We often assume that the main reason for testing students is to find out what they know. But it isn’t. The main reason for testing students is to improve learning, and one of the ways tests do this is to motivate productive effort by students – studying! Teachers are used to teaching students who study … Continue reading Motivating productive effort through testing

We may already be in the era of 'peak humanity', a time where we have the greatest levels of education, reasoning, rationality, and creativity - spread out amongst the greatest number of us. Hamilton, Wiliam & Hattie (2023) Tutor: Good evening Mrs Taylor. Hi Harry. Thank you for coming to meet with me this evening. … Continue reading Peak humanity: Options Evening 2033

Of all the crass messaging that schools put out on results days, an institution boasting that it got its 'best results ever' grates on me the most. Runners up include: 60% of grades A*-A! and A*-B up by 20%! I've been as guilty of this as anyone else. In fact, I am still working on … Continue reading Our best results ever!

Sometimes it is worth considering a proposal which probably won't come to fruition. This is because the very act of thinking about it helps you see more clearly what you have now. That's where I am with the idea of a National Home Education Service (NHES). I'm not advocating for one. I'm not even sure … Continue reading Is it time to consider a National Home Education Service?

At the secondary school I attended in the 1980s, the headmaster was rarely seen. He would emerge to deliver an occasional assembly before retreating to his office, a mysterious place we could only picture by piecing together the fragments of rumours spread by the unruly boys who had been called there. Mr Norris would never … Continue reading Mind the gap

In this post, I will make the argument for purging the phrase "earned autonomy" from our professional lexicon in education. It is a phrase that, until recently, you would hear me use on occasion to mean that someone (or a group of people) should be left alone because they know what they are doing. For … Continue reading The Earned Autonomy Trap

As I write, we are in the midst of exam marking season. Teachers up and down the country will be regretting signing up to mark exams as they plough through their load of papers, motivated only by a small financial gain for each script they mark. Ironically, the principles upon which their remuneration is based … Continue reading Test-motivation: skipping the question

Call it what you will, the time to think about the school improvement plan has come around again, because God forbid we should be happy with what we have. 😉 Fitter, healthier, more productive... I don't need to put it on my calendar; I just wait for the blogs to start appearing. And there have … Continue reading The 7 inconvenient truths of school improvement planning

There is a forum for secondary school head teachers in the county in which I work. It is at about this time of year that we pay tribute to colleagues who are moving on to jobs outside of the county, or outside of schools, or who are about to retire. A few kind and generous … Continue reading The Long Walk