EdBlogs

In the current education debate, I believe assessment is unfairly judged. It is easy fodder for persecution because it is misunderstood and often carries negative connotations with students, teachers, parents and the administration. Part of the problem – and I'm not sure how it happened – is that many people have come to think of assessment and tes...

When I started in teaching, I wanted to copy everything I loved about the teachers who had made a difference to me. By the time I started in the classroom I was very much in favour of being tough on kids and demanding superb output from them. I was anti-liberal and, looking back, too much so. Teaching English was a huge amount of fun, but in my ear...

 Teaching is a highly nuanced, complex art, where the most effective teachers build up a range of strategies over years and years of practice. I opted out of the classroom too early to do that, and moved into what in many ways is a less complex, but equally demanding, role of senior administrator, or leader, in schools. I taught for about 15 y...

Every year at BETT I play a little game: I go up to stalls and ask how they know whether their product makes a difference to what or how well children learn. In the past, I have been met with blank stares or told that "children just love it". This year was different, though: I was impressed by the number of companies that could talk about how resea...