Academisation: as straightforward as it sounds?

Writing in the Daily Telegraph on 15th August 2015, David Cameron announced that every school in England should “have the opportunity to become an academy and benefit from the freedoms this...

Policy for an imaginary school: a call to break the spell

The initial motivation for my doctoral thesis emerged from my involvement in a programme for the implementation of Assessment for Learning (AfL) with Chilean teachers in partnership with the...

16-19 Learners: Time to Stop Pigeon-Holing and Start Listening

It’s been a busy few years for the FE sector; in fact, I cannot recall a time of greater change during my professional career. Funding cuts have become commonplace in many areas of education,...

Pakistani boys’ education in Birmingham schools

Pakistani children make-up a quarter of Birmingham’s school population and will soon become its largest pupil ethnic group. A large number of them leave the local schools each year without the...

Learning from the past: History qualifications in the 21st century

History is for human self-knowledge… the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teachers us what man has done and thus what man is. (R.G...

What difference can be made to teacher practice in assessment for learning?

Most people want students to learn as well as possible, while being fiscally and time efficient. The majority of teachers do the best they can. Yet some students and teachers appear to achieve...

Developing the role of the teaching assistant: Centralisation as a way forward?

Highlights from the first 1,000 BERA Blog posts

The teaching assistants (TAs) that I meet are enthusiastic, keen to improve their practice, and valued by the teachers and senior leaders that they work with. However, research on the national...

Framing the geographies of higher education participation: schools, place and national identity

How young people make choices about university, where and what to study has been a question asked by many social researchers, policy-makers and practitioners alike. Research has shown that when...

Fy Ardal/My Neighbourhood: Pupils’ perceptions of place — a pedagogy for living in Wales

For the past three years, the Wales Institute of Social & Economic Research Data & Methods (WISERD) has been conducting research with pupils, teachers and parents in 29 primary and secondary...

EAL Learners’ Mother Tongues: To include or Exclude. A Randomized Comparison of Alternative Approaches

In 1684 Charles Hoole, Latin teacher and celebrated educationalist, published a collection of Latin colloquies, presented side-by-side with English translations. Hoole included the translations so...

‘We’re still here!’ Higher aspirations for young people with life limiting impairments

There are now many more young people living across the UK with life limiting impairments than ever before. An example of this is Duchenne Muscular dystrophy (DMD), a genetic muscle wasting...

An opportunity for change?

the benchmarks of what is deemed acceptable in terms of school improvement are apparently edged up each year Nationally, the speed of change involving education policy is rapid and much of...