A list of do’s and don’ts — Skype is not the solution If primary schools are to close down (which looks increasingly likely), the question of what to do will be weighing heavily on a lot of leaders’ minds. I am very concerned about the amount of guff I have read online about deploying Skype and other such tools to carry on…

Part 1: The Problem — The Fundamental Question Why are almost a quarter of children unable to write effectively when they leave primary school? It’s worth noting that this ‘quarter’ could well be much more than that, given that writing is teacher-assessed and overwhelmingly not moderated (and in the 25% of cases where it is moderated, the evidence…

Introducing the £1m Kingsnorth Prize 2020 — Ok, let me be completely transparent from the outset: There is no denying it: I am, in my current thinking, heavily prejudiced against reading comprehension strategies (RCS) when it comes to improving children’s long-term reading comprehension. I’ve written extensively about this prejudice both here and here. While I am placing…

Here’s a 2 minute summary of this post, for those in a hurry: — Here’s a 2 minute summary of this post, for those in a hurry: Don’t be fooled by the backslapping: the country’s GCSE results are pretty terrible (and no: warm-strict, knowledge-rich schools don’t seem to be doing much better). After 12 years of school, 75% of pupils got 60–100% of their…

Walk away from the madness —  you’ll never look back. — Some of you might have seen me tweet recently about a friend who called me in tears, on the verge of quitting teaching forever. In this short blogpost, I want to address one of the more pernicious aspects of her workload and appeal to the headteachers and assessment leads who…

This is part two of my ‘Small is Beautiful’ series on the need to radically reduce the primary curriculum to ensure fluency in the core… — This is part two of my ‘Small is Beautiful’ series on the need to radically reduce the primary curriculum to ensure fluency in the core areas of reading, writing and maths. In part one, I re-wrote the maths curriculum. It can be found here (along with a 60-second summary of…

“Whenever something is wrong, something is too big.” Leopold Kohr, The Breakdown of Nations — “Whenever something is wrong, something is too big.” Leopold Kohr, The Breakdown of Nations “Any intelligent fool can invent further complications, but it takes a genius to retain, or recapture, simplicity.” ― Ernst F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful Here’s a 60-second summary of this post, for those in a hurry:

The best that has been thought, said and…grown? — I’ve learned a lot from traditionalist teachers: the effectiveness of direct instruction, the relevance of cognitive science and the importance of knowledge. These are the mainstays of my teaching practice, and I’ve always liked one of the more common traditionalist refrains — that we should focus on teaching the ‘best…