Utterly totally & completely indefensible

Lazy populism artificially dressed up as serious debate. If genuinely debating the challenges of growing up - parents and children deserve better…

Whilst the ‘culture wars’ may be at least partially over - it is time to rethink and rebuild teacher education for a sustainable future. Important insights here from Ian Cushing and Viv Ellis.

David Spendlove 🐝 Ian Cushing Thanks for the post. Looks timely and important from very well respected academic voices. Link to their report if you are not a subscriber to the Times Higher. reimaginingteachereducation.mmu.ac.uk/wp-content/upl…

Interesting paper on how AI outperforms undergraduate students-perhaps more interesting is viewing results in context that ChatGPT is already significantly more powerful (x 2-5) from when research was likely carried out - possibly late 2023. bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/be…

Labour didn’t aim high in the manifesto so can’t be accused of over promising & under delivering-but whilst steady progress is welcome they need a full review of teacher recruitment, ‘training’, development & retention. The system is creaking, dysfunctional & not fit for purpose.

John Dickens Question is, did it ever warrant the additional funding, and would that be better spent on other teacher recruitment objectives? I’m glad value for money is being raised.

Sounds like Teach First is getting the Frontline treatment: rebranding, more oversight, emphasis on diversity... In this previous article রবীণ সেন Robin Sen and I argued that these changes were a tacit admission that Frontline had failed. Same can now be said of Teach First.

My view of Teach First was always its aim should be to no longer be required-whilst TFs rationale often seemed to be the opposite. Despite the rhetoric the idea of the most ‘disadvantaged’ schools getting large numbers of rapidly ‘trained’ inexperienced‘teachers’ is questionable.

This is my brother in law. A truly wonderful person and a huge loss to so many…

Huge surprise the ‘bung a tsar’ strategy didn’t work…

Remembering Dave Tweddle

It was always going to come down to creative accounting rather than a genuine policy shift. Equally there isn’t an increase in STEM teachers-this is the stuff of unicorns - where do you train to become a new STEM teacher? Time for Labour to step and own the policy in this space.

Looking in the same places with the same people for new answers guarantees the same results…equally asking the same question without fully understanding the question guarantees the answers won’t be found.

Even if anyone could prove this was the case, which they can’t, the follow on question would be at what cost and is/was it worth it.

So Nick claims when training Rory Gribbell was given a handout on the philosophy of mathematics ed as evidence that an orthodoxy on what made good teaching was the single biggest barrier to school improvement? Even if true-just a reminder Rory was on the Teach First Programme…

Interesting read, but you need to take politician's claims with a grain of salt. For an 'evidence-informed' approach many vagaries and claims without evidence - Ten lessons on driving successful school reform schoolsweek.co.uk/ten-lessons-on…

The key thing to recognise is that educational policies are made at all levels, particularly at the school and classroom levels. As far as children are concerned, their teachers are THE policy makers. Therefore, teacher and leadership development are essential 2/2

It’s difficult to see any likely future government wanting to develop a high quality teaching ‘profession’ and it may be of little interest to Labour. If so where does the drive for a stronger, sustainable and high quality profession come from?