Author: Tim Dracup
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. This post traces the early history of Dracups resident in Great Horton, now part of Bradford in Yorkshire, England. It covers a period of just over a century, beginning around 1730 with the arrival of John Dracupp (1688-1767) and his young family and ending as great grandson Samuel Dracup (1793-1866) establishes himself as a…
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. . . . . . This post compares how we do differentiation with how it’s done elsewhere. It explores the tension within education policy between autonomy and pedagogical prescription through the ‘forensic analysis’ of recent ministerial speech content. It flags up the likelihood of further…
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. This post assesses the progress of English Russell Group universities in admitting students from areas with low levels of higher education participation. It reapplies a methodology used previously by the Sutton Trust and the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission (SMCPC) to measure the success of these 20 universities in recruiting young, full-time first…
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. This post: Reviews the most recent statistical evidence of attainment gaps between disadvantaged high attainers and their peers. Questions why pupil premium is having no impact on these excellence gaps and Proposes action to close the gaps by raising attainment, so improving the life chances of these learners. . Introduction I have…
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. This post is mainly about Policy Exchange’s plans for ‘super-selective schools’, as proposed on Total Politics and reprised in Schools Week . Digression It’s been a strange six months. Last July I officially retired the Gifted Phoenix Blog and the @GiftedPhoenix Twitter feed, leaving the former open access and converting the latter into a…
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. This post casts a critical eye over the proposals for widening participation and fair access in the Higher Education Green Paper. It succeeds an earlier post – ‘Can we expect a rocket boost for fair access?’ (October 2015) – that discussed what was known of the Government’s intentions prior to publication. . Publication BIS…
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. This post provides updated information about trends in Key Stage 2 Level 6 performance. . Background Two further datasets have been released since I published a summary of Provisional KS2 Level 6 results for 2015 (August 2015): 2015 static national transition matrices for KS1-2 reading, writing and maths were added to RAISEonline on 29…
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. I wanted to find out how many of our 163 grammar schools give priority to disadvantaged pupils in their admissions arrangements for academic year 2016/17, and by what means. This analysis was prompted by a comment made by Secretary of State Nicky Morgan during the Commons debate on her statement of 19 October 2015. The…
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. This is an exploratory discussion document. I wrote it to try to understand more clearly the current situation. I am open to persuasion and will take on board evidence-based amendments. . The transition from old to new The original policy design for levels-based assessment was simple and elegant. This helped ensure its longevity throughout…
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. Having spent several years bewailing the limited availability of national data on excellence gaps, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that RAISEOnline has just published transition matrices showing the progress made by disadvantaged learners from KS2 to KS4. It is regrettable that this data has been released only at the point when an entirely…
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. Today (20 October 2015) saw the publication of the latest DfE destinations data. It was contained in SFR40/2015: Provisional destinations of key stage 4 and key stage 5 students in state-funded institutions, 2013/14. I will not repeat again the detailed description of this data or the provisos attached. The essential information is set out…
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. This week’s media debate about the value of grammar schools as instruments of social mobility has been profoundly depressing. For the record, all the research evidence shows that the historical impact of selective education on social mobility has been negligible. The proportion of disadvantaged learners currently admitted to grammar schools remains desperately low: As…
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. This post considers whether the forthcoming Higher Education Green Paper will propose radical reform to bring about fair access to universities. . The runes first written The Conservative Government aspires to widen participation and improve fair access. There was no explicit commitment in the Conservative election manifesto but, one week before the May 2015…
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. This post draws together what we know about Nathaniel Dracup (1728-1798), the most celebrated of the early Dracups in England. My previous genealogical post, ‘The Earliest Dracups’, discusses the children of George Dracoppe, our first known ancestor. His youngest son, John (1596-1673) also called his eldest son John (1627-74). The latter’s second wife, Sarah…
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I am increasingly concerned about NCETM’s notion that ‘stretch and challenge’ should always involve studying the same material in greater depth. This is becoming increasingly pervasive and resulting in widespread confusion, amongst teachers as well as parents. For example see this Mumsnet thread and this sample of recent Tweets . Has anyone got anything official…
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Note: This is an updated version of a post that first appeared on 7 September 2015. It includes data published by Exeter Mathematics School in response to the original version, as well as answers to some follow-up questions I posed on Twitter. . My attention was drawn to a recent Spectator article by Alison…
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We spent a fortnight in Austria in late July and early August 2015, dividing our stay between the predominantly rural Filzmoos and the more urban Zell am See, both located in the state of Salzburg. They were very different. In Filzmoos tourism was low key and visitors were almost exclusively European. Only on our…
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My attention was drawn to a recent Spectator article by Alison Wolf ‘What I’ve learned helping to found a specialist free school’ Kings specialist maths school sounds fantastic. Question arising is why has this model failed to take off? https://t.co/GsXxDkH1TV — Rachel Gooch (@SchoolDuggery) September 4, 2015 In answering that, twitter really misses…
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