Monday, October 26th A collection of insightful views on the Cambridge Primary Review featured in last Friday’s TES letters column. See: http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6025758  http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6025759  http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6025760 and: http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6025761Read More →

  Monday, October 19th It was pleasing to see Education by Numbers mentioned in the final report of the Cambridge Primary Review. I will post more on the contents of the near-600 page review book when I have had time to digest some more of its findings. But I will just note for now how impressive it is to read something which is so careful with the evidence, and so independent in its conclusions.Read More →

Saturday, October 10th The Daily Telegraph carries a preview today of the Cambridge University-based Primary Review’s final report. This is said to call for an end to Sats tests in primary schools.Read More →

  Thursday, October 1st You may have noticed that I had a piece in the Guardian’s education section over the summer about an online discussion among history teachers as to which board offered the “easiest” exams. Teachers were debating with each other, over several years, on the schoolhistory.co.uk website, which version of the modern world history GCSE offered the easiest,  most predictable questions. One teacher, who started the debate, talked at length about the benefits of moving from AQA to OCR. He said of OCR’s exams: “The questions are very straightforward and at least 40% easier!” He said that the coursework requirements were also less exacting for OCR,Read More →