The Skills for Jobs white paper: A chance to provide ‘flexibility’

The UK government’s Skills for Jobs white paper is clearly an attempt to realign post-16 education around the needs of employers. It presents a challenge for higher education to develop an...

Teacher micropopulism on social media

When you invest years in thinking about what populism is and how it manifests on social media, it is easy to forget that, for many, ‘populism’ is seen as a negative term, and that individuals...

The impact of school closures on pupils with English as an additional language

Covid-19, education and educational research

Pupils with English as an additional language (EAL) attract a great deal of interest among policymakers, school leaders and teachers, yet there are relatively few studies that have examined EAL...

The Covid-19 pandemic and the early years workforce

Covid-19, education and educational research

The evidence is clear that motivated, knowledgeable and experienced staff are key to supporting children’s development in early years settings (see for example Melhuish, Ereky-Stevens, &...

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

Covid-19, education and educational research

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?

Covid-19, education and educational research

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

Covid-19, education and educational research

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

Covid-19, education and educational research

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...