Professor Robert Plomin is a researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London. In 2018 he published a book, Blueprint, which reveals his research findings. He looked at the genes and life-histories of 10,000 twin pairs born 1994-6, some of whom were identical, some not, some brought up by the same... Continue Reading →
Reflective practice and its challenges are my constant. Why is this? Supervision of doctoral students at Buckingham relies on the development of academic reflective practice and necessitates all of us to be research active and meaningfully reflective. To cut a clear path through the intellectual thinking around this process is very time intense and as... Continue Reading →
The biggest problem in our schools is the low level of education reached by about 30% of children – worse than in other rich countries. Many of them (but far from all) are from poorer homes. These children are behind by the age of 4 and few catch up. In England, the latest data shows... Continue Reading →
Ahead of the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers (UCET) conference in early November and the imminent election, an article was published in the TES which has caused much debate. According to the article (see link at bottom of blog) the University sector are proposing that all UK state-school teachers should be qualified to... Continue Reading →
In September 2019 John Dunford published his malpractice in exams report for JCQ (the Joint Council for Qualifications). JCQ is in fact run by the exam boards, but then they are responsible for detecting and preventing malpractice. In 2018 there were 2735 penalties for malpractice – a small number given that 11.5 million certificates were... Continue Reading →
How will higher education adapt to the rise of artificial intelligence, online learning, and other factors? Universities, for all their diversity across the world, will become still more so over the next 25 years, under the pressures of financial, social, and above all technological change. The ‘Carnegie Classification’ of institutions of higher education, created in... Continue Reading →
Since 2012, October 11th has been marked as the International Day of the Girl. The day aims to highlight and address the needs and challenges girls face, while promoting girls' empowerment and the fulfilment of their human rights. This year’s theme was: GirlForce: Unscripted and Unstoppable Global charities working in the gender equality and... Continue Reading →
“When did ‘wellbeing’ become a buzz word in the teaching profession”, I ask myself? I qualified 17 years’ ago and it has not always been a focus throughout my career. I was not trained in my PGCE year, my NQT year, nor as a Head of Year or as a Pastoral Senior Leader in strategies... Continue Reading →
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away... (well, a comprehensive school in Essex around 2006) I was asked if a new maths teacher could observe my lesson. He was not long from the Caribbean and was struggling with behaviour management. An important point to note is that this was June and he... Continue Reading →
