Category: Archive
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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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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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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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SFR30/2015 ‘National curriculum assessments at key stage 2 in England, 2015 (provisional)’ was published on 27 August 2015. This is the final year of operation for separate level 6 tests. From 2016 there will be single tests for all KS2 learners capable of taking them. Headline percentages were unchanged from 2014, with 9% of entries…
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I’ve always followed athletics closely, probably because it’s the only sport for which I’ve ever willingly trained, reaching the dizzy heights of second place in the under 15 400 metres at the 1974 St Albans and District School Sports. But, like many others, I’ve become increasingly cynical about the capacity of the sport to…
Eponymous 