Rob Webster. 
Last week, a video of controversial comments made in the Australian Parliament about pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) provoked international headlines. Voice wavering and clumsily tripping over her words, Senator Pauline Hanson unmistakably suggested that “we need to get rid of these people” from mainstream classrooms, because their presence “held back” others:
“Most of the time the teacher spends so much time on them, they forget about the child who is straining at the bit and wants to go ahead in leaps and bounds in their education”.
Educators, researchers, advocates and parents of children with (more…)

The IOE blog has asked colleagues from across the Institute what’s at the top of their wish list. We are publishing their replies during the run-up to the election. 
School leaders and leadership   
The new Secretary of State faces a potentially combustible set of issues in England, especially if they are a Conservative charged with introducing more grammar schools. The new funding formula, piled onto the tight funding situation already facing many schools, will also occupy the headlines. Behind these issues sit some fundamental questions about where the system is heading – Local Authorities have been decimated since 2010, but the new model of Regional Schools Commissioners is far from established and less than half of schools are yet academies.
The emerging Multi-Academy Trusts are facing serious challenges, with limited evidence of impact overall and a continuing stream of bad news stories about the (more…)

The IOE blog has asked colleagues from across the Institute what’s at the top of their wish list. Their replies will appear over the next few weeks.
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Peter Blatchford. 
David Aaronovitch is a good journalist and there is much to admire in an article he wrote for the Times newspaper last week (‘Teachers must get out of their ideological rut’, January 26, 2017). I suspect however that he has never taught a class of children. The line he takes – following the well publicised view of the head of OECD educational policy Andeas Schleicher – is that class size doesn’t matter. David remembers the words of his grandmother: ’feel the quality not the width’.
With my colleague Tony Russell, I am working my way through the carefully collected views of hundreds of primary school teachers, headteachers, Teaching Assistants and pupils, along with careful classroom observations and case studies (part of a large scale study we conducted at UCL Institute of Education), and what stands out are the many ways that class size does indeed matter. We have found that having fewer children in the class tends to mean more individual attention, a more active role for pupils in class, better relationships between pupils, easier classroom management, more individualisation for (more…)

Chris Watkins. 
Jerome Bruner, one of the most influential writers of our times in the fields of psychology, culture and education died aged 100 on June 5 2016. His writing scored much more than a century: it set up enduring understandings about humanity.
His dynamic development started with psychology but became more extensive and more integrated, especially with the concept of narrative, and his own story illustrates the ideas and understandings as they developed.
He was born on October 1 1915 in New York City to Herman and Rose Bruner, Polish Jewish immigrants. I hesitate to mention that because Jerry’s research (1957) demonstrated that an introduction with such categories leads our perceptions to continue focusing on them. Jerry never smoothly fitted other people’s categories. He was born blind and didn’t have sight until the age of two. I do not hesitate to mention that because Jerry has helped us see (more…)

Meghan Rainsberry. 
The Department for Education (DfE) announced yesterday that 30,000 fewer children in England are experiencing bullying today compared to 10 years ago. This is a welcome finding as anti-bullying charities, schools, local authorities and others gear up for this year’s Anti-Bullying Week (16-20 November).
But other evidence suggests that the problem persists for many minority groups, and that the scarring effects of childhood bullying last well into adult life.
Longitudinal studies follow people throughout their lives, collecting information on their health, wellbeing, education, employment, family life and social networks. They are a unique resource for understanding who is at risk of being bullied, and what long-term effects bullying can have on our lives. (more…)

Brian Creese, NRDC & CECJS
I know it is difficult for some of us educationalists to admit this, but Michael Gove’s arrival at the Ministry of Justice has been a breath of fresh air. He has already instigated a review into education in prisons and its links with rehabilitation, led by Dame Sally Coates and seems ready to examine alternatives to the current policies of high incarceration.
My own contribution to the Coates Review will be my recently completed report on prisoners’ literacy and numeracy levels. In my view, this information is much needed. The last survey of prisoners’ basic skills was 15 years ago, and the comparisons with the general population were flawed. This incorrect and out of date understanding of prisoners’ skills, together with the press’s desire to discuss adult literacy levels in terms of reading ages, has dominated discourse in this area for too long.
So, we decided it was time to take a fresh view. You can download our report, “An assessment of the English and maths skills levels of prisoners in England”, here. (more…)

Chris Watkins
Yes, Jerome Bruner, currently Professor at New York University, will turn 100 on October 1. And in the snappy headline to this blog, it’s his scoring (writing) which has been one of the main contributions to so many lives and disciplines in that time (only a third of a million mentions on the web!). I’m not going to attempt to write Jerry’s story in full, but I would like to use this occasion to highlight a few aspects.

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Praveetha Patalay.
A few mischievous children acting out in a classroom and disrupting an entire lesson is a common scenario that teachers deal with. However, trouble-making children who hit out and misbehave are not only disruptive to teachers and classrooms, they are also likely to get lower grades.
In recent research, my colleagues and I examined the links between the development of problem behaviour in 5,400 children between the ages of eight and 11 from 138 primary schools in England. The children were in Years 4, 5 and 6 – the last three years of primary school and what’s called Key Stage 2. We found that those who developed disruptive behaviour in these three “middle childhood” years did worse in the tests, also known as SATs, at the end of Year 6.
The problem behaviours we looked at in our study were when children got angry, hit out, broke things, hurt people or lost their (more…)

Anna Remington.

Autism is commonly, if mistakenly, associated more with logical thinking than creative expression. But new research suggests we might need to rethink our views on creativity and autism.
The criteria we use to diagnose autism have long made reference to the fact that autistic imagination appears to be limited, and this trait is used as a way of detecting the condition. Yet in reality we still see many extremely creative autistic people.
This paradox led researchers at the universities of East Anglia and Stirling to study creativity and autistic traits in a large group of both autistic and non-autistic individuals. Their tests of creativity involved coming up with as many innovative uses for (more…)