, I'll [...]

Back to school Part 2: Relationships

2014-08-25T12:38:45+01:00August 20th, 2014|Featured|

This series of #backtoschool blogs summarises much of my thinking as it’s developed over the past few years and is aimed at new or recently qualified teachers. Each area has been distilled to 5 ‘top tips’ which I hope prove useful to anyone embarking on a career in teaching. That said, I’ll be delighted if they serve as handy reminders for colleagues somewhat longer in the tooth. Once clear and sensible routines are in place, there's space for positive relationships to form; without them, we are merely fire-fighting. Somewhat surprisingly perhaps, pupils prefer teachers they perceive as 'stricter' and want the reassurance of feeling safe, and knowing [...]

Can we trust the evidence of our own eyes?

2015-04-16T21:26:05+01:00August 8th, 2014|Featured|

Unwisely I got embroiled in an online discussion this morning on the merits of research versus the experience of seeing stuff work with our own eyes. The contention is that although research may have its uses, there is no need to waste time or money researching the "blindingly obvious". On the face of it, this would appear to be self evidently true. Why bother testing the efficacy of something we can 'see' working? Well, as I've pointed out before, we are all victims of powerful cognitive biases which prevent us from acknowledging that we might be wrong. Here's a reminder of some of [...]

Slow Writing eBook – contributions wanted

2014-08-07T14:58:37+01:00July 31st, 2014|Featured|

Hey all! In a flush of Twitter inspired enthusiasm, @redgirob, @bryngoodman and I have come up with a crazy idea. What if we put together a crowd sourced, not for profit eBook detailing the various uses, applications and examples to which my idea of Slow Writing has been put? Hang on, I hear you cry, what bleedin' 'eck's Slow Writing? Where've you been? For any cave dwellers, you'll be pleased to know I've written several posts about it: Slow Writing: how slowing down can improve your writing Black space: improving writing by increasing lexical density The art of beautifully crafted sentences A [...]

Ofsted's new Inspection Handbook – a cause for celebration

2014-07-30T22:19:04+01:00July 30th, 2014|Featured|

As detailed by Old Andrew here, I attended a meeting with the new National Director for Schools Policy, Sean Harford in Birmingham on Friday 25th July. This had followed a series of telephone calls and emails in which I provided "free consultancy" on Ofsted's new Inspection Handbook. Whatever your ideological stripe, whatever your beliefs about the purpose of education, everybody can, I hope, agree that reforming Ofsted is in everyone's best interest. During the past month Sean has "taken a scythe" to the 500+ pages of subsidiary and subject specific guidance to produce a slimmed down document that will be useful to inspectors, and [...]

Some thoughts on Edtech and the Sunk Cost Fallacy

2014-07-30T07:33:48+01:00July 29th, 2014|Featured|

Every man in the journey of life takes … advantage of the ignorance of his fellow travellers, disguises himself in counterfeited merit, and hears those praises with complacency which his conscience reproaches him for accepting. Every man deceives himself while he thinks he is deceiving others; and forgets that the time is at hand when every illusion shall cease, when fictitious excellence shall be torn away, and all must be shown to all in their real estate. Samuel Johnson Mark Anderson (That's @ICTEvangelist to you!) asked me today whether I'd mind answering some questions on the role of technology in education. [...]

My impatience with some Ofsted inspectors

2014-07-24T16:34:31+01:00July 24th, 2014|Featured|

We hope we are transparent and honest. I am very keen that the people we inspect have confidence in the quality of our inspections and the quality of our inspectors. I believe the quality of inspection and the quality of our inspectors has gone up over the last few years. Sir Michael Wilshaw I'm genuinely of the belief that Ofsted as an organisation is trying hard to put right some of the worst excesses it has been responsible for in its 21 year history. But certain attitudes make the task so much harder. Consider this from the boss: We have done more [...]

You can’t teach an old teacher new tricks…so sack them.

2014-07-23T19:43:43+01:00July 23rd, 2014|Featured|

I rarely reblog posts on my site, but in this case I wanted to make an exception for two (make that three) reasons: 1. This is @cazzbooth's inaugural post I'd like to do my 'umble best to help her build an audience. 2. This post speaks precisely to the style over substance nonsense that is regularly enacted in many many schools all over the UK. The sooner we can move to a system where teachers who get great results are allowed to teach as they see fit, the better. 3. Because it's well written and it confirms my biases. When I recently [...]

Do I lack the courage of my convictions?

2020-02-26T11:10:39+00:00July 20th, 2014|Featured|

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. Friedrich Nietzsche An accusation that has been increasingly levelled at me is that, because I've publicly changed my mind about my views on education, I must be some sort of slippery, trend-chasing wannabe with no moral compass. Or to put it another way, that I lack the courage of my convictions. I've always found it a lot more satisfying to disagree with someone who is prepared to change their mind. I've wondered why it is that when politicians change their mind on an issue the media cries "U-turn!" As if it's a bad [...]

Playing the game: Ofsted vs. Civitas

2017-01-09T09:26:46+00:00July 17th, 2014|Featured|

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort. John Ruskin On the face of it, this seems both self-evident and obvious: if Ofsted aren't judging quality of teaching in a school, what are they doing? Now, I'm not one of those who feel Ofsted is a cancer needing to be cut out of the education corpse, but I do feel that along with the good they might have done in holding failing schools to account, they've done a lot of harm along the way. A new report from Civitas, Playing the Game The enduring influence of the preferred [...]

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