- Professor of Education and Public Policy, Durham University
The government’s policy promises partnership between families and schools.
A significant barrier will be the lack of specialist teachers.
Secondary schools introduce separate subject disciplines, many of which are almost impossible to understand without the ability to read fluently.
Academy schools are no better at raising attainment than the schools they replaced.
What the new Labour government really needs to tackle is ways to stop trained teachers quitting.
If schools raise fees, parents may choose to send their children to state schools instead.
Basing admissions to some schools on faith fragments the education system.
Our findings suggest that increasing teacher pay over their whole career would help.
There is no evidence that either academies or local schools produce better results with equivalent pupils.
Measures need to focus on reducing social segregation in schools.
A one-off premium for moving to a challenging school, or another part of the country, is a lacklustre response to a big shortage. It’s also been tried before.
Would formal exams be a better, and fairer, measure of pupil performance than teacher assessments?
Academic progress seems to be the government’s primary concern. But school pupils have experienced lockdown learning – and losses – in a myriad ways
There’s no evidence that private schools produce better results than state schools for equivalent pupils.
The apparent success of grammar schools is simply due to pupils coming from more advantaged social backgrounds and already having higher academic attainment at age 11.
‘Per pupil expenditure’ is where the real story lies.
Grammar schools are back on the agenda in England, but they are not a go-to education policy for the 21st century.
Many people think that the admissions process should take into account the type of school students attended.
Can you and should you stop free thought? Not in primary school.
Disadvantaged pupils know what they’re missing when it comes to extra-curricular activities.
Going through the motions of giving children superficial or formulaic feedback won’t help boost their learning.
Educational strategies and new interventions are being evaluated like never before as emphasis is increasingly put on finding out “what works” in teaching. Many of these studies are randomised controlled…
On BBC Question Time on February 5, Labour’s shadow education minister Tristram Hunt made a remark appearing to link weak, unqualified teachers to religious education, specifically Catholic schooling provided…
It is not yet possible to tell whether the government’s flagship academies policy has been “a positive force for change” in the English education system. That’s the finding of a long-awaited report by…
Overcoming educational disadvantage is not easy. Even before they enter the school gates for the first time, a variety of factors including inheritance, social class, parenting style and family income…
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