‘Golden Age’? What golden age?
There was no Golden Age. No ‘bygone era’ when the world was a great place for everyone, a happy place, a safe place. Pick a date. Pick a place. Were,…
What makes learning hard, and how to make it (a bit) easier
Learning things is generally hard, especially the biologically secondary learning (what we learn in the curriculum in school and college, trying to learn a musical instrument or a foreign language…
Why aren’t all schools equally ‘good’?
There were around 25,000 schools in England the last time I checked, and 99.something percent of them consist of buildings, pupils and staff (it’s not 100 percent because there are…
Things we SHOULD worry about
‘Don’t worry ‘bout a thing, cause every little thing, is gonna be all right…’. Bob Marley Bob was right: we shouldn’t get ourselves het up about things; as far as…
Season of the sticks
‘Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift’. Mary Oliver, poet. They say Autumn is…
Teacher Workload: why we need to reduce it, and how we might do that
The why The 2023 Department for Education survey found that 40,000 teachers – almost 9% of the teaching workforce – left state schools in the 2021-22 school year, before the…
Consistency: the key to improving everything
I remember having a conversation something like this with my son, James, when he was ten or eleven years old: Me: Son, you really need to be eating your…
‘Effortlessly superior’? I think not
Trying to track down the source of the phrase ‘Effortlessly Superior’, I found a reference to this book in the Balliol College Archives and Manuscripts: Balliol College: a History,…
The problem with … ‘What Went Well, Even Better If…’ marking, and what to do instead
Marking will tear us apart (from The Literacy Shed Blog, paraphrasing a Joy Division song line…) ‘What went well, even better if’ and it’s sibling, ‘Two stars and a wish’…
Adaptive Teaching: what it is and why it matters
The idea that teachers should adapt their teaching has been around for a long time. It was at the heart of Black and Wiliam's 2005 seminal paper that called for…