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We need an overhaul of England’s early childhood system, not ‘just’ more childcare
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 23 March 2023
Credit: FeeLoona / Pixabay
Ahead of his UCL Lunch Hour Lecture on 11th May, Emeritus Professor Peter Moss sets out why ‘just more childcare’ is not the answer to England’s early years needs.
Last week’s Spring Budget saw the latest of many attempts by successive governments to fix England’s broken early childhood system. More funding was directed at childcare. But expensive childcare is just one symptom of a flawed system, itself the product of decades of government neglect followed by a failure to think critically and holistically once early years gained policy attention from 1997.
The result today is a hodgepodge of fragmented services, coupled with weak and poorly co-ordinated leave provision. Read the rest of this entry »
Does the UK really have the best maternity rights in the world?
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 8 March 2023
Credit: Keira Burton via Pexels.
In a recent BBC Radio 4 debate, the Right Honourable Jacob Rees-Mogg MP claimed that the UK has the best maternity rights in the world. The programme was aired on the 31st January, to debate the third anniversary of Brexit. In it, he also assured the audience that rescinding EU employment regulations would have no detrimental impact on British working parents – and that in comparison to our European neighbours we in the UK already benefit from exceptional maternity rights, with laws originating from the UK itself.
In fact, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s claim of world-leading maternity rights for Britain is an odd statement and contrary to international evidence. Read the rest of this entry »
TCRU@50: A listening, thinking and hopeful vocation
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 2 March 2023
Illustration of book covers, by TCRU artist in residence Nora Wuttke.
Les Back, Glasgow University, with an introduction by Mette Louise Berg.
2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the Thomas Coram Research Unit, a leading centre for research into children, parenting and families. Throughout the year we will be running a series of events and activities to reflect on the unit’s past, present, and future. For our first anniversary event we were delighted to be joined by former TCRU colleague, now Professor of Sociology at Glasgow University, Les Back. In conversation with former TCRU co-director Professor Ann Phoenix (UCL) and Dr Sivamohan Valluvan (Warwick University), the three speakers reflected on race, multiculture, and conviviality in the shadow of Brexit, COVID, and the Windrush scandal. Here we publish an abridged version of Les’ comments at that event, sharing his reflections on the ground-breaking work carried out by TCRU on race and identity, its formative influence on his own scholarship and career, and the importance of hope and listening in research. Read the rest of this entry »
Has peak PISA passed? A look at the attention international assessments receive
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 23 February 2023
Once upon a time, when Michael Gove was Secretary of State for education, PISA was all the rage (for the uninitiated, PISA is the Programme for International Student Assessment, which compares the performance of 15-year-olds across nearly 100 countries in reading, mathematics and science). As I noted at the time, international evidence was then en vogue, with PISA in particular featuring prominently in education debates. But is PISA now receiving less attention than it use to? In a new academic paper, I take a look… Read the rest of this entry »
Nuclear disarmament education is needed now more than ever
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 8 February 2023
Credit: Zef Art / Adobe Stock.
Ellis Brooks and Hans Svennevig
When is a good time to teach nuclear disarmament in the classroom? You might be surprised to see it phrased liked that, rather than something more anodyne like ‘explore the topic of nuclear weapons’. But disarmament is not a controversial topic. It is an agreed international goal. The Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 committed nuclear armed states, including the UK, to disarmament in good faith. Read the rest of this entry »
How do inspector characteristics link to short school inspection outcomes of primary schools?
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 7 February 2023
Credit: Phil Meech for UCL IOE.
John Jerrim, Sam Sims and Christian Bokhove
This is the final post in a five part series on Ofsted inspections. Jump to: previous.
We have published a new academic paper investigating how Ofsted inspection outcomes vary across inspectors with different characteristics. This has been supported by the Nuffield Foundation and uses data we have pulled together on approximately 30,000 school inspections conducted between September 2011 and August 2019.
You can read a full version of our academic working paper along with our responses to some FAQs about the research.
This final blog in the series looks at the relationship between lead inspector characteristics and short inspection outcomes of primary schools. Read the rest of this entry »
Do Ofsted inspection outcomes differ between male and female inspectors?
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 7 February 2023
Credit: Phil Meech for IOE.
John Jerrim, Sam Sims and Christian Bokhove.
This post is the first in a five part series on Ofsted inspections. Jump to: next.
We have published a new academic paper investigating how Ofsted inspection outcomes vary across inspectors with different characteristics. This has been supported by the Nuffield Foundation and uses data we have pulled together on approximately 30,000 school inspections conducted between September 2011 and August 2019.
You can read a full version of our academic working paper along with our responses to some FAQs about the research.
This first blog in our series focuses on differences between male and female inspectors. Read the rest of this entry »
The ‘Shaping Us’ campaign – a welcome spotlight on the early years
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 3 February 2023
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Professor Pasco Fearon, and Professor Alissa Goodman, during a 2021 visit to UCL. Credit: Parsons Media for UCL.
It was exciting to be invited earlier this week to the launch of Shaping Us, the new Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood campaign to raise awareness of how important the early years are for shaping the adults we become.
At the launch, the Princess of Wales showed her obvious passion for and commitment to improving the lives of all children, from their earliest stages of life. Her serious personal interest in the deep scientific underpinnings for why the early years matter is also very striking. Read the rest of this entry »
Young people’s physical health during the COVID-19 pandemic
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 31 January 2023
Although young people were among those least likely to be directly affected by severe effects of COVID-19, they were not immune from its immediate effects on health. We are better able to understand the implications of this using data from the COVID Social Mobility & Opportunities study (COSMO). The study includes a representative sample of over 13,000 young people across England, who were aged 14–15 at the onset of the pandemic, and 16–17 during the academic year 2020/21 when our first data were collected.
COSMO’s purpose is also wider than the direct health impacts of COVID-19. As such, this blog post — drawing on our latest COSMO briefing published today — also takes a wider look at young people’s health behaviours during this period. Read the rest of this entry »
Maximizing the use and impact of the UK’s longitudinal research data
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 24 January 2023
Credit: alice_photo via Adobe Stock.
Rob Davies.
As CLOSER marks its 10-year anniversary, we’re looking back over the evolution of the home of longitudinal research in the UK.
The studies
The UK funds a number of internationally renowned longitudinal population studies (LPS). Each tracks a large sample of individuals over a number of years. In some cases they follow cohorts of around 17,000 born in the same year, from cradle to grave. In others, they follow a cohort for a shorter period, and the sample may be defined by age and/or, for instance, where these individuals live or work. The data this generates have been invaluable for analysing social as well as biomedical research questions and informing policy. The primary funders are the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Medical Research Council (MRC).
Each of the studies is powerful in itself, but the LPS community were more ambitious still, looking to amplify the insights they could provide by combining the data they generate. Read the rest of this entry »
IOE at 120: the mission to transform education and society continues, 2012-22 and into the future
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 8 December 2022
This is the last in a series of 12 blogs exploring each decade in IOE’s history in the context of the education and society of the times. Find out more about our 120th anniversary celebrations on our website, and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn to keep up with everything that’s happening.
Emma Wisby sums up and wraps up our blog series.
It is important for an organization to have a sense of its history, to take opportunities to reflect on that journey as well as celebrate its contributions and achievements. That is what we have been doing this year at IOE, as it marks its 120thanniversary. It has been an opportunity to recognize the many individuals and organizations that have been a vital part of IOE’s impact. Central to this has been the IOE at 120 blog series, which in this piece we draw together and bring to the present day.
As the series has conveyed, organizationally IOE has taken many different forms:
- from elementary teacher training college for London with just 58 students,
- to the Area Training Organization for London, overseeing some 30 teacher education colleges,
- and back to a single entity; from one of England’s esteemed ‘mono-technics’ or ‘specialist institutions’, alongside the likes of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Royal College of Art,
- to a world-leading faculty within UCL.
In parallel, we see IOE’s influence on the field of education studies and then, over more recent decades, related areas of social science and the arts Read the rest of this entry »
What is the joint impact of all the characteristics of Ofsted inspectors that we examine?
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 7 February 2023
Credit: Phil Meech for UCL IOE.
John Jerrim, Sam Sims and Christian Bokhove
This is the fourth post in a five part series on Ofsted inspections. Jump to: previous and next.
We have published a new academic paper investigating how Ofsted inspection outcomes vary across inspectors with different characteristics. This has been supported by the Nuffield Foundation and uses data we have pulled together on approximately 30,000 school inspections conducted between September 2011 and August 2019.
You can read a full version of our academic working paper along with our responses to some FAQs about the research.
This fourth blog in the series provides an illustrative example of how inspection outcomes differ across two lead inspectors with very different characteristics. Read the rest of this entry »
The relationship between Ofsted judgements and inspection team size
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 7 February 2023
John Jerrim, Sam Sims and Christian Bokhove
This is the third in a five part series on Ofsted inspections. Jump to: previous and next.
We have published a new academic paper investigating how Ofsted inspection outcomes vary across inspectors with different characteristics. This has been supported by the Nuffield Foundation and uses data we have pulled together on approximately 30,000 school inspections conducted between September 2011 and August 2019.
You can read a full version of our academic working paper along with our responses to some FAQs about the research.
This third blog in the series explores how Ofsted inspection judgements are related to inspection team size. Read the rest of this entry »
How do Ofsted inspection judgements vary between OIs and HMIs?
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 7 February 2023
John Jerrim, Sam Sims and Christian Bokhove
This blog is the second in a five-part series on Ofsted inspections. Jump to: previous and next.
We have published a new academic paper investigating how Ofsted inspection outcomes vary across inspectors with different characteristics. This has been supported by the Nuffield Foundation and uses data we have pulled together on approximately 30,000 school inspections conducted between September 2011 and August 2019.
You can read a full version of our academic working paper along with our responses to some FAQs about the research.
This second blog in the series explores differences between inspectors who hold different contractual relationships with Ofsted – Her Majesty’s Inspectors (HMI) and Ofsted Inspectors (OI). Read the rest of this entry »
