Credit: Darren Tsang / 1314 Family Style for UCL IOE.

27 November 2025

By Joseph Mintz, Gayoung Choi and Jianing Zhou

As educators, we routinely reflect on how to respond to and meet diverse learner needs within our classrooms. But do we also see and value the knowledge and experiences that students bring with them? Engaging with that question means looking at ourselves, our own backgrounds, experiences and perspectives, and thinking about how those shape what and how we teach. This is especially so when our backgrounds differ from those of many of our students. (more…)

Credit: Lucy Pope for UCL IOE.

1 August 2025

By Frank Coffield

Concerns, and anger, regarding the conduct and impact of Ofsted inspection are longstanding. To pick out just a few examples, analysis by Carol Taylor Fitz-Gibbon (1996), Jo Hutchinson (2016) and Christine Farquharson et al (2022) has variously critiqued inspection methodologies, the failure to take account of a school’s context, and the risk that inspection tips a school into a downward spiral, with all the consequences that entails for its staff and the community it serves. Earlier this month, Chief HMI, Sir Martyn Oliver, stated Ofsted is to put “disadvantaged and vulnerable children…at the heart of what we do as an inspectorate”. If that is to be the case, then it is even more vital Ofsted engages with such evidence. Especially so as we await an updated National Curriculum, the delivery of which is a focus of inspection. (more…)

Credit: Mat Wright for UCL IOE.

1 July 2025

By Jane Perryman and Alice Bradbury

In June, Ofsted announced a delay in the publication of its formal response to the 2025 consultation on inspection reforms, until September. Despite this, the inspectorate is pressing ahead with its plan to introduce new ‘report card’-style inspections in November. Originally, Ofsted was expected to publish its response during the summer term, giving schools a full term to digest and prepare for the new framework. Chief Inspector Sir Martyn Oliver has cited the ‘scale of feedback’ as the reason for the delay.

As authors of the Beyond Ofsted inquiry report, we have joined teachers, leaders and education unions in a call for a pause to the process – the latest such call being a joint letter to the Secretary of State from four unions. As a reminder, this reform came as a direct response to an inquest which concluded that Ofsted inspection had contributed to the mental health deterioration and death of a headteacher, Ruth Perry. Perry had committed suicide whilst awaiting publication of an inspection report downgrading her previously ‘outstanding’ school to ‘requires improvement’. Her suicide brought to the forefront of public discourse concerns about Ofsted and its effects. (more…)

Credit: Lucy Pope for UCL IOE.

22 March 2025

By Jane Perryman and Sandra Leaton Gray

When researchers visit schools to ask young people about their experiences of moving up to secondary school, a number of recurring themes emerge. Pupils anticipate new uniforms, the chance to study new subjects in specialist classrooms, access to advanced equipment, opportunities to meet new teachers, join extracurricular clubs and form new friendships.

However, alongside this excitement, many also experience anxiety. Concerns about navigating a larger school site, managing increased academic demands, encountering bullying and struggling to establish friendships are common. Schools are well aware of these challenges and have long developed robust strategies to ease the transition. Liaison with primary schools, induction days and structured pastoral support ensure that by the end of the first term most students have settled in and adjusted to secondary school life.

Five years ago, however, this well-established process was profoundly disrupted. The Covid-19 pandemic meant that many young people arrived at secondary school with highly fragmented educational experiences, varying levels of academic preparedness and, in some cases, significant social and emotional challenges. As parents of sons in the suddenly disrupted Year 6/7 cohort, we wondered what we could do to help. In response, our research at IOE, supported by the UCL Coronavirus Response Fund, sought to identify the most effective strategies to support Year 7 pupils at that time. The recommendations we developed emphasised relationship-building over immediate academic catch-up, flexibility in routines, digital literacy training and a focus on physical activity and wellbeing. (more…)

Accessibility is not just physical access, it also concerns digital products, spaces and services. Credit: Sophie Mitchell for UCL.

11 March 2025

By Leda Kamenopoulou and Ben Watson

What is and what is not accessibility?

Accessibility is often defined as the extent to which products, services and spaces are easy for people with disabilities to access and use. In this blog post, we argue that this is a narrow view and accessibility is a lot more than that. We do this by busting six common misconceptions. (more…)

Credit: zinkevych via Adobe Stock.

5 March 2025

By Claire Cameron, Aase Villadsen, Amelia Roberts, Jo Van Herwegen, Vivian Hill, Dominic Wyse

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is right to call for “…a national effort to tackle the epidemic of school absence so we can give all children the best start in life”, but the solutions adopted by recent successive governments, especially fining parents, have not been effective. We need a rethink in how to address attendance at school. Whether through truancy, also known as skipping school, or formal exclusion, far too many children are missing out on their right to education, with potentially lifelong consequences. As many studies show, these children are more likely to be socially disadvantaged children and those with special educational needs or mental health problems. We believe an approach based around the principles of social pedagogy offers a better way forward. Our new research highlights why this needs to start in primary school. (more…)

Credit: Phil Meech for IOE.

19 November 2024

By Bernie Munoz-Chereau

This commentary is adapted from Bernie’s contribution to the ESRC Education Research Programme event, ‘Democratic decision-making in English education: whose voices count?’ You can watch the event recording on UCL Mediacentral.

Imagine for one moment that you are subjected to the visit of a team of inspectors. They will come to your workplace at any time after one to three days of giving notice. When they arrive, they will spend a couple of days collecting information (i.e. observations of your performance, interviews with your colleagues and/or ‘service users’, institutional data, etc.). Then, they will use the evidence they have gathered to rate the quality of your performance, which will first be communicated to you in a meeting with you and your team, and then reiterated in a written report a few weeks later. This report will identify the name of your organisation and, once published, will be publicly available for anyone in the world with access to the Internet.

If the inspectors conclude your organisation is doing a good job, new opportunities may open up for you as its leader, such as taking on more responsibility, career progression, and even training those new in your sector and profession. If, on the contrary, the inspectors conclude the performance of the organisation you lead is poor, a spiral of decline might follow. In the worst-case scenario, your institution might be closed or taken over. Colleagues might move to other jobs, while, for those who remain, there might be fewer resources to work with.

Within England’s schools system, these latter risks are very real following a poor outcome from an inspection by Ofsted. (more…)

Credit: WavebreakMediaMicro via Adobe Stock.

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…)

Credit: WavebreakMediaMicro via Adobe Stock.

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…)

Adapted from 9george / Adobe Stock.

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…)