EdBlogs

It's easy to see why teacher-teacher couples work well – they understand the long working hours, the emotional investment and the need to be in bed by 10pm on weeknights. But what about dating another teacher in your school?  Is having your beau in a nearby classroom a way to be close or a recipe for disaster? With Valentine's Day coming up, w...

While it might feel like having fewer pupils in your class would help you make more progress, there is strangely little hard evidence that reducing class sizes consistently improves student attainment. It's not just teachers who gravitate towards a leaner classroom; reducing class sizes is extremely appealing to parents and one of the main attracti...

What is it? Growth mindset is Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck's theory that learners need to move away from the belief that skills are innate and unchanging – a "fixed mindset". Instead, the thinking goes, students must move towards a "growth mindset", where they believe their capabilities and skills can be developed through effort and...

Best known for: Birbalsingh shot to fame following a speech she delivered at the 2010 Conservative Party Conference. Her heated rhetoric drew a lot of abuse on social media, and the nature of her sentiment apparently led the governors of the school she was teaching at to 'discuss her position'. Birbalsingh ultimately resigned her post, and turned h...

I was a lazy newly-qualified teacher (NQT). While there were negative aspects to that, there were some definite positives too. I eased myself into teaching, churning out a steady run of "satisfactory" lessons in my first year. I was really well supported by a motivated, organised and inspirational teacher – if she was long-suffering she didn't let ...