EdBlogs

 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...

A data analysis of the effect of coaching on teachers' practice and students' outcomes caused a bit of a stir recently. The meta-analysis of 37 studies found that coaching was an effective method of professional development for teachers. It is worth noting that coaching was most effective in small groups, however. In fact, it was half as effective ...

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...

​Getting 'the call' from Ofsted is rarely met with joy (to put it mildly), but it doesn't have to be a moment of panic for school governors. Last week we hosted #ukgovchat and asked the great school governor minds of Twitter for their advice and wisdom on how to (or whether to) prepare for an inspection. What Ofsted says: @EdCentral @HarfordSean wh...

In schools we assume a lot we probably shouldn't. One of the most damaging of these assumptions is that disadvantaged children want the sort of lives their teachers have but just don't know how to get them. When children make it clear, through bad behaviour or lack of work, they don't want to get qualifications and have professional careers we attr...