Update yourself with the latest news for both job seekers and recruiters alike.
By Alan Peters, 24 Jan 2020
We have an Ofsted outstanding school near to us. Every inspection says the same. Its students get among the best results in the county. Not the very best, admittedly, but in a pure numbers game more of its pupils gain the required set of five GCSEs, A* to C in old money, than most of its...
By Ryan Crawley, 24 Jan 2020
If you are still using the same lesson plans day after day that you first originally created 20 years ago, it might be time to update your curriculum. After all, two decades ago, trucker hats were in style and skinny jeans were not even a thought. Things change! Your lesson plans and teaching...
By Ryan Crawley, 24 Jan 2020
As all school budgets tighten a bit as funding shrinks, a common theme is to eliminate teachers and just make the class sizes larger. While there is no doubt that this strategy can save a good chunk of money, the question is whether it is worth it. Is there an academic benefit to having smaller...
By Mark Richards, 24 Jan 2020
There are very few people that would take any issue whatsoever with staff wellbeing being seen as a key priority in schools. Indeed, probably next to concern about school budgets, workload and the impact it has on the wellbeing of staff is generally recognised as the most pressing issue of the day...
By Mark Richards, 24 Jan 2020
The extent to which the current school curriculum is fit for purpose is a debate that rumbles on and on. On one side of the fence, it can be argued that there are more Ofsted-judged ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ schools than ever before. If this is the case, surely it points to the curriculum being...
By Alan Peters, 24 Jan 2020
Back in 2009, Bedfordshire Borough Council’s website announced the closure of its middle schools. The method it employed to do so – we might call this ‘opaque’, for want of a better word, of which there are many – gives a clear answer to the question regarding the future of middle schools. It is...
By Ryan Crawley, 24 Jan 2020
There is no time in the school year for a teacher quite like the last couple of weeks of December. The students are excited for not only Christmas and New Year, but the break from school that comes along with it. And no matter what the teachers say, they are thrilled as well. It is a reprieve from...
By Mark Richards, 24 Jan 2020
Following the announcement that Ofsted is to begin asking staff at schools who are being inspected to evaluate their own leadership team in terms of workload, several questions might be asked. For example: Is Ofsted essentially blaming school leaders for workload? What do Ofsted inspectors...
By Mark Richards, 24 Jan 2020
Exams regulator, Ofqual, has published the results of a research project that began in 2015 to look at the differences between grading at GCSEs, AS and A levels. It will come as no surprise to many – especially Modern Foreign Languages – teachers that the news is now official: some GCSEs have...
By Alan Peters, 24 Jan 2020
Other than the odd minor tweak, our education system has sat broadly unchanged since the Victorian era. Yes, there was that experiment with middle schools in the seventies and eighties, some of which continue today. Certainly, the leaving age has steadily crept up as Governments battle to find...
