Reform to GCSE is nothing new. Educators have been calling for changes for some time but the pandemic has not only increased the desire to look at things in a new light but also shown how quickly changes can happen.
For Sarah Fletcher, High Mistress of St Paul's Girls' School in London, GCSEs have simply not kept up with the pace of change in the last thirty years. "I think the fundamental problem is that the world is now very different to the one that existed back in the 1980s."
Read MoreAs well as institutional rankings, The Sunday Times and The Times have identified the centres of excellence within each of 67 subject areas. The subject rankings are based on student opinion on teaching quality and their wider university experiences, combined with the outcomes of the 2014 research assessments, graduate job prospects and course entry standards.
Read MoreNB Parents can nominate children. Please see the rules at the bottom of this page.
The Maths Masterclass Tutorials are an intense programme of FREE online Maths tuition designed to stretch and challenge the very best young mathematicians
Following the huge success of our pilot in May, we are now scaling up to a year-long FREE programme. The Maths Masterclass Tutorials programme is delivered by TalentEd in partnership with best-selling author Dr. Simon Singh.
Read More‘Some form of examination’ needed for students to feel system is fair, Roger Taylor says.
Roger Taylor has said it was a "fundamental mistake" to believe the public would get behind this year's grading system.
Read More“Did you know that a long, long time ago, long before there was even pizza in Chicago, we were known for something else—dragons?”
The students laugh, knowing it’s not true, but they lean forward to hear more.
“See, here in Chicago we had the most beautiful dragons that anyone had ever seen. Dragons that had colors that people couldn’t even imagine. If you were stealthy enough and watched over by the lake, you could have seen dragons of the deepest blues, whose scales changed colors with the seasons. Over in Grant Park, you might spot dragons with scales in jewel-toned greens hiding in the trees, and white winter dragons that shimmered in the coldest weather. But then everything changed.”
Read MoreLatin and the works of Sophocles are no longer the preserve of public schools thanks to a project that links professors with underprivileged teenagers.
An initiative between King’s College London (KCL) and Newham Sixth Form College in east London offering lessons in Classics to bright sixth-form pupils is now in its second year.
Read MoreOften, gifted kids are referred to as being bright. We want to be careful when labeling them with this because it is not always accurate.
There are a few clear distinctions between the two. For instance, the bright child is a hard worker, while the gifted child tests well. That does not mean that all gifted children do not work hard, but what it does mean is that some gifted children do not have to work hard in order to achieve good grades. As a result, some of these gifted children have learned not how to work hard, but how to hardly work. And who can blame them?
Read MoreOur sense of the world and our place in it expands by the hour. This 21st-century jungle is incomprehensible in its complexity and fullness; the Earth is saturated with people and information. Just think about how much stuff is out there, from scientific and medical discoveries, books written, works of art created, the 500 recordings of Elgar’s Cello Concerto – the inordinate documentations of our collective pasts, and the continuous stream of current inventions is overwhelming.
We also have so many things in every shape, size, colour and form conceivable, and for every purpose imaginable. And many of these things are designed not to last. Mobile phones are downgraded through a process called “upgrading” – the companies that do it have admitted it!
But what about a thing that does last and is intended to? Do we understand the weight or value of a timeless thing? “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge, where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” wrote TS Eliot in 1934. If he felt that then, I wonder what he would be saying about us now.
Read MoreWhat happens when you bring together high-school students, teachers, and technology entrepreneurs to experiment with new ideas for learning? Christoph Wittmer talks about shaping the future of education with innovation.
Read MoreThanks to the information revolution, a stunning 90% of the data created by humanity has been generated in just the past two years.
Yet the math taught in U.S. schools hasn’t materially changed since Sputnik was sent into orbit in the late 1950s. Our high school students are taught algebra, geometry, a second year of algebra, and calculus (for the most advanced students) because Eisenhower-era policymakers believed this curriculum would produce the best rocket scientists to work on projects during the Cold War.
Read MoreEver tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. But try to succeed 85 per cent of the time.
Scientists have discovered that there is a perfect amount of failure, suggesting that those who get the answers wrong 15 per cent of the time while studying have found the optimum difficulty level to stimulate fast learning.
Researchers said that a success rate of 85 per cent, or getting about six of every seven questions or challenges right, was the “sweet spot” for fast learning, explaining that anything above this is too easy and anything below is too difficult.
Read MoreParents should avoid leaving blanks on their children’s school application forms since they risk being assigned to the least popular school in the area, according to experts.
Calling for an overhaul to simplify the system, the Good Schools Guide said parents were forced to conduct labour-intensive research and fill in reams of paperwork during a process that “no doubt favours certain sections of society”.
It notes that there is significant variation in school admission policies, with individual schools demanding different information and using different criteria for admitting pupils. The Local Government Association (LGA) has called for a review to make the system more inclusive.
Read MoreBritish schools are being offered a programme for morning assemblies that are entirely secular and free of religion for the first time.
All state schools in the UK are currently required to provide an act of daily worship of a “broadly Christian character” under the 1944 Education Act.
But Humanists UK, the campaign group for secularism and non-religious belief, has drawn up an alternative model that takes God out of daily school assemblies, focusing instead on respect for the individual, the environment and justice for the developing world.
Read MoreIn a Victorian Gothic church behind Harrods in west London, a group of young people from troubled backgrounds have gathered to rehearse a play about school.
Excluded is a new production, set in a turbulent GCSE class in a Londonsecondary school in 2019, that attempts to shine a light on the problems faced by vulnerable young people within the education system.
The content of the play is close to home. At an early workshop exploring the issues, it emerged that all but two of the young performers had been excluded from school. Some are care leavers, some have mental health problems, others have been young offenders. Many have been affected by the consequences of knife crime, which they link to the increasing number of exclusions.
Read MoreAnother year, another wave of students trampling across autumn leaves, making their way to their first lectures heady with a cocktail of excitement, apprehension and a nasty hangover. But while every year brings new faces, one feature of the academic landscape remains ever-present: the huge, imposing blackboards.
Now photographer Jessica Wynne, a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, has thrown a spotlight on this workhorse of academic endeavour, travelling across the US and beyond to capture the blackboards of mathematicians.
Read MoreDr Anne-Marie Imafidon - Co-founder of STEMettes
Dr Dayo Olukoshi OBE - Executive principal, Brampton Manor
Sally-Anne Huang - Headmistress, James Allen’s Girls’ School
Andrew Ashe - CEO of onebillion
Emma Russo - Science teacher, South Hampstead High School
James Handscombe - Principal, Harris Westminster Sixth Form
Amanda Spielman - Chief inspector, Ofsted
Tim Barber - Head teacher, Hugh Myddelton Primary School
Tara Baig - Head teacher, Miles Coverdale Primary
Emma Stevens - Music teacher, Norbury Manor Business & Enterprise College
Mike Sheridan - Ofsted’s London director
David Benson - Head teacher, Kensington Aldridge Academy
Mouhssin Ismail - Head teacher, Newham Collegiate Sixth Form
Cheryl Giovannoni - Chief executive, Girls’ Day School Trust
Lady Cobham - Director, The 5% Club
Kimberley Hickman - PTA member, Goose Green Primary School
Sir Daniel Moynihan - Chief executive, Harris Federation
Sir Peter Lampl - Founder and chairman, Sutton Trust
Sara Williams - Chair of Pan London Admissions Board
George Lamb - Grow, founder | NEW
The handwriting of young children improves significantly when they are required to teach robots that seem to be struggling with the same difficulties, scientists say.
Researchers programmed a small humanoid robot to help under-nines to overcome the most common errors, including where parts of the letter appear out of scale and where the letter appears to be rotated at the wrong angle.
Read MoreAs a late spring child myself, I completely agree with this. For certain 11+ school exams, month of birth is taken into consideration. I see many summer born children who, in an ideal world, should be allowed to go back a year if requested by their parents.
Read MoreMost schools have a class clown, but one headteacher is encouraging more pupils to play the fool.
Stand-up comedy lessons have been introduced at Sheffield Girls’ School to teach sixth-formers how to deal with hecklers and silence and could help girls to cope with job interviews, negotiate at work and give them the confidence to ask for a pay rise.
The comedy club is an alternative to debating societies, developing similar skills among those put off by formal rhetoric and argument.
Read MoreSchool Cuts coalition warns of real-terms cuts despite government’s cash injection
Four in five state schools in England will be financially worse off next year than they were in 2015 despite promises by Boris Johnson’s government of a multibillion-pound funding boost, according to research by teachers’ unions.
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