Jurgen Klopp, the manager of Liverpool FC, has been in the game of football long enough to know that making predictions about winning the Premier League is unhelpful. In an interview with Goal, his thoughts were measured as usual: “The main thing is that we actually think about ourselves: ‘Yeah, we are quite a good [...]
Will more training in moderation for Key Stage 2 writing, announced by Justine Greening yesterday, help reduce the inequities that were highlighted in a recent blogpost on Key Stage 2 writing? Sadly, the evidence suggests otherwise. If you look through the literature on examination standards over the last 20 years, you will find references through [...]
This year, 81 schools are using the new Proof of Progress Tests (PoP tests) from FFT to assess writing and conceptual understanding in maths at the start and end of Year 7. The tests are designed to be sensitive to learning, but resistant to practice effects. In other words, we would only expect pupils [...]
For the last three weeks myself and twelve post-graduates who are studying Creative Writing around the UK have been immersing ourselves in dragons, bears, vampires and ghosts. No, we haven’t been overdosing on Netflix, we have been judging the creative writing of 11 year olds in what we think is the largest experiment ever of [...]
With Finland giving up on handwriting at school it is perhaps only a matter of time before we all follow. Before we down our pens with the Finns, however, should we consider whether pupils actually write as well on a word processor as they do with pen and paper? We ran a small study at [...]
Do you have strong evidence that your Year 7 pupils made progress in English and Maths last year? Do you have strong evidence that your Year 7 pupils made better progress in English and Maths last year than pupils at other schools? Last year, seven schools were brave enough to measure their progress in English [...]
