Category Archives: Accountability

Urgent action on Ofsted

Posted on February 17, 2019 by

Ofsted are desperately trying to rebrand themselves, including the claim that they will rely less on test data and more on intelligent engagement with the school’s curriculum. There are good reasons to be sceptical about this, given the hit-and-run nature … Continue reading →

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Ofsted – a fairer future?

Posted on February 3, 2019 by

Rumours are circulating that schools in poor areas will stand a better chance of getting a good Ofsted grade, but where is this coming from? There are no such promises in the new draft Inspection Framework. In fact, page 11 shows … Continue reading →

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Progress 8 – a biased and misleading measure

Posted on January 25, 2019 by

Progress 8 was supposed to be a fair measure of secondary school ‘effectiveness’. New research confirms that it is seriously biased against schools with more disadvantaged pupils. It is vital to expose this injustice because scoring ‘well below average’ on Progress … Continue reading →

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Phonics test – Nick Gibb fails again

Posted on September 27, 2018 by

Schools minister Nick Gibb is crowing, once again, that thousands more children are ‘on track to become fluent readers’. Improved pass rates in the Phonics test show no such thing. “163,000 more 6-year-olds are on track to become fluent readers … Continue reading →

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Challenging the tyranny of the Phonics Check

Posted on July 9, 2018 by

It is hard to compete with Margaret Clark’s tenacity in challenging the deeply flawed Phonics Screening Check along with  schools minister Nick Gibb’s dogmatic support of Synthetic Phonics. After editing two books in a single year, she has just completed a … Continue reading →

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“Pull yourself together, child!”

Posted on May 13, 2018 by

England is in the middle of a mental health crisis for young people, and a major cause is the way in which they are being put under pressure to achieve. It happens at university: 146 students killed themselves in 2016 … Continue reading →

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Primary school tests: what can parents do?

Posted on May 1, 2018 by

We recently published information about Key Stage 2 SATs in a blog post called Protecting children from primary school tests. It was based on the official instructions sent to headteachers by the Standards and Testing Agency, known as the Assessment and … Continue reading →

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