Green shoots at the grassroots will grow a better profession

By guest blogger Alex Quigley, Director of Learning and Research at Huntington School, York

Few subjects in education can offer the promise of a consensus of opinion. Teachers, politicians and the mass of organisations in between, rarely agree on anything. And yet, there is a small number of emerging themes on which, it seems, many of us can find common ground – such as the need for a self-improving school system.

Standards and status – supporting the role of evidence in a College of Teaching

By Kelly Kettlewell

On Tuesday this week the Government announced plans to develop a College of Teaching, to ‘drive forward the culture change which is already starting to make teaching a more evidence-based profession which confidently grounds its practice in robust research and evaluation’. It will be supported by, but independent of, government and a consultation is now live.

The kids are alright

By Jack Worth

Last October, the headline finding from England’s performance in the OECD’s Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) was the low literacy and numeracy skills of people aged 16-24.

Precious mettle can transform FE practice

By guest blogger Andrew Morris, education consultant and member of the Learning and Skills Research Network

Augmented reality for bricklayers, ‘clinical interviews’ for numeracy students, practitioner enquiry for trainers tackling gang culture – what’s the common thread?

Five years of hunger

The second in our Election 2015 blog series by Geoff Gee

2009 was only five years ago, but it seems longer. Ed Balls was still Secretary of State for Children Schools and Families. The first book in the Hunger Games series was just out in paperback. The Audit Commission had a series of publications titled Valuable Lessons: their subject was value for money in schools, rather than adolescent combat-to-the-death in a dystopian future.