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Improving the nation’s numeracy: what can we learn from the British cohorts?
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 4 July 2024
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. Read the rest of this entry »
The Gender Wage Gap: decline and deceleration
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 3 July 2024
Credit: Feodora / Adobe.
3 July 2024
By Heather Joshi, Alex Bryson, David Wilkinson, Francesca Foliano, Bozena Wielgoszewska
Unequal pay between men and women is a key driver of social and economic gender inequality. In the 1920s, women’s pay was around 50% of men’s. A hundred years later, the gap is around 15%. It continues to fall but only very slowly. Aside from the push given by World War 2, the factors behind this long-term convergence are the closing of gaps between women’s and men’s education and employment experiences, helped by equal opportunities policies, especially those initiated by Barbara Castle in the 1970s. While the pay gap has been falling historically, within lifetimes it tends to widen as cohorts pass from youth to midlife.
Our ESRC-funded research project at UCL has examined the Gender Wage Gap as reported in the British Birth Cohort Studies, which track Read the rest of this entry »
From Kabul to Crawley: using collaboration to understand Afghan resettlement across England
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 1 July 2024
Afghanistan flag on a vintage suitcase. Credit: Sezerozger / Adobe Stock.
1 July 2024
By Caroline Oliver, with Mustafa Raheal, Mursal Rasa; María López, Louise Ryan, London Metropolitan University; and Janroj Keles, Middlesex University
The national conversation around immigration often gets caught up in slogans, but sat behind this are complex realities of displacement and resettlement. Our research aims to capture the intricate stories beyond the headlines, focusing on Afghan resettled populations in England. This necessitates a collaborative approach, using novel methods. Read the rest of this entry »
The future of primary education in England: a response to recent discussions
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 20 June 2024
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Assessment in primary schools: reducing the ‘Sats effect’
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 7 June 2024
Credit: Cavan for Adobe via Adobe Stock.
7 June 2024
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:
- In the hands of new government: the future of primary education in England
- Children, choice and the curriculum
- Hands on learning: a progressive pedagogy
- 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. Read the rest of this entry »
Hands on learning: a progressive pedagogy
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 6 June 2024
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:
- In the hands of a new government: the future of primary education in England
- Children, choice and the curriculum
- Hands on learning: a progressive pedagogy
- 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. Read the rest of this entry »
Children, choice and the curriculum
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 5 June 2024
Credit: Cavan for Adobe via Adobe Stock.
5 June 2024
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:
- In the hands of a new government: the future of primary education in England.
- Children, choice and the curriculum.
- Hands on learning: a progressive pedagogy.
- 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. Read the rest of this entry »
In the hands of a new government: the future of primary education in England
By IOE Blog Editor, on 4 June 2024
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:
- In the hands of a new government: the future of primary education in England.
- Children, choice and the curriculum.
- Hands on learning: a progressive pedagogy.
- 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. Read the rest of this entry »
Early childhood in England: time for a real transformation
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 10 May 2024
Credit: Cavan via Adobe Stock.
10 May 2024
By Peter Moss
A recent editorial in The Guardian asserted that ‘childcare and nursery education in England is in the process of being transformed’. It referred to the government’s policy of extending ’30 hours free childcare’ to children from 9 months of age, providing they have employed parents earning over a certain amount. There is, however, nothing transformative about this policy; rather, it is more ‘reformist tinkering’ that simply doubles down on what the Nuffield Foundation recently described as ‘a dysfunctional system in need of a radical re-think.’ Read the rest of this entry »
“My name is not ‘asylum seeker’”
By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 2 May 2024
My name is not ‘asylum seeker’: Nadia Mendez Guevara assembles a section of the exhibition. Credit: IOE Communications.
2 May 2024
This week, ‘My name is not asylum seeker!’, a pop-up exhibition based on the SOLIDARITIES research project, opens at Halifax Central Library. The exhibition focuses on the everyday lives and experiences of people who have sought asylum in the UK and are waiting for a decision on their application. During the waiting period, people seeking asylum are ‘dispersed’ to different parts of the country and housed in dispersal accommodation, often of very poor quality; most are not allowed to work. Read the rest of this entry »
