John Hattie once described learning as a ‘staccato’ business. What he meant was that it’s not neat and linear, it’s full of starts and stops and two steps forward and…

Sugata Mitra wrote an article published in the Observer on Saturday 15 June 2013 entitled ‘Advent of Google means we must rethink our approach to education’ in which he said:…

Talking about ‘drilling’ in education risks the response that it’s an outmoded concept consisting of mindless, boring, ‘rote learning’. I don’t believe it is, but drilling probably has a bad…

There are many ways of teaching, but some are far more effective than others. Research done in teaching and learning can help us to understand how to teach most effectively but, of course, research only tells us about what works well on average, for most people, most of the time – it has its limitations. Despite those limitations it is very useful, alongside what we find out from our own experience over time, in helping us develop teaching and learning in our school.

Improving a school isn’t easy. Sustainable improvement requires at least three things…

When I started teaching, I was expected to mark the exercise books of all of my classes once a week. If I sometimes couldn’t manage that, I would be forgiven for once-a-fortnight marking, as long as that was the exception and not the rule …