Bubble, toil and trouble: School leadership as Shakespearean tragedy in and after Covid-19

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the witches exacerbate divisions, push ambition through brute force, hierarchy and power; their interventions end in the wicked destruction of leadership potential and...

‘The significant return to normality’: Back to school in England, but who is missing?

As part of the gradual lifting of lockdown measures in England, following the ‘second wave’ of the Covid-19 pandemic here, schools reopen wholesale today, 8 March 2021. For many parents and...

Children’s agency: What is it, and what should be done?

'Oh my God. The Principal came in today and chose a child to read. I knew what I had to do: I knew I had to remind the child to say "p. 35 chapter 4"; I had to remind the child to hold the book in...

What ‘building back better’ really means for our children: Anne Longfield’s final speech as the children’s commissioner for England

On February 17 2021, Anne Longfield OBE gave her final speech as the children’s commissioner for England. Her words were a clarion cry for the UK’s children, who for the past 12 months have...

BERA Research Commission 2021/22 – A teacher and youth co-created manifesto for Education for Environmental Sustainability (EfES) from the four jurisdictions of the UK

The primary objective of this commission was to co-create a manifesto for Education for Environmental Sustainability (EfES) in secondary education in the UK.  To achieve this, the commission...

Transforming the secondary curriculum

The questions of how to design and implement secondary curricula are critical and current ones in education. Of major concern is the narrowing of the curriculum and the lack of an inclusive...

Describing young people’s use of digital technology

Scarcely a month goes by without something in the media about young people’s use of digital technology. This is often framed in negative terms related to concerns about excessive ‘screen...

Silver linings: Lockdown legacies

In my November 2020 BERA Blog, ‘Reading during lockdown: Supporting vulnerable learners’, I reported on the beginnings of a small-scale research project (funded by BERA) to explore the impact...

The BERA Blog: Highlights of 2020

BERA Blog end of year highlights

A warm and wintery ‘welcome’ to all our readers, wherever you may be. This time last year I wished all of you a seasonal ‘yo-ho-ho’, blissfully unaware of how 2020 would play out. Today,...

Exploring early years degrees and graduate employment outcomes

Degree-qualified practitioners contribute to the quality of early years education and improve children’s outcomes. However, little is known about the content and structure of early years...

Do private schools make a difference to mental health?

Parents send their children to private schools for a range of reasons, and we know that British private schools are successful in terms of academic attainment and that their alumni tend to go on...

The good, the bad and the ugly in higher education: Is there any hope for students?

It is an interesting time to be a student. Not a single day passes without newspaper and social media headlines echoing student concerns about the (mis)handling of the Covid-19 crisis on campuses,...