EdBlogs

What is it?  The belief that smaller class sizes mean better results for pupils. It's an idea that has huge support among parents, who (understandably) follow the logic that if there are fewer pupils in class, their child will get more attention and be more likely to succeed. The public are quick to jump on the bandwagon too. In his book, Davi...

What is it?  ​It depends who you speak to. For some, homework is a way to develop students' independent learning skills and ensure they have understood – and then consolidate – work from the classroom. Others, meanwhile, contend that it's a largely pointless tradition that brings stress to young people and their families, robbing them of much-...

It's well-known that there's a timebomb in teaching right now – the sector is struggling with both recruitment and retention, while the population of pupils keeps increasing. And yet, many experienced older teachers, particularly women , feel that they are being performance managed out of their jobs, to be replaced by younger, cheaper staff. Those ...

​Education is awash with acronyms. ITT is tricky at the best of times, but it can be even harder if you don't know your SLT from your HOYs, HODs or HOFs – or your LOs from your LOs (yes, there are two kinds). Here's our brief guide to the acronyms you are most likely to come across regularly (we would rival War and Peace if we included them all). A...

A new guide from US-based Mathematica Policy Research's Center for Improving Research Evidence, explains to educators how to tell which type of research evidence supports claims about effectiveness, ordering them from the weakest (anecdotal) to the strongest (causal). The guide gives examples of common sources for each type of evidence, such as mar...