LeadingLearner

Apprentices or Graduates? #ThursdayThunk

I spent Sunday afternoon listening to Justine Greening’s speech at the Conservative Party Conference; I was there on Headteachers’ Roundtable business.  If apprentice routes to employment are a must for a number of our students than should it also be a route for some of our teachers? Continue reading →

Game Changers: Reading, Retrieval and Re-induction

In the middle of Bradford with a large number of pupils from disadvantaged background; receiving its first set of GCSE results in Summer 2017 you find Dixons Trinity Academy.  A Progress 8 score of over +1.0, including for disadvantaged pupils; 70% attaining English and Mathematics at grade 5+ and a wonderfully warm and humane culture, it’s an academy getting a lot of things right. Continue reading →

Breaking the Underachievement Cycle #Thursday Thunk

Most of my week has been spent in departmental self-evaluation meetings; most of the month in meetings, with various people, discussing the summer’s results and how we intend to move forward.  Our Progress 8 is down this year; think it will bounce back next; so over three years it will be pretty much spot on zero.

Continue reading →