Holly Maguire.
When I was in Year 10, feminism was a word I vaguely associated with not wearing a bra, hating men and setting things on fire. But the world has moved on. Last term, one of my Year 10 GCSE students told the class that men taking birth control pills and exercising responsibility for their sexuality was “just basic feminism”.
Young people’s relationship to feminism has changed. Beyonce is now a feminist. ‘No More Page 3’ campaigners won the argument. #Sayhername, honouring black women and girls killed by US police, happened. Social media made my students aware of these things.
But do teachers understand this change and its implications?
This progress has been coupled with non-compulsory PSHE in schools, allowing many (more…)

Rob Webster. 
This week, The Economist carried an article on how education systems globally are improving the quality of teaching by looking inside “the ‘black box of the production process’ – or what others might call the classroom’.” It concludes with the line: “The answer, after all, was in the classroom”.
The classroom, it seems, is where many other solutions to other dilemmas lie – including how education in England will transform itself into a self-improving, school-led system. The recent white paper, Educational Excellence Everywhere, pulls no punches in setting out an agenda for systemic change. As Chris Husbands writes, it’s a plan that will usher in “a radical new education structure”, much of which was put in place by Ms Morgan’s Conservative forebears.
Small state conservatism demands that schools alone become the drivers of educational (more…)

Chris Brown. 
Last week, delegates to the American Educational Research Association held its enormous annual conference in Washington DC. Engaging with research and evidence as part of effective professional teacher development is an obvious topic for such a gathering of teachers, academics, school leaders and students. It has benefits for teacher practice and pupil outcomes. At the same time school leaders often require help with understanding how to harness these benefits. As I note in Leading the Use of Research and Evidence in Schools, however, school leaders can support evidence-informed practice by addressing the five key checklist items set out below.
CHECKLIST ITEM 1: does your approach to research and evidence use demonstrate your own commitment as well as facilitate the efforts of others?
School leadership must actively and demonstrably buy-in to research and evidence use for it to become part of a school’s ‘way of life’. This means that school leaders must not only promote the vision for and develop the culture of a research engaged school, they must (more…)

Peter Blatchford. 
Here we go again. The arguments over class size are with us once more. Now there are worries about ‘supersized classes’ for young children in school, the result of pressure on school places and the current fragmented state of local educational planning.
Large classes are a recurring worry, especially when experienced by the youngest children in school.  Worries about this problem led the last Labour Government to introduce a legal cap of 30 on class sizes in England. Last year there was a debate in Parliament about perceived breaches of this rule by the then coalition Government, and now the problem is receiving coverage again. The concern is that the 30 maximum protection is being relaxed and this will have a negative impact on children’s education.
The educational issue here is whether there is a threshold beyond which class sizes (more…)

Chris Husbands.
The ‘tragedy of the commons’ is a well-known tenet of public, and especially environmental policy. The ‘commons’ refers to a resource shared by many individuals who can use a portion of it for their own benefit. The tragedy is that in the absence of effective regulation, each individual will tend to exploit the commons to his or her own advantage. Under this state of affairs, the commons are depleted and eventually ruined: everyone acts in their own interests and the outcome is destructive for everyone. But the problem is that if the commons are going to be used up, whoever uses most stands to benefit the most. The application of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ to environmental challenges is obvious. (more…)

 Rob Webster, Paula Bosanquet and Julie Radford. 
Schools are increasingly using research evidence to inform their strategic and day-to-day practice. A key resource is the Education Endowment Foundation’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit. Consistently top of the EEF’s list of ‘what works’ are teacher feedback and strategies relating to metacognition. Evidence suggests pupils could make up to eight months’ additional progress if such approaches are successfully implemented.
A bonus of embedding these techniques is that they tend to be very cost-effective, offering schools sizeable value for money compared with, say, one-to-one tuition (currently fourth on the EEF’s chart).
One of the less cost-effective investments schools could make, according to the Toolkit, is teaching assistants (TAs). Evidence suggests schools could gain just one month of additional progress from spending on TAs. However, the evidence on impact is (more…)

Rob Webster
Over the last five years, schools in England have been granted an unprecedented level of freedom. An increasing number of state schools now decide for themselves which children are admitted, the curriculum they follow, who to appoint to teach it, and how much they will be paid.
The professional architecture governing teachers’ qualifications and training, performance management, promotion, pay, contracts and conditions of work has been loosened in ways that will already be familiar to the 369,700 teaching assistants (TAs) employed in English schools.
There has never been agreement on entry qualifications for TAs, consistently applied professional standards, or a national (more…)

Vivian Hill
Last week, the Duchess of Cambridge launched the first children’s mental health week on behalf of Place2Be, a children’s mental health charity. The message was clear, mental health challenges are not a sign of weakness but a normative part of development.
These challenges are frequently reactions to stress and adversity, whether a traumatic life event, examination anxiety, bereavement, bullying, domestic violence, neglect or abuse. Children should have prompt access to support interventions. A recent survey by Young Minds found that 60% of parents did not feel adequately supported in managing their child’s needs and 25% waited more than a year to access services.
This Saturday, 28 February, the London Festival of Education will put a spotlight on these issues, among others, with sessions (more…)

Peter Blatchford
The head of the OECD PISA surveys, Andreas Schleicher, has been called the most powerful man in education. On  the BBC website this month he described 7 big myths about top-performing school systems. Myth number 4 in Schleicher’s list is that small classes raise standards. He argues that “everywhere, teachers, parents and policy makers favour small classes as the key to better and more personalised education.” In contrast, he argues, high performing education systems invest in better teachers and high performing countries (many in East Asia) have large classes – so the size of a school class can’t be important.
Far from being a myth, however, my sense is that the view that class size is unimportant is in fact becoming more and more accepted by many (more…)

Chris Husbands
I remember an occasion early in my teaching career when I went to try to see my headteacher at the end of a school day. His secretary (there were no PAs in those days) told me that he was ‘on a course’ after school every Wednesday. As a young teacher, I was impressed that senior professionals were still committed to their own learning. It was some time before I discovered he was playing golf.
We used to separate professional development and enjoyment. One of the great things about the London Festival of Education is that it puts them back together. This year’s LFE – here at the IOE on 28 February – is another vibrant, buzzing treasure house of debate to stimulate you, workshops to enhance your practice, entertainment to engage you: great speakers, great sessions, fabulous festival food for the stomach and the mind. No (more…)