EdBlogs

My varied teaching career so far has seen me teach two- and three-year-olds in a bilingual nursery setting, and secondary English and humanities in an international school. This latter placement was what I really enjoyed doing, and where I spent the majority of my career so far. Despite imperfections with the school (and no school is perfect), I re...

University Challenge fans may remember Daisy Christodoulou: she was described as "Britain's brightest student" after her outstanding performance on the 2006-07 series, where she captained the University of Warwick's team (you can catch the final on YouTube here). Fast forward a decade and the student is now a teacher. Christodoulou initially b...

Have you known excellent classroom practitioners who have failed to make the transition to successful school leadership – as middle leaders, senior leaders, or headteachers? Have you known indifferent teachers go on to be skilful and effective leaders? I've been thinking about the relationship between teaching and leading in education recently. It ...

So, you managed to make it through your last placement, perhaps in KS1 or LKS2. The heady glow of completion, although fast becoming a distant memory, still brings a smile and sense of relief. Even if you experienced the usual wobbles along the way, you appreciate that this is all part of the learning curve; the frequent challenges of becoming a be...

What is it? The process of putting students into classes that have a mix of abilities, rather than streaming them into sets alongside others of a similar attainment level. The practice is still quite rare in England's schools (both primary and secondary), with most leaders opting for the more traditional approach of setting by ability, particularly...