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TES

A decreased focus on facts & knowledge won't help either

2015-09-21T19:17:50+01:00September 21st, 2015|Featured|

Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly raises one person above another. - Joseph Addison The TES reports today that “A leading independent school headmaster has warned that the greater focus on facts and knowledge in reformed GCSEs and A-levels may fail to equip pupils for the modern world.” Well, duh. Anything may fail or succeed in its aims, but this statement sort of assumes that up until now GCSEs and A levels have been doing a bang up job of preparing students for the modern world. I have little doubt that some pupils will continue to be every bit [...]

Forget about assessing learning after lessons

2014-09-19T18:27:37+01:00September 19th, 2014|Featured|

Today I not only have my first ever article published by the TES, it's made the front page! Those of you familiar with my output will recognise the arguments and be familiar with the thinking that's led to these conclusions. But for anyone new to the blog, a little background wouldn't go amiss. The first and perhaps most important brick in the teetering edifice I've been constructing over the past couple of years is the idea that learning and performance are not the same thing. Maybe this sounds obvious, but it rocked my world to its rotten foundations. Read this post if [...]

Should Ofsted judge 'quality of teaching'?

2014-05-26T13:23:05+01:00May 26th, 2014|Featured|

We all know, that as well as giving an overall grade, Ofsted give schools an individual judgement against 4 criteria: attainment, behaviour & safety, leadership & management, and quality of teaching. Theoretically it would possible to possible for a school to different grades for all four areas in one inspection. To my knowledge this has never happened. The correlation between some judgements is a lot stronger than others. There is fairly weak correlation between the behaviour grade or the leadership grade with a school's overall grade. It's reasonably common for schools to be awarded one grade higher than their overall grade in either of these categories. But [...]

Who inspects the inspectors?

2013-07-21T08:17:33+01:00February 5th, 2012|Featured|

Are Ofsted fit for purpose? This week Dylan Wiliam threw a wet leather gauntlet in the face of monsieur d'Ofsted, saying, "Ofsted do not know good teaching when they see it”. If this is true (and how would we know because obviously no one ever bovvers to check up on Ofsted, do they?) it casts HMCI Sir Michael Wilshaw's assertion that teachers' pay progression should depend on them teaching 'good' lessons into serious doubt. Wilshaw says “The thing that irritates good teachers, people who work hard and go the extra mile is seeing people that don’t do that being rewarded." No. The [...]

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