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Tom Sherrington
Towards an anti-racist curriculum: Step 1. Reading
Ever since the wave of discussions about racism that flowed from the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in June and July, I’ve been thinking a lot about what an ‘anti-racist’ curriculum would look like in schools. It’s a huge, important, complex area – one you don’t want to get wrong – so, I’m writing this with … Continue reading
Teachers’ CPD needs are massive: it needs more time and more flexibility
If you make a list of all the areas of knowledge that teachers need to work on, it’s extensive. Overwhelmingly so. Here’s a sketch of that list….. Curriculum General curriculum concepts: coherence, spiralling, core-hinterlandSubject concepts: the heart of the curriculum – the details of what should be taught in the subject; the best way to … Continue reading
A National Baccalaureate for all. There is another way!
During lockdown, when exams were cancelled and remote learning was forced upon us en masse, people started blogging and tweeting about the possibility of doing things differently on a permanent basis. More recently, as part of the exam grades fiasco, people have been discussing the flaws in our exam-dominated system and the accountability machinery that … Continue reading
*Exam Grades 2020*: Technically a fiasco.
It’s been one hell of a week for everyone involved with exams – especially for the thousands of students receiving A levels. Earlier this week I posted my thoughts about the system: Adjusting CAGs: no politics, no disgrace, no injustice. It’s just technical. Well – that headline didn’t turn out so well did it! The blog … Continue reading
Adjusting CAGs: no politics, no disgrace, no injustice. It’s just technical.
(Hindsight note: I was badly wrong! They stuffed up the algorithm big-time and I totally underestimated the legitimate sense of injustice people would feel after CAG adjustments of any kind. But this is what I thought before reality happened) In the wake of the Scottish exam results being published, Nicola Sturgeon’s apology for ‘getting it … Continue reading
The A|D|A|P|T approach to implementing teaching ideas.
When Oliver Caviglioli and I sat down to think about our Teaching WalkThrus project, an early consideration was the problem of “implementation” and the practices that surround it. It’s a common and highly problematic concept in CPD that teachers are meant to receive ideas through training that they then deliver; they implement. This leads to … Continue reading
Our Wonderful @WalkThrus_5 Adventure.
Oliver (Caviglioli) and I have been on quite an adventure in the last year. It’s just over year since Oliver pitched the idea that we could work together on a book. In our first meeting around my kitchen table we hatched a plan for five-step WalkThrus; a repository of the core ideas and strategies that … Continue reading
100+ Lockdown Movie Adventures.
Like lots of people, film and TV have always played a big part in our lives. We have a fabulous Picture House cinema nearby and, pre-lockdown – we would go nearly every weekend; a family ritual. My son is something of a film expert- on his Letterboxd film app, he’s recorded over 1200 movies that … Continue reading
Comfort vs Strategy. (Don’t project anxieties; make things possible)
As a parent I observed early on how often our kids would take their emotional cues from us. I also learned a great deal from my wife about minimizing drama. Whether it was an ‘alarming’ nappy-change moment in the those first weeks of uncertainty, or one of the kids had grazed a knee in the … Continue reading
British History; Black History: Everyone’s history.
One of the positive changes that I see emerging from the recent wave of #BlackLivesMatter protests is that schools are going to be talking a lot about how effective their curriculum is in teaching children about colonialism, empire, slavery and the wider frame of the history of BAME people in Britain. What is an anti-racist … Continue reading
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