Li Wei, Director and Dean of IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, at the launch event for Punnett Hall. He stands in front of a slide with a picture of Margaret Punnett and the text “IOE Events”. Credit: IOE Communications.

22 October 2024

By Georgina Brewis

As IOE celebrates one of its founding leaders, Margaret Punnett, in the naming of its space, Georgina Brewis, Professor of Social History, reflects on the path of pioneering women in the early 1900s and their recognition in the fabric of university campuses today.

Margaret Punnett (1867–1946) was born in Lincolnshire in 1867. She was born just at the right time for middle-class women to receive a better education than their mothers – she was educated at South Hampstead High School and went on to take a University of London BA in German and Mathematics in 1889. Again, this was good timing, as the University had only opened its degrees to women in 1878. (more…)

Credit: Phil Meech for UCL

17 October 2024

By Peter Moss and Pat Petrie

Imagine an IOE academic in the 2000s, committed to policy-relevant research and absorbed by the Labour government’s policy agenda for children and young people. Imagine they fall into a deep sleep in May 2010, only to awaken in October 2024. As when they’d fallen into oblivion, they find Labour in government, and expectantly ask an old friend what news of their field. Whatever happened to the Department for Children, Schools and Families? To Children’s Centres and Extended Schools? To that interesting work on social pedagogy at IOE, much of it government funded and with so much promise for children in care? Above all, whatever happened to ‘Every Child Matters’? The old friend pauses, noticing the expectancy in the questioner’s voice, then breaks the difficult news: all gone and forgotten. Our academic Rip Van Winkle is left shaken and speechless. (more…)

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24 September 2024

By John White

‘Major surgery, not sticking plasters.’ What Keir Starmer said recently about NHS reforms applies also to school education in England. For nearly 40 years we have been blighted by a National Curriculum whose main rationale is as the central pillar of a selective system as indefensible as the eugenics-based binary system of the post-war years but all the more effective for being less visible. (more…)

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10 September 2024

By Joseph Mintz

Government policy for the schools system in England has moved away from using the term ‘differentiation’, replacing it with what they have called ‘adaptive teaching’. This is an idiosyncratic term in this context, and it seems that by adaptive teaching the Government means to refer to an emphasis on direct instruction and mastery learning. I argue here that this shift risks the individual learning needs of children with special educational needs being ignored, and that this has not been given enough attention in policy, practice or teacher education. (more…)

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9 July 2024

By John Yandell

This commentary is adapted from John’s contribution to the ESRC Education Research Programme event, ‘Education after the election: Priorities for change’, which you can watch back, along with commentaries from speakers covering early years, schools, skills and higher education.

There is a crisis in teacher recruitment and retention in England. This is a long-term problem and there is no sign of it abating, or of any of the measures taken by the last government having had a long-term, meaningful impact in addressing it. In the current year, there is a significant projected under-recruitment of teachers in the primary sector and in the majority of secondary subject areas. Meanwhile, teacher attrition rates have risen back up to pre-pandemic levels. And there is worrying evidence that teaching has become less attractive because it conspicuously lacks the flexible working patterns that are available to graduates in most comparable jobs. (more…)

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4 July 2024

By Charlotte Booth, Claire Crawford, Vanessa Moulton

Every new government likes to put their own stamp on the National Curriculum – with varying use of evidence to support their changes.

The next government is sure to be no different, no matter who wins today. While the UK’s two main parties have campaigned on very different platforms, there is one issue where the Conservatives and Labour do agree – the importance of maths. (more…)

Credit: Phil Meech for UCL

20 June 2024

By John White

I agree so much with the arguments running through the four recent blog posts on primary education from the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy. Today, curriculum and pedagogy are dominated by assessment requirements. This explains why so much of the curriculum is about knowledge acquisition and regurgitation – and, as Alice Bradbury’s piece points out, why so many pupils are bored or anxious about their Sats performance. Children are, after all, active, inquisitive, creative creatures. They need a curriculum, pedagogy and assessment system befitting these qualities. (more…)

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7 June 2024

By Alice Bradbury  

This is the final in a mini-series of blog posts about primary education from the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy (HHCP) at IOE. Each post addresses key points that are included in a new HHCP briefing paper written to inform debate about education in England as we approach the general election. The four posts are:

1. In the hands of new government: the future of primary education in England
2. Children, choice and the curriculum
3. Hands on learning: a progressive pedagogy
4. Assessment in primary schools: reducing the ‘Sats effect’

Assessment plays a key role in any teacher’s work: through formative assessment, teachers understand what children can do and what they need to learn next. This guides how learning is planned and what is taught. However, the current assessment landscape in England is dominated by statutory, summative assessment, where the purpose of the assessment is not to help children learn, but to measure what they can do. This is one part of the education system which, as we in HHCP argue in our new briefing paper, needs a different approach. (more…)

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6 June 2024

By Emily Ranken

This is the third of four blog posts about primary education from the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy (HHCP) at IOE. Each post addresses key points that are included in a new HHCP briefing paper written to inform debate about education in England as we approach the general election. The four posts are:

1. In the hands of a new government: the future of primary education in England
2. Children, choice and the curriculum
3. Hands on learning: a progressive pedagogy
4. Assessment in primary schools: reducing the ‘Sats effect’

Children’s opportunities for authentic, hands-on experiences as part of their learning, such as science experiments, school trips, and ‘forest school’, are decreasing. Rising constraints on school budgets, combined with a detailed curriculum that prioritises traditional, knowledge-heavy content, means that schools are less likely to be able to provide children with these real-life, resource-intensive activities. Yet, they provide children with an essential component of primary education. (more…)

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5 June 2024

By Yana Manyukhina

This is the second of four blog posts about primary education from the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy (HHCP) at IOE. Each post addresses key points that are included in a new HHCP briefing paper written to inform debate about education in England as we approach the general election. The four posts are:

1. In the hands of a new government: the future of primary education in England.
2. Children, choice and the curriculum.
3. Hands on learning: a progressive pedagogy.
4. Assessment in primary schools: reducing the ‘Sats effect’.

Curriculum is a fundamental aspect of schooling as it dictates what children learn. Behind each curriculum is a set of significant assumptions about what we intend for our children to achieve by the time they complete their schooling. These assumptions reflect our societal values and the kind of citizens we aspire to nurture. (more…)