EdBlogs

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...

Progress in neuroscience is rapidly influencing the way we think about teaching and learning. Cognitive scientists and behavioural psychologists now claim to have a better understanding – based on new empirical evidence – of how our minds and memories work, how and why we make decisions and how we learn. Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary fi...

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...

This year's A level results were accompanied, as usual, by pictures of joyously jumping teenagers, and searching analyses of lots of numbers, such as why 28.4% of the grades awarded to boys were A and A*, but only 28.2% to girls. Much the same is likely to be reported about the GCSE grades when they are announced on Thursday. All good, and importan...

It's the joke answer to that difficult job interview question: "My biggest weakness is that I'm a perfectionist." But the reality of perfectionism isn't funny, with massive stress caused by unrealistic expectations. When you start any new job – but particularly one as all-encompassing as teaching – it is natural to want to hold yourself to a high s...