Terry Pearson

Children with disadvantage often don’t do as well as others because, overall, they have had fewer resources than those who are not disadvantaged. Schools are expected to provide additional resources to those children and indeed there is a PP payment to fund these extra resources. However, schools that serve such communities often have to spend considerable additional (to PP) resources over and above in the form of time, effort and emotional toil. And the end outcome will still be, overall, insufficient due to a myriad of factors - not least that it is impossible for schools to compete with parents who lavishly resource their children from birth to work and beyond to help them achieve. The way to help schools is to provide additional resources rather than pressure staff in them to spend more of their own personal time, effort and emotional toil over and above those whose schools serve more advantaged communities. If you do exert that pressure using gaslighting (‘you have low expectations’), many amazing and hard working staff will leave our wonderful profession or such schools and seek a fairer contractual relationship.

I’m not sure how the new Ofsted framework is raising standards. It’s seems to be regurgitating the same systemic issues - the more disadvantaged the school, the more likely Ofsted will highlight this, and exacerbate the problem. schoolsweek.co.uk/fury-as-ofsted…

Prof Colin Richards offers a response to the profession's reaction to the Chief Inspector's speech at the ASCL conference last week.THE CHIEF INSPECTOR’S TIRED RHETORIC IS NOT CONVINCING share.google/jwXGH8hnoeImD7…

@clinjar Looks like we should all refrain from watching smart TVs within four hours of going to bed.

Here's a link to the full study: doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1…

Harvard researchers had 12 people read on an iPad for 4 hours before bed. For 5 nights straight. Then they measured what happened to their brain chemistry. Here's what screens before bed are really doing to your body:

@FrankWNorris It is “Inspection by numbers.” Deconstructing the discourse of school accountability so that the quality of a school becomes narrowly defined by numbers, “improvement” can only be demonstrated by increases in these numbers and the pedagogical expertise of inspectors is sidelined.

And revisit all inspection outcomes under the new Fwk?

@cerysturner7 It is “Inspection by numbers.” Deconstructing the discourse of school accountability so that the quality of a school becomes narrowly defined by numbers, “improvement” can only be demonstrated by increases in these numbers and the pedagogical expertise of inspectors is sidelined.

I analysed almost 500 inspections to see if schools with disadvantaged intakes are performing worse on pupil outcomes. The findings show that it's disproportionate. Heads say it's demoralising as they urge Ofsted not to confuse achievement & attainment. tes.com/magazine/news/…

@ChrisHillidge @Samstricko181 Yes. Is Education Week an American publication?

@Samstricko181 The 'gotten' on the graphic is making my eye twitch.

Sadly this is a growing issue for schools. Behaviour needs to be taken seriously. The narrative that suspensions should be low and declining is unhelpful & the use of RJ without sanctions doesn’t help…

@Samstricko181 An interesting piece on the link below: schoolsweek.co.uk/exclusions-and…

@PaulGarvey4 @Ofstednews If/when Ofsted bring similar schools into the mix - I'd like to see that on the charts too. Will take a bit of extra training but will be worth it to provide more nuanced understanding. My article in SW explains why I prefer similar schools to CVA, but both serve the same aim.

While most secondary schools require students to wear blazers, nearly half of teachers would prefer young people to wear ‘joggers and a polo’ or no uniform, exclusive polling reveals tes.com/magazine/news/…

@SwailesRuth @butlerd101 What frustrates me most about the latest framework is that the issues which are being highlighted are not ones that couldn’t have been seen at the design stage. For example, if more thought and care had been applied when developing the toolkit these issues could have been avoided

@butlerd101 It's also making some people feel like there's no point in even trying to achieve expected standard, because it's just impossible in the circumstances, they can't go back in time and change data from before they were even working in the school.

Recently I've been speaking to lots of leaders who have taken on schools that need to improve, and who have moved mountains in a short period of time, but who are resigned to the fact that no matter how much they do, their next inspection report will have "orange dots" no matter

I don’t think so! No headteacher should enable Ofsted whilst they refuse to listen to the profession. No matter how nice & understanding an inspector is they are bound by an inflexible framework that damns truly inclusive schools in schools that face multiple challenges.

Parents’ perspectives on special education in England. New Open Access study on the link below: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

@HargreavesBC @williamdoylenyc @DianeRavitch Does that include textbook zealots too?

Beware all zealots - digital & anti-digital. We overdid the urging. Now, comes the purging. A responsible curriculum uses a range of technologies - screens, textbooks, literature, original sources for diverse learners. spectator.com/article/textbo… @williamdoylenyc @DianeRavitch

@KateJones_teach Just be aware of studies/meta-analyses that proclaim effect sizes are a reliable/valid indicator of the effectiveness of interventions in education: tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

Professors John Hattie & Gregory Donoghue published ‘A Meta-Analysis of Ten Learning Techniques’ (2021), which replicated the findings of Dunlosky et al. (2013). Their conclusion stated: “The most effective techniques are Distributed Practice & Practice Testing.” I write about retrieval practice & spaced practice in the article below for @EvidenceInEdu evidencebased.education/resource/retri…

If you have an interest in how Ofsted is (not)improving inspection practice, this is an informative piece. It's not a particularly short read, but it is well worth putting aside the few minutes it requires.

The last paragraph really does describe in a nutshell the effect of Ofsted's inspection system.

Precisely this!

I’m concerned that some HTs will now be railroaded into becoming inspectors. Inspection remains a high-stakes process & should not be seen as a form of CPD. If we had a system based on true peer review, things would be different-but we are stuck with an awful framework.