Simon Baddeley

As you may know, I was hacked last week and lost access to the @SimBadd64 account. Can I ask you to please block that account and follow me here instead? Reposts appreciated.

@greeborunner Eek. I went to a Minecraft event as a guest of Microsoft with this guy back in the day. *Shudder*

Wow! This was someone I knew on this platform

We are approaching order cut off date in many trusts. Make sure you get your Purchase Orders to us so you can hit the ground running in September. literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/pric…

Surely the tickets will stay the same price and the park owners will pocket a tidy bonus.

Honestly, I thought the DfE would have dropped the TOWIE-style PR after the universal condemnation, but instead they doubled down. What makes it so problematic is how clearly out of touch it is with the reality on the ground. Schools are facing unprecedented levels of restructures and redundancies. There is a genuine crisis in education, driven by years of austerity and chronic underfunding, yet the DfE appears completely tone deaf to it. The SEND White Paper promised £400 million through the Inclusive Mainstream Schools Fund, but in practice that works out at roughly half a teaching assistant per primary school. That is nowhere near enough for a teacher managing a class of 31+ pupils, often without any TA support, to deliver genuine inclusion. And the reality is that much of this funding will simply be absorbed into plugging wider budget gaps elsewhere. At the same time, an unfunded pay award is projected to leave mainstream schools facing an £870 million shortfall. Instead of treating the profession and the public with respect - publishing the long-overdue STRB report and setting out a serious plan for sustainable school funding - we are getting staged Q&As with reality TV personalities. It is hard not to see that as a profound misreading of the mood across the education sector.

No @bphillipsonMP I don't object to this because I'm snobbish, I object because I am aspirational for my students. I don't want them to think their academic outcomes are irrelevant because there is a vocational safety net. I want them to aspire to reach for the best they can be.

@MaryMyatt Reading develops abstract thought - it also has an impact across the curriculum. It builds knowledge alongside words... and in the end, children with bigger vocabularies are more likely to do well. All of this from the start. Read to and with children a huge amount.

The sale and consumption of alcohol should be banned from Westminster with zero tolerance for being under the influence in chambers. It is absolutely abhorrent that our elected representatives can go drinking at lunchtime and vote to take the country to war by the afternoon.

Knowledge of the world around them is one of the best ways to prepare young people for adult life. It underpins comprehension and arms against misinformation. Don't leave knowledge acquisition to chance. How do your students start their day? literacyengine.co.uk

The message "It doesn't matter how poorly you do in a subject because there's always vocational routes" is just horrible and lowers the expectations of the already disadvantaged. This campaign is just a car crash.

The utter contempt for knowledge the DfE is demonstrating here is repulsive & undermining the efforts of schools/teachers across the country. Shame on you.

Didn't take long for someone to turn that DfE video into a parody one.... facebook.com/watch/?v=26424…

@RachelOrr Just seen it. I have no words.

@SimBadd18 Have you seen the next one with sparkly stars and maths emojis?

Well. The DfE are proving that they are brilliant at uniting the profession here.

BP: OK team. How did last night's video go down? Good reception? DfE: Erm... mixed responses... BP: Right so teachers loved it then. OK hit them with the silly old maths one. Kids will love that. DfE: Brilliant boss. Let's do it.

Can you send her round to hold a bucket under this corridor leak for us? Cheers 👍

I asked 10 leaders if reading aloud counts as 'real learning'. Seven hesitated. Three said yes, with caveats. That hesitation is the problem. 🧵

Please stop wasting money! You've already rinsed £18m and counting down the drain on the massively ineffective Year of Reading. Just stop this nonsense.

@mazst @greg_ashman My boundary is usually Sheffield. I'm not sure how it would turn out calling someone from Barnsley a Southerner... 😱

@SimBadd18 @greg_ashman To be fair I consider anything below York to be southern

Does the existence of Birmingham disprove the idea that there is any such thing as The North? Is North versus South a false binary?

Ouch. There will be many a wince at the sting of truth in this jest.