EdBlogs

David Didau is one of a small but growing band of practising teachers who promote the importance of research informed practice. His popular blog The Learning Spy seeks to identify the most interesting and practically oriented research on teaching and learning that can support classroom practice. Didau is never afraid to challenge wel...

Intuitively, it seems obvious that reducing the number of pupils in a class will improve the quality of teaching and learning, for example, by increasing the amount of high quality feedback or one-to-one attention learners receive. There is no doubt that parents like small class sizes. However, Professor John Hattie in his book, Visible Learning: a...

Tom Bennett (the Behaviour Tsar) recently stated that, "behaviour problems crush learning." Few would disagree. Yet many teachers see managing and controlling behaviour in the classroom as their greatest challenge - and fear. Just one disruptive child in a class can have a negative impact on a teacher's ability to teach and on other students' abili...

As far back as 1999, Professor Robert Coe, in his Manifesto for Good Education, argued that too many policies have been imposed on schools without adequate evidence about their likely effects and costs. This approach was as much a waste of public money and professionals' time then, as it is now.  While education may not be an exact science, Co...

 We are not good at Maths in this country. In the latest PISA results (2012), England ranked 24th in the maths tables. This equates to a three year achievement lag between the performance of our 15 year olds and those at the top of the performance table - in Shanghai. But if you look at the performance of our 16-19 year olds, the picture is ev...