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Teach First

What I learned in my visit to King Solomon Academy Part 2 – The Lemov lecture

2014-09-12T13:57:31+01:00September 12th, 2014|Featured|

When I reported my observations about King Solomon Academy, a number of commentators pointed out the similarities to some of the Charter Schools in the US. Any similarity is the Charter model, particularly the KIPP schools (Knowledge is Power Programme) share many of the same aims, values and structures as KSA. Although I've never visited one of these schools I was aware of the influence they've had on a number of English Free Schools and Academies. How synchronous then Doug Lemov, managing director of the Uncommon Schools network in New York state and author of the highly influential, Teach Like a Champion: [...]

A reblog: Teachers: show your working

2014-08-02T23:04:35+01:00August 2nd, 2014|literacy|

I know it's pretty cheap to reblog a post which sings your praises (and to be fair, I don't do it much) but this evaluation of a session on The Secret of Literacy I gave at Teach First's Impact Conference last week by primary teacher Jon Brunskill struck a chord. In it he talks about the concept of 'enlightened competence' and very kindly suggests that my ideas about literacy had the effect of engendering this quality in the audience. Maybe so, but more importantly (for me) it made me notice my own practice and descend - or ascend - into some sort [...]

The times they are a changin': how can we improve the PGCE?

2013-10-27T15:03:15+00:00October 27th, 2013|Featured, training|

Back in the dim and distant mists of time when I embarked on my Post-graduate Certificate in Education, there was no other way to train as a teacher. Much of my training was interesting and I largely enjoyed the subject specific content. But the generic stuff on professional practice was pretty awful and has largely been expunged from memory. I felt hopelessly unprepared for my first teaching practice, but then I expect that's true of most or many, but despite lots of classroom experience, lectures and having written a dissertation I was still hopelessly unprepared on being awarded QTS. I had [...]

Building evidence into education

2013-03-14T14:27:40+00:00March 14th, 2013|Featured|

Does he look happy? Today I got to rub shoulders with the great and the good at Bethnal Green Academy (second most improved school in the land, dontcha know?) for the Teach First sponsored launch of Ben Goldacre's thoughts on Building Evidence into Education. I somehow found myself on a guest list that included Michael Gove, Kevan Collins, chief executive of the EEF and sundry academics and educational big wigs. Fortunately there were also a few familiar faces: I was joined by fellow rent-a-gob Tom Bennett who is an old hand at these sorts of affairs and handled himself with considerable savoir [...]

Why do so many teachers leave teaching?

2013-10-20T11:28:31+01:00February 27th, 2013|Featured|

  Apparently 50% of  teachers leave the profession within their first 5 years. I've heard this statistic bandied about for quite a while, and while you can argue the exact figure back and forth a bit (some estimates put the figure at 40%) either way it's a bloody big number. Here's another perspective: 404,600 fully trained teachers under the age of 60 are no longer teaching, compared to around half a million still actively working in English and Welsh schools. So that's almost half of the qualified teachers in the country not actually teaching. And it's getting worse: some 47,700 teachers [...]

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