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…)

Credit: Joaquim Alves Gaspar / Wikimedia Commons.

12 September 2023

By Amanda McCrory and Michael J. Reiss

Early in 2023, and for the third year in a row, the UK government decided to allow the ‘emergency’ use of the pesticide thiamethoxam (a type of neonicotinoid) on sugar beet in England. Thiamethoxam is normally banned because it is incredibly toxic to bees and other insects. A single teaspoon can kill over a thousand million bees.

Should school children consider ethical issues such as whether these pesticides should be used? In our newly published book The Place of Ethics in Science Education: Implications for Practice, we look at the arguments for and against the inclusion of ethical issues in science education. (more…)

Credit: Hero Images / Adobe Stock

13 July 2023

By Kate Greer and Alison Kitson 

A new survey of teachers in England has found limited coverage of climate change and sustainability in both initial teacher education and continuing teacher professional development – and provides the impetus for change.

These findings, from UCL’s Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education (CCCSE) are set out in a new report, Teaching climate change and sustainability: A survey of teachers in England. Covering teachers’ practice, professional development and priorities for support, the findings will be of interest to teachers, teacher educators and organizations that support teachers to contribute to society’s transformation to sustainability, as well as to schools as they develop and implement climate change action plans. The findings are also informing CCCSE’s suite of free professional development resources – Teaching for Sustainable Futures – which are being designed for teachers of all subjects and age-phases.  The Geography and History modules, for primary and secondary teachers in each case, are ready to access now (see the joining instructions on CCCSE’s website). The next set of modules – English and mathematics – will be available in 2024. (more…)

Six women curriculum theorists, clockwise from top left: Maria Montessori, Lucy Diggs Slowe, Susan Isaacs, Susan Haack, Martha Nussbaum, Maxine Greene (Credit: public domain; Alpha Kappa Alpha; IOE Institute Archives; zooterkin; Robin Holland; Ryan Brenizer, all Wikimedia Commons)

8 June 2023

By Sandra Leaton Gray and David Scott

At David’s retirement party, after all the toasts and speeches, we started discussing something that represents a still accumulating problem in the field of curriculum studies: how is it that so many of the seminal works relating to curriculum theory focus exclusively on the contributions of men, given that there are many such female theorists (and professional educators are more likely to be women)? To that end, recently we have been giving a great deal of thought to different formations and interpretations of feminism, as a way of gaining new insights into the field. (more…)

Live stream of a talk with BSL interpretation and live captioning.

30 May 2023

By Leda Kamenopoulou

What is accessibility and why should we think about it?

Accessibility is ensuring physical and digital spaces and products are accessible to people with disabilities. It is also a lot more than that, because by making access easier for disabled people, we make access easier for everyone. Moreover, thinking about accessibility is not optional, it ensures compliance with minimum legal requirements, such as the Equality Act (2010) and the EU Directive on Web Accessibility (2018). As highlighted by the Global Accessibility Awareness Day, accessibility is not just ‘nice to have’ or a ‘tick-box’ exercise, so everyone in an organisation must know and be committed to best practices. (more…)

Credit: Phil Meech, UCL.

24 May 2023

By Alice Bradbury

One of my daughters did Key Stage 1 SATs ‘quizzes’ last week, and she found it tiring and emotional. Some of her friends were in tears over how they did, and this is without the pressures of having your results used to appraise the whole school. Judging by the outcry over the Reading paper, the Key Stage 2 SATs week was especially tough for pupils, parents and teachers alike this year. But this concern over SATs goes much deeper than one difficult paper; many parents and teachers have simply had enough of what they see as a damaging system. (more…)

Credit: Phil Meech for UCL.

9 May 2023

By John Jerrim

For quite a long time now, some groups have argued for the abolition of the Year 6 SATs (Standard Assessment Tests). Those who do so argue that they lead to a narrowing of the curricula, encourage schools to “teach to the test” and harm wellbeing across the education sector.

On this final point, in a previous blog I have discussed how evidence of a negative impact of the SATs on pupil wellbeing is pretty thin.

But what about the link between the SATs and the wellbeing of teachers? In a new academic working paper released today I take a look… (more…)

Credit: Image: Monkey Business / Adobe Stock

4 May 2023

By Gurpinder Singh Lalli, University of Wolverhampton; Gary McCulloch; Heather Ellis, University of Sheffield

Mashed potato, gravy, custard. When British people hear the words “school dinners”, it’s not always great memories that come to mind.

That’s not the case for everyone. Indeed France is known for its gourmet school lunches cooked by onsite chefs – bon appétit!

But in the UK people have been complaining about school meals for a long time. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver campaigned against cheap processed foods like “turkey twizzlers” in the early 2000s. And Margaret Thatcher, the UK’s prime minister in the 1970s, was nicknamed the “milk snatcher” when she was education secretary because she stopped free milk for children in schools.

(more…)

NEU demonstration in Norwich, February 2023. Credit: Roger Blackwell via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).

3 April 2023

By Sal Riordan

Teachers are in the news, striking for better pay and working conditions. Whatever you think about the rights or wrongs of that—at the start of the action a slim majority of Brits supported it — it’s hard to ignore the country’s teacher workforce crisis. National Education Union (NEU) members have just rejected the government’s pay offer, triggering two further days of strikes. (more…)

Image credit: Africa Studio via Adobe Stock.

1 April 2023

By John Jerrim

Online fraud is very serious business. We are faced with it every day. Indeed, as I am writing this blog, I’ve just received an email from a prince from a far-off-land who has an “exciting” business opportunity he wishes to discuss with me…….

I’m sure you have all received such emails as well: it is estimated that around 3.4 billion spam emails are sent every day. But how many young people are actually at risk of being duped by such a primitive digital scam?

Given that in many countries today it’s April Fools’ Day, essentially a day where we celebrate gullibility, let’s take a look. (more…)