Data often gets something of a bad press in education. It is seen by some as a dehumanising force: reducing real, living students to faceless numbers. However, this is to miss the point of data in education. It is precisely by putting the people to one side – for a moment – that we discover […]
Read more
Like many schools, the majority of our geography department interventions occur in Year 11 with all hands on deck to ensure target grades are met and significant progress has been made (and can be shown!). As part of my role as Head of Department, I am seeking ways to try to avoid this mad rush […]
Read moreThe first few weeks of a new school year usually involves both looking forward and looking back. The summer of 2016 saw an almost completely new set of national assessment and accountability arrangements and schools are analysing how they’ve done and pondering the implications for the years ahead. We don’t have all the results yet […]
Read moreThe summer of 2015 saw the end of a 25-year period in primary schools when attainment was assessed and reported in relation to a continuous scale of ‘level descriptions’. Along with levels, the old National Curriculum and its associated assessment and accountability arrangements, are now consigned to history and everyone involved in primary schools – […]
Read moreToday the DfE published a document called Primary school accountability in 2016. Although it is mainly concerned with the technical aspects of how the accountability measures for 2016 will be calculated, it gives a handy overview for schools about what will be reported in 2016. This includes how progress measures will be calculated, which is very different to the current […]
Read moreTo get the most out of your guided reading sessions and ensure every child makes progress in reading, I recommend you use The Simple View of Reading as a device for organising your guided reading groups. This series of blog posts will give you practical advice on how to make guided reading work for every […]
Read more
My daughter was indignant to be rewarded by her primary school for reading at home six times in a week. The pleasure from her books, she told me, was reward itself. This got me thinking. In school science, do we focus on the intrinsic rewards of the subject itself, or are extrinsic rewards – achieving […]
Read moreThe summer of 2015 saw the end of a 25-year period in primary schools when attainment was assessed and reported in relation to a continuous scale of ‘level descriptions’. Along with levels, the old National Curriculum and its associated assessment and accountability arrangements, are now consigned to history and everyone involved in primary schools – […]
Read more