Chris Husbands. 
There’s currently some controversy about whether teachers should – or should not – ask children to put their hands up to answer classroom questions. My IOE colleague Dylan Wiliam has argued that they shouldn’t – the teacher should simply decide who to ask, making sure that all children are involved; the DfE’s latest ‘behaviour tsar’, Tom Bennett takes a different, more traditional view. But: hands up if you had, a week ago, heard of Lucy Powell.
Lucy Powell is Labour’s new shadow secretary of state for education. An MP since 2012, she was chief of staff to Ed Miliband before the election. Schools Week’s indefatigable Laura McInerney produced a useful quick biographical note. But it’s rumoured that one of the people who may have kept his hand down when asked the question above would have been the new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is reported never to have met Lucy Powell before appointing her to lead a policy area (more…)