School (as we know it) is the best way we have come up with so far for the mass education of the nation's youth, given the level of resource we choose to allocate to it. However, it is far from perfect. There are significant constraints that arise from the logistics of having children all in … Continue reading You had to be there

Setting work for children to complete at home during a period of lock-down is not easy. You might think it is, until you try it and see the consequences. You may make the mistake of thinking that it is just like setting lots of homework. It isn't. Homework is an add-on to lessons. It is … Continue reading What have we learnt from 18 days of ‘suck it and see’ schooling?

Since the introduction of school league tables in 1992, the exam results 'achieved' by a school has grown in significance tremendously. It is now one of the main, perhaps the main, preoccupation of most secondary schools. The objective of 'improving results' is embedded in the psyche of school leaders, politicians and parents: it is the … Continue reading Stop trying to improve your school’s exam results

There appears to be a lot of home baking going on at the moment - a useful distraction from the less enjoyable task of home schooling, I imagine. As with baking, the recipe schools are asking parents to follow will to a large extent determine the quality of the end product. You can add your … Continue reading The recipe for misery

In the scramble to 'design' a process for awarding grades this summer there is a risk that we impose a one-size-fits-all approach which fails to recognise disciplinary distinctiveness. Indeed, I would suggest that the quality of the system we design may have an inverse relationship with the uniformity of approach. Consistency of outcomes may require … Continue reading Disciplinary distinctiveness and the awarding of grades

Many of us in a position of responsibility in a school right now are grappling with the problem of setting grades for students robbed of their chance to take examinations this summer. As far as complex problems go, this is a beaut! Already, the classic errors associated with solving complex problems can be observed. One … Continue reading A cautionary note about awarding grades

We are embarking on a quest to recreate teaching in a virtual form. At various rates, bound by our technical abilities, every teacher, in every school, is moving from setting souped-up 'homework tasks' to attempting to recreate the surface features of the teaching and learning process. Review - instruct - apply - assess. This is … Continue reading What it feels like to learn

I swear that they were due the week everything fell apart. As we were sending children home because we didn't have the staff to teach them, as we were rapidly formulating contingency plans for the inevitable school closure, even after the atom bomb that was the cancelling of summer exams - even in the middle … Continue reading What it says on the tin

Distance weakens our ability to control. It is an odd feature of human nature which has been brought home to me this week. Visibility is a prerequisite to compliance. Without visibility, consequences cannot be incurred; power cannot be exercised. Contained within a classroom, students are visible to the teacher: 'Sit up, Johnny'; 'Can you get … Continue reading All that’s left is trust

It is at the close to chaos boundary that self-organizing changes can emerge. Bushe and Marshak, 2016 20/20 vision is useless when the fog descends. As long as you can see 10 yards ahead, keep walking in what feels like the right direction. *** The first casualty this week was free speech. As a headteacher, … Continue reading To the edge of chaos