Thursday, December 10th 2009 I’ve not done this before, but I’m posting an exclusive news story here. In the New Year, I intend to have a personal website/blog not directly related to the book. This might feature some articles which I’ve not had published. In the meantime, this seemed the best place for the story below. Warwick Mansell Teachers preparing to mark next year’s Sats exams for 11-year-olds have been banned from speaking to the media or discussing any problems with the tests in online discussion forums. Contracts sent this week to markers by the test marking firm Edexcel include a gagging clause forbidding themRead More →

Wednesday, December 2nd I woke up the other morning, sadly enough, thinking about school accountability. Maybe I need to get away… No, seriously, I was just having a think about the repercussions of some documents I came across which had been produced by the communications team at Ofsted, and about which I wrote an article for the TES on Friday. The piece made the point that much of the inspectorate’s effort – or at least that of its communications team – is spent defending and trying to promote Ofsted’s reputation. To judge from these papers, the inspectorate tends to view public announcements on the stateRead More →