If we were to design an assessment system focused on maximising learning, we wouldn’t create a Key Stage 3 "No Man’s Land" followed by the high-stakes pressure of GCSE jeopardy. Yet, this is precisely the experience many students face in today’s education system — a period of inconsistent focus in the early years of secondary …
Continue reading GCSE Jeopardy and the Difficulty with Second Chances
Another term, another crisis (a desperately sad one this time) and another set of solutions mooted by opposition parties and policy commentators to the perennial school inspection problem. As usual, it’s easy to jump to quick solutions by starting at “the end”. “The end” is the question of what policy triggers should be attached to …
Continue reading Ofsted inspections are (still) unreliable by design
In my last post, I explained how KS2 maths SATs can encourage students who struggle with maths to chase marks in periphery topics, rather than improve arithmetic understanding and fluency which is necessary for the study of secondary mathematics. In this post, I’m going to reflect on how we might manipulate accountability to do the …
When I wrote about reforming accountability measures a few months ago, I promised I’d follow up by explaining why I don’t support any methods for ranking schools from the very worst to the very best, regardless of whether it is an attainment measure, a value-added or ‘progress’ measure or some sort of voodoo ‘contextual value-added’ …
This is a follow-up to my earlier blog 'Nobody Knows Which Schools Are Good'. I'd recommend reading it first. It is the 21st of May 2024, the biggest night of the year for state-funded schools in England. Tonight is the night when headteachers find out how they will be judged this summer. The great and …
This is the first part of the talk I gave at researchED London 2019. It is almost entirely based on work I completed with Dave Thomson at FFT Education Datalab. All the smart bits are his and the errors are mine! Have you ever read so much and thought about something so hard, that you …
I thought I had nothing to say about Ofsted's proposed use of book scrutiny because there is no research on book scrutiny (I wonder why?!?). As far I am concerned, even if Ofsted's own research could show inspectors can rate books with 100% consistency, it would still be a terrible idea. The effect of the …
Last week, Ed Dorrell wrote a strange editorial in TES called ‘Why attaching excluded pupils' results to their school won't work'. I say it was strange because he failed to address the major impediment to including off-rolled pupils in accountability metrics (i.e. finding them... for that, read on). There is no doubt that there are …
Becky Allen 