Lee is Deputy Head at Cherry Orchard Primary School in Worcester. You can follow Lee on Twitter. There are few more persuasive voices in global education at present than that of Andreas Schleicher….Read more…
I now know how passionate teachers are about the subject of CPD
Richard Garner is education editor of The Independent If I didn’t realise it before, I now know how passionate teachers are about the subject of continuous professional development. Tuesday’s debate…Read more…
A qualified workforce?
Why a qualified workforce? Is this a question we should even be posing? Does it make sense to talk of an unqualified workforce? How is it that teaching in FE colleges or academies, independent…Read more…
We need to do more to recognise and facilitate growth and career development
David Weston is the founder and Chief Executive of the Teacher Development Trust. CPD isn’t a luxury add-on to the work of teaching, it is an absolutely central element of being a professional. The…Read more…
Getting excited about CPD reminds us why we chose to do this job
Ellie Dix is the Director of Pivotal Education. CPD for teachers is a necessity. When CPD works well, it is genuinely useful and can make a huge difference not just to the practice of an individual…Read more…
Use your vote!
Mark Baker is president of ATL. 99% of ATL’s members cast their vote in this year’s National Presidential election! That would be a nice headline and I encourage everyone who can to make it…Read more…
Teachers want for themselves what they give their pupils – frequent opportunities to learn
Dr Mary Bousted is general secretary of ATL and AMiE. Michael Barber recently opined that teachers are ‘semi-professional’. He argued that the profession remains heavily unionised (obviously a bad…Read more…
Review of the year
The major educational event of 2014 was the sacking of Michael Gove. Joy was unalloyed among the vast majority of teachers and school leaders as this most ideological of politicians was shown the…Read more…
A national curriculum should help children flourish
By Michael J. Reiss A school curriculum is not an end in itself, but a vehicle to realise further purposes. You would think, therefore, that those who devise a national curriculum would start by…Read more…
We need an open dialogue about what ‘evidence’ is
Tucked away in the ‘evidence check’ documents in the Select Committee webforum is something I have always suspected might be the case. The evidence government uses to develop policies is sometimes no…Read more…
Teachers don’t want Ofsted to be popular, they just want it to be valid, fair and reliable. It’s not.
By Mary Bousted Sir Michael Wilshaw should not be worried that Ofsted is unlikely to win any popularity contests. Teachers and school leaders set a low bar for the agency. They merely want the school…Read more…
Funding effective careers guidance – is another ‘lost generation’ a price worth paying?
The second of ATL’s series of pre-election policy debates asked if another ‘lost generation’ was a price worthy paying for a dearth of effective careers guidance. On the panel were: Sara Caplan, a…Read more…
Employers can’t continue to operate in a careers advice vacuum
Sara Caplan is a Partner in the UK Consulting practice at PwC, leading the Education and Skills business. We all have an image in our heads of what career guidance has meant to us as individuals. I…Read more…
Careers advice should be more than glossy leaflets and free pens
Liberty Pim is a sixth former at Charters School, Sunningdale It’s a shame to say that careers advice at school has so far only been an inconvenience to me, but it’s the truth. As a hardworking sixth…Read more…
What should the education landscape look like in 2020?
What should the education landscape look like in 2020? This is what we’ll be asking in our five, pre-election debates. These debates expand on key themes identified by our members and which shaped…Read more…
Good career guidance is the key to social mobility. But what does it look like?
John Holman is Emeritus Professor in the Chemistry Department, University of York, UK, and adviser in Education at the Wellcome Trust and the Gatsby Foundation. Career guidance is the key to social…Read more…
What’s wrong with making a profit from education? This is what was said…
“We don’t want Serco exam factories” said Rick Muir, associated director of IPPR and a panelist at yesterday’s ATL debate on the role of profit in schools. This was the first in five debates ATL will…Read more…
Imagine if every school in your local area was stamped with a commercial logo
Rick Muir is Associate Director for Public Service Reform at IPPR. The case for ‘for profit’ providers in education rests on weak empirical foundations. The international evidence on the performance…Read more…
Profits are progressive
Gabriel Heller Sahlgren is research director at the Centre for Market Reform of Education and affiliated researcher at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics in Stockholm, Sweden. He’s also a…Read more…
A school is a vital community resource, let’s keep it that way.
Martin Johnson is former deputy general secretary of ATL and author of the TUC publication, Education Not for Sale. The real damage to England’s schools following the reforms of the last twenty-five…Read more…