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 →
British teenagers have lower IQs than 30 years ago, reversing the ‘Flynn effect’, seeing scores rise in 20th century. Professor Flynn believes the drop is due to youth culture stagnating and dumbing down. Is a decline in speaking related? Children find face-to-face conversation ‘too much effort’, preferring to watch YouTube than meet friends or pursue... Continue Reading →
Professor Barnaby Lenon, Dean of Education, looks at the impact of class sizes. Class sizes in the UK are quite large – an average of 25 at primary schools compared to an OECD average of 21. There are mixed opinions amongst researchers about the merits of smaller class sizes. PISA research suggested that small class... Continue Reading →
Current educational headlines and social media posts talk of a crisis in teacher recruitment. Who will join a profession that seems to be haemorrhaging qualified educators every term? But what’s the real story? There must be a reason why people don’t feel attracted to our challenging but utterly rewarding profession. So what makes some wonderful... Continue Reading →
