Last year the world of educational leadership research was rocked by a study, summarised in two Harvard Business Review articles (here and here), that introduced to the world the idea of ‘Surgeon’ and ‘Architect’ headteachers, among other types. The findings, if more generally true, would radically re-shape the advice we should give governing bodies about [...]
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 [...]
The starkest figure published in last week’s Key Stage 4 statistical first release (SFR) was the Progress 8 score for Knowsley, a small unitary authority in Merseyside. Pupils attending its six secondary schools achieved on average almost a grade per subject lower than pupils with similar prior attainment elsewhere in the country. All six schools [...]
On Tuesday, Justine Greening announced that six parts of the country have been designated social mobility opportunity areas, with a further four areas to be announced at a later date. The initiative will see these ten areas share £60m in funding, with schools in these areas partnered with those in other parts of the country, and links [...]
School leaders are used to dealing with change, not least when it comes to assessment data, but this year is in a league of its own. With changes to all the tests, teacher assessment, scaled scores and accountability measures, headteachers would be forgiven for despairing of any attempt to make sense of it. Even when [...]
We have an accountability system that has encouraged schools to check that children are making a certain number of sub-levels of progress each year. This is the basis on which headteachers monitor (and now pay) teachers and on which Ofsted judges schools. Yet there is little hard science underpinning the system in use: take a [...]
