So A-level General Studies will be no longer be available after 2016. As Ofqual have been reforming A-levels so-called “soft” subjects such as home economics and now General Studies have been dropped. But are some current A-levels really easier or harder than others? In this blogpost, we look at national attainment in 2014 in five [...]
The arguments for and against grammar schools are well rehearsed. Grammar schools provide a good education for those who get to attend - I think the best guess in the literature is that they experience gains in the order of 1 grade in 4 of their best 8 GCSE exams. This isn’t a huge impact, [...]
Secondary schools can now download the marks achieved by each of their new year 7 pupils in every question from the 2015 Key Stage 2 tests. Even better, this data can be imported into RAISEonline so that analysis of test performance can be undertaken for a year group, class or individual pupil broken down by [...]
I recently watched the recent BBC series 'Are Our Kids Tough Enough: Chinese School' which followed the experiences of five maths teachers from China as they started teaching in a school in Southampton. I anticipated that I might learn something that might explain the very high levels of attainment of students from China in international [...]
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 [...]
So you’ll get your GCSE results on Thursday. They’ll show that you’ve done really well. Have you decided what you’re going to do next? Has your school got a sixth form? Are your grades good enough? Are there any Colleges nearby? What do they offer? Now imagine you come and live with me in South [...]
Over the weekend the Daily Mail reported on plans to open the first new Grammar School in 50 years. The arguments for and against Grammar Schools as agents of educational improvement and social mobility will doubtless be rehearsed with even greater vigour in the coming months. In this blog we look at whether private tuition [...]
Secondary school accountability is changing and by 2016 schools will be primarily judged by their Progress 8 score, rather than the proportion of pupils achieving five or more GCSEs at A*-C, incl. English and maths. Progress 8 isn’t perfect (no rank order of schools serving different communities can be), but this is indeed progress. The [...]
