We broadly welcome the recommendations of the Curriculum and Assessment Review, in particular citing CEPEO’s briefing note on the value of GCSEs (econpapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucl:ce...) and...

More large-scale survey evidence that many students are becoming disengaged from education when they enter secondary school. This time from collaborators of mine at @liftschools.org www.liftschools.org/ks3-engagement

Elon Musk's involvement in politics really hurt Tesla sales. "Without the Musk partisan effect, Tesla sales between October 2022 and April 2025 would have been 67-83% higher, equivalent to 1-1.26 million more vehicles."

Finally read the paper and it's worth the buzz. mRNA vaccines saved 20 million lives in a global pandemic and the technology is opening up new avenues for the treatment of deadly cancers. This is really one of the most impactful scientific developments of our time. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

To be clear: deportations to increase cultural homogeneity is the text book definition of ethnic cleansing. Demands that come even close to this are so far outside any democratic norm and the rule of law. What has happened to a country when this is not condemned in the strongest possible terms?

Very sensible. Indeed it would be mad if the government didn’t do it the way Daisy proposes.

Joel Mokyr won the Nobel prize today Here is what I think he can teach us about improving schools: samsims.education/2022/06/08/e...

All teacher training ultimately aims to support transfer of learning to new and varied classroom situations. In this (recently published) paper we provide some of the first experimental evidence on how teacher educators can help achieve this goal: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Works in Progress is now available as a print magazine. I think it's the most beautiful and readable magazine I've ever seen. Subscribe today for $100/£75 to receive six beautiful, 120-page issues a year. worksinprogress.co/print

How can democrats justify continuing to fund an authoritarian takeover of the federal government? open.spotify.com/episode/5kpn...

Radical right accommodation really does not work. New paper out with this exceptionally talented team @katharinalawall.bsky.social @robjohns75.bsky.social @drjennings.bsky.social @sarahobolt.bsky.social @zachdickson.bsky.social @danjdevine.bsky.social & @jack-bailey.co.uk doi.org/10.31235/osf...

A huge moment -- Melvyn Bragg steps down from In Our Time after over a quarter of a century. What a programme and what a legacy! Just a model for how to make great, clever, engaging radio, and a twenty-seven-year experiment that proves there's a huge global audience for smart, scholarly programming.

Are you interested in teacher coaching, simulation, transfer of training? Join us at 11am (online) for this talk on Thursday. Sign up using the link below: ucl.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Across subjects and grades (6th-college) prequestions improve learning--new evidence from real classrooms (open) psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

The @theeef.bsky.social recommends schools use teaching assistants (TAs) to deliver evidence-based interventions This research, led by my colleague Briony Banks, sets out the options and provides advice for school leaders on how to choose between them www.ambition.org.uk/teaching-ass...

Teachers who made more/better use of classroom routines had students with measurably higher (indicators of) attention in their lesson www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Climate models since the 1970s nailed it—most predicted global warming almost exactly as it happened.

New meta-analysis of expertise reversal effect: lower prior knowledge learn more from higher instructional guidance; higher prior knowledge learn less Differences in effects of guidance for low-high knowledge groups (60 studies) supports theory: Tetzlaff et al www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I am generally a big fan of the BBC - but this is a truly terrible 'both sides' *push notification* to send out to people in this country about this news event

How should we train new teachers? New research from @drsamsims.bsky.social suggests breaking teaching sequences into parts, then recomposing them in new contexts, helps teachers adapt better than learning whole sequences from the start. Read more here: 👇 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Hi Bluesky 👋🏻 Is there anyone out there who a) knows how to write basic C++ scripts and b) might be interested in joining a research project looking at behaviour/attention in the classroom? Estimated two days of work in total. You would be a coauthor on the paper. Please do get in touch!

“Flooding the zone” is designed to overwhelm the ability of traditional media and citizens to keep track of the intentional slide into authoritarianism. This website uses data to track it all:

🧵Introducing the Trump Action Tracker website! Today I’m launching www.trumpactiontracker.info - a live, searchable list of authoritarian‑style actions from Trump’s second term (over 740 actions so far). 1/14

Last time I will share one of these quotes for Unlocking Teacher Development. I've been blown away by the support and unexpected success of my little self-published book. Here's what a proper smart person who thinks about teacher development as a job thinks: Thanks @drsamsims.bsky.social

This paper by Ludewig et al shows that quite a lot of the 2016-2021 PIRLs country score changes can be accounted for by changes in the home learning environment and duration of school closures during the pandemic www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We often have to judge who is knowledgeable—precisely when we are not. Can humans really do that? Our new paper in Psychological Science shows that, surprisingly, we can. drive.google.com/file/d/1b15E...

Roll up, roll up! This will be a fascinating talk. And there’s wine and discussion afterwards

Strong FT editorial on much of the world’s shameful silence on Gaza, even as Netanyahu threatens to escalate Israel’s offensive. on.ft.com/433Mp02

Interesting proposals for (affordable) reforms of teacher professional development in England from @ippr.bsky.social and @ambitioninstitute.bsky.social 👀 ippr-org.files.svdcdn.com/production/D...

Primary educators 👋🏻 I am interviewing teachers for a research project aimed at understanding how teachers learn from each other in the workplace. But my sample is currently very secondary heavy Could you (please!) spare me an hour of your time this week or next? It will be interesting, I promise!

Tens of millions of pounds for a ditch. The UK planning system is a farce.

I had been doubtful that we were going to have a "this is the crisis moment" with Trump, as opposed to "everything about this is a destructive catastrophe." But the Abrego Garcia case is the crisis moment. 1/

🔥

You'd never know it from some media and politicians but "The UK is among the countries with the least anti-immigration views in Europe. While in 2002-03 only 27% of the public felt immigration had a positive impact on the economy, this jumped to 66% in 2023-24." theconversation.com/what-britons...

Seriously disturbing. “"We need Greenland for international safety and security. We need it. We have to have it," Trump told podcaster Vince Coglianese. "I hate to put it that way, but we're going to have to have it."” www.france24.com/en/live-news...

Outstanding www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

I wrote about how Trump is destroying American democracy, along with eight crucial lessons about how to counteract it, drawing on my 14 years of studying brave pro-democracy opposition movements in authoritarian regimes across the globe. We’re in serious trouble, but there’s still hope.

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy on Mahmoud Khalil.

America second

"According to the Polity Project, an organization that ranks and categorizes governments worldwide, the U.S. government is classified as a “non-democracy” as of February 2025, a downgrade from its previous status as a democracy." ash.harvard.edu/articles/fro...

🚨I promised I'd say more on the Royal Society and Elon Musk, so here it is. 🚨 I've resigned my position as Associate Editor at Royal Society's journal Open Science in protest at their lack of action over Elon Musk. My op-ed in @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Garry Kasparov is right, I’m afraid: they are breaking everything so quickly even though it’s unpopular, because they never expect to face real elections again. www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

Why do teachers in some schools keep getting better for longer? We are developing a new measure of teacher workplace social capital to find out: blogs.ucl.ac.uk/cepeo/2025/0...

My friend Natasha Raheem is writing an important book about schools that support student and teacher belonging. She is looking for case studies of schools doing great work in this area. If you know of good examples, please DM me. Thanks!

This is the most clear-eyed thing I have read on the intent and likely consequences of what is happening in the US federal govt

What these nihilistic vandals are doing to dismantle science & medicine—generations of expertise & public service & life improving benefits—is cultural revolution level national self harm. No foreign foe could inflict such brutal damage & senseless suffering on US so fast & effectively & unresisted.

Allegory alert!

www.npr.org/2025/02/10/n... 😔