“Building bridges across the chaos… because we are standing on the edge”
We feel closer to the edge than ever before; there are bright spots in the education system but overall it feels stressed, appears fractured and lacks a cohesive national narrative. Insufficient funding is affecting provision for pupils and limiting teachers’ salaries; excessive invalid accountability is creating perverse incentives and fear leading to poor short term decision-making plus there is a woeful lack of retention and recruitment. Dr. Mary Bousted wrote a brilliant article for SecEd that you can read here.
When it comes to feedback, there has been lots of blogs about feedback to pupils – written and verbal and in lesson responsive teaching. There have been fewer about how feedback can help improve an aspect of a teacher’s classroom practice in terms of their subject pedagogical knowledge.
If medicine was run like education there would be many more patients who wouldn’t survive the random, un-evidenced and poorly researched treatments given. I can look back on a career of maximum effort, huge expenditure of energy, long hours and too little progress. Continue reading