Note - this piece was first published on April Fool's Day 2015! The establishment of free schools by the current government aimed to meet a demand for new school places in particular areas and to raise the performance of all schools through increased competition. For researchers, trying to show whether the establishment of a free [...]
The changes made by the coalition government to secondary school accountability, such as the EBACC, the Wolf Review and Progress 8, have tended to be met by concern that 'creative' subjects will become marginalised as a result of schools placing greater emphasis on 'academic' subjects. In recent weeks, for example, the TES questioned whether creative [...]
The Wolf Review of 2011 heralded major changes to the Key Stage 4 Performance Tables this year. Much of the media coverage in the wake of their publication tended to focus on a fall in the headline percentage of pupils achieving 5 or more A*-C grades (or equivalents) including English and mathematics and a rise [...]
We’ve been so busy in the past week that the Education Datalab launch already feels like a long time ago. For those who missed the launch of our report, on "Seven things you might not know about our schools", at the immersive Microsoft Showcase Classroom, here’s a short recap of the highlights. FFT Managing Director, [...]
When national results at Key Stage 4 were published last November phrases like "the gap between rich and poor widens" typified headlines in the national press. This was because the gap between the attainment of disadvantaged (often called Pupil Premium) pupils and others in the headline measure of 5A*-C including English and maths had increased [...]
Last week we published a report with data that suggests non-physics graduates can teach physics to GCSE standard just as well as physics graduates. Does mean that the Government’s battery of programmes to get physics and maths specialists into teaching is unnecessary? Probably not, for two reasons: 1. We appear to be hurtling into a [...]
In recent days there has been some discussion about the way grades in current GCSEs will be scored alongside reformed GCSEs when calculating Progress 8 in 2017 and 2018. In 2016, when Progress 8 will be fully introduced into Performance Tables, GCSE grades A*-G will be converted into points on the 1-8 scale. By 2019, [...]
Today Policy Exchange have published a lengthy report ‘A Rising Tide’ claiming competitive benefits of free schools. The premise is that neighbouring schools have improved their results due to the threat of loss of pupils to a new free school. It is certainly possible that this might have happened. Any headteacher at an undersubscribed school [...]
A couple of weekends ago I attended the London Festival of Education. The “London Effect” in secondary schools, a topic on which I have blogged previously, was much discussed. One of the important contributions to the debate, cited by a number of presenters at the festival, was made last year by Simon Burgess from Bristol [...]
