EdBlogs

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...

Many teachers struggle with the idea of connecting their own practice to the latest educational research. How many consciously set aside time to discover and digest research, browse the latest education publications and research oriented blogs or discuss research with their peers? This answer is probably - not many. Even given the many time pressur...

That's the easy part. Finding enough leaders to transform the school system presents a huge challenge and one that we don't appear to be meeting at the moment. What does a good leader look like? ... after all, good leaders come in all different shapes and sizes. Do you need someone possessing a basket of generic leadership skills (in other wor...

If there is a holy grail in education, then it is probably to improve the education outcomes of our most disadvantaged pupils and narrow the performance gap between them and their peers. It has certainly been a key objective of successive governments. To tackle the long tail of under-achievement, the Coalition government introduced the Pupil Premiu...

Professor Simon Burgess of the University of Bristol says: "Having a good teacher as opposed to a mediocre or poor teacher makes a big difference. Teacher effectiveness matters enormously. A pupil being taught for eight GCSEs by all effective teachers (those at the 75th percentile of the teacher effectiveness distribution) will achieve an overall G...