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Archive for the 'Education policy' Category

The future of primary education in England: a response to recent discussions

By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 20 June 2024

Girls in a primary school classroom talk over laptop screens. Credit: Phil Meech for UCL IOE.

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…)

Assessment in primary schools: reducing the ‘Sats effect’

By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 7 June 2024

Students sitting at their desks taking exams. Credit: Cavan for Adobe via Adobe Stock.

Credit: Cavan for Adobe via Adobe Stock.

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…)

Hands on learning: a progressive pedagogy

By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 6 June 2024

Children doing a science experiment with their teacher. Credit: Drazen via Adobe Stock.

Credit: Drazen via Adobe Stock.

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…)

Children, choice and the curriculum

By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 5 June 2024

Children raising their hands as a teacher leans over their desks. Credit: Cavan for Adobe via Adobe Stock.

Credit: Cavan for Adobe via Adobe Stock.

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…)

In the hands of a new government: the future of primary education in England

By IOE Blog Editor, on 4 June 2024

Teacher leaning over to check on a student as they write at their desk.

Credit: WavebreakMediaMicro via Adobe Stock.

4 June 2024

By Dominic Wyse

This is the first 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 from age four to eleven have a natural thirst for learning, and a quickly developing capacity for independent learning. This is a golden opportunity that must not be squandered by a national curriculum and pedagogy and assessment systems that fail to reflect the best evidence we have. While we have heard some welcome proposed manifesto promises about early years, secondary and further education, primary education is in danger of being neglected. 

England’s national curriculum, statutory guidance on pedagogy, such as that on literacy, and statutory assessment systems reflect a level of control by government that is unprecedented in the history of curriculum development in England, and which is an outlier internationally. The agency of all actors in the system needs rethinking. (more…)

Rising school absence: what do we know and what can we do?

By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 16 January 2024

Empty desk in an otherwise full classroom

Credit: Smolaw11 / Adobe.

16 January 2024

By Lindsey Macmillan and Jake Anders

The start of 2024 has seen a renewed focus on persistent absenteeism from school, with the Secretary of State for Education announcing a major national drive to improve school attendance, and the Shadow Secretary of State for Education laying out Labour’s plans to ‘rebuild the broken relationship between schools, families and the Government’. Yet this is not a new problem: the issue of persistent absenteeism has been looming since schools returned to ‘normal’ after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Everyone agrees that the rise in pupil absence since the pandemic is of significant concern. But the causes and what we should do about this are much less clear. (more…)

The case for an immediate pause and reset in school inspection

By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 24 November 2023

Teacher speaking to students sitting on the floor. Credit: Ashok Sinha / Adobe.

Credit: Ashok Sinha / Adobe.

24 November 2023

By Alice Bradbury and Jane Perryman

The current Ofsted inspection system for schools has generated such a level of mistrust, even perceptions of ‘toxicity’, that it needs extensive reform, and to be paused immediately while an alternative system is developed. This is the overarching conclusion of the Beyond Ofsted Inquiry, for which we provided the research.

We have spent several months collecting data from teachers, school leaders, parents, governors and key policymakers about the impact of Ofsted and options for reform, through a survey and series of focus groups. Based on this feedback and a review of the wider evidence base, the inquiry report proposes (more…)

Revisiting Brian Simon: a major educator in historical perspective

By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 14 November 2023

Technical drawing at Tottenham Polytechnic, Middlesex, England, UK, 1944 (Credit: Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer / Wikimedia Commons).

Technical drawing at Tottenham Polytechnic, Middlesex, England, UK, 1944 (Credit: Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer / Wikimedia Commons).

14 November 2023

By Gary McCulloch

Student, soldier and schoolteacher, Communist Party activist, and educational academic, campaigner and reformer, Professor Brian Simon (1915-2002) had a distinguished public record in education which was well recognised during his career. His many publications in the history of education, including a four-volume history of education in Britain published in 1960, remain required reading in the field. He had a particular link to IOE as he trained here as a teacher in the 1930s before embarking on his career in education, and his extensive personal archive was donated to IOE after his death.

Yet it is only now, some 20 years on, that we can see him in a more long-term historical perspective as in many ways an underrated figure in 20th century Britain, whose work is (more…)

How should research, policy and practice interact in the interests of education?

By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 16 October 2023

What Matters in Education series from the ESRC Education Research Programme.

16 October 2023

By Gemma Moss

In the run-up to the next general election, each of the political parties is beginning to set out what they see as the key issues in education and what they would like to change. This is a good moment to review the extent to which party-political priorities reflect concerns widely shared by the general public, the practitioner community and the research community – and the role the research community might have in helping to shape that debate. Just how research, policy and practice can best interact are live questions for the social sciences. (more…)

What works for teaching phonics, reading and writing?

By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 12 October 2023

Mixed ethnic background group of children reading a digital tablet in a library.

Credit: Vectorfusionart / Adobe

12 October 2023

By Dominic Wyse

This is the third of three blog posts about the teaching of phonics, reading and writing. The approach of this blog series is characterised as ‘A Balancing Act’:

  1. Understanding the PIRLS 2021 results;
  2. England’s narrow approach to phonics teaching;
  3. What works for phonics, reading and writing.

The Balancing Act: Part 3

Research published to date strongly suggests that the most effective way to teach phonics, reading and writing is a balanced approach – one that carefully combines different aspects of reading and writing in all reading and writing lessons. For example, when children are age five to six there would be a clear emphasis on phonics, but this would not be taught as separate synthetic phonics lessons, nor would the emphasis on phonics unduly dominate the other important aspects of teaching reading such as comprehension, motivation for reading, engagement with real books more than decodable books, etc. A balanced approach to teaching reading and writing is not the same as the synthetic phonics-led approach currently enforced in England (more…)