Shambles looking fabulous this morning

🚨New Resources Alert🚨 March is now online featuring: ⚙️ Should social media influencers be more accountable for their content? ⚙️ Castle Bravo ⚙️ Aretha Franklin ⚙️ Have you ever wondered what taxes are spent on? Comprehension starts with powerful knowledge literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/ge...

Controversial opinion alert. The Leadership Pay Scale should start at the value of UPS3 plus the top of TLR1, not at UPS3.

Reading comprehension is not a skill. It’s an outcome of what you know. Strategies plateau. Knowledge compounds. lnkd.in/e-P9uNE2

My latest article for Educate magazine is all about verse novels. In it, I explore how they can help make reading possible for children who might feel overwhelmed by the amount of text on a page, why they work brilliantly as read-alouds and how they're helpful for developing empathy.

1265 is the maximum number of hours a teacher can be directed to work. It isn't a target. The closer your contact time with students gets to 1265 the more workload is pushed outside the school day. It must either be protected or reformed to include ALL work. #SaveEducation

No solutions from the Chancellor for school budgets but at least she managed to find a nice 5% pay rise for MPs this year so... yeah... every cloud has a silver lining. ##SaveEducation

🚨April resources are now LIVE🚨 This month features: ⚙️ NATO ⚙️ The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln ⚙️ Mackenzie Scott ⚙️ How much money £1billion really is We equip young people with the essential knowledge to comprehend the world around them literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/ge...

I confiscated these cards this morning from a Year 11 student revising prior to their first Literature exam. Can you see the problem? #SnapChatAI

Surely those that successfully applied to draft the new national curriculum can consult outside their group to gather voices/evidence of what works well. Many subjects have organisations named as part of the draft team that you would hope bring their own diversity to the table.

True story. I sacrificed one Year 9 lesson to use 6-7 19 times. Year 9 didn't do it again. Ever.

What is this blue stuff? 😲

It was a non uniform day at school today. As there always is there was a handful of students in uniform. The looks of relief and gratitude on their faces when they saw my suit was heartbreaking.

After taking 7 years to write and draw, my new graphic novel, Speaking in Pictures, about language, cognition, comics, and visual communication is out in less than a week! At long last! www.visuallanguagelab.com/sip

This looks very interesting indeed - CC @cmooreanderson.bsky.social @olicav.bsky.social @literacyengine.bsky.social @mrbates.bsky.social #VisualLiteracy

What movie moment made you exclaim… "THIS IS CINEMA!"

Mind = blown by this thread. I mean... I can't say I've spent much time actively thinking about ice dancing but I just assumed they picked a random song and made up a different routine for each competition. 🤯

I love the ##WinterOlympics. That's it. That's the post. 😆

ICYMI This Week's Blog Which Experts Should Be Leading Literacy? We have a vast wealth of expertise in education across academia and classroom practice with experts across the board. But which experts should we listen to? literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/20...

Excellent summary of where the expertise of academic researchers vs classroom-based practitioners lies, and why it can be hard to bring together.

How much "surplus" do you have to have invested to earn £4million from it?!? 😲

New Blog Alert Which Experts Should Be Leading Literacy? We have a vast wealth of expertise in education across academia and classroom practice with experts across the board. But which experts should we listen to? literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/20...

My fears with oracy were always: - promotes deficit narratives, especially around race and class - is really about debunked approaches like enforced group work and 21st century skills This seems to enthusiastically double down on both, plus makes some wild claims about the attainment gap, and AI.

ICYMI This week's blog takes a look at how we can start to bridge the cultural disadvantage gap via reading. Includes 5 evidence based strategies to use in your classroom. #GetReadingIntoIt literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/20...

I've had to start pushing back when asked to do things. "What would you like me to stop doing so I can do that?", is now a default answer. It's surprising how often the "new thing" becomes a "non thing" when you push back. We can't start to tackle workload until we accept that we are at 100%.

"Every adult is being used for every minute of the day" is an excellent thing to consider for anyone who wants change in schools. The pace and intensity of work in schools is remarkable. It shocks people when they first experience it.

Hearing BBC Breakfast presenters cringe and contort over their pronunciation of 'Schitt's Creek' this morning is making me smile.

It's ok. I'm sure the DfE will come up with an AI reading parent that children can read to instead. Then parents can stay at work even longer and not worry about silly things like reading. Yay!

This is a great thread...only thing I would add is that there is a removal of parental responsibility in some parts of proposal. If young people are gaming or online during suspension it is, surely, parents role to stop this. Likewise, support learning during off site exclusion. Or am I being crazy?

🚨BOOK GIVEAWAY🚨 To celebrate the release of Leading Secondary English from @bloomsburyed.bsky.social on 12 February, I am giving away not one, but TWO FREE COPIES. To be in for a chance of winning, simply 'like' and 'repost' below. 👇 Winners will be chosen on Monday 2nd February.

🚨New Blog🚨 Closing the Disadvantage Gap We must not confuse disadvantage with inability. What interventions can we use to close the disadvantage gap & equip students with the rich knowledge they need to comprehend the curriculum & the world around them? literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/20...

Some really important points to consider here. A must read thread. 👏 You don't improve behaviour by reducing suspensions. You reduce suspensions by improving behaviour. One of these things is really easy to do. The other requires far more widely reaching change.

Agree ... they (Gov) have completley forgotten/ignored libraries and museum. Completely in thrall to their US tech comany paymasters.

In a world where screens and scrolling dominate the early development of too many children, get them out of your lessons and #GetReadingIntoIt. literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/20...

All well and good but what criteria are you using to assess them? There is no agreed component knowledge bank that anyone could use so assessment is based on loosely defined skills. Most oracy frameworks are built on pedagogy not knowledge and I don't want oracy dictating my pedagogy.

ICYMI Here's this week's blog offering practical classroom strategies to get reading into your lessons across the curriculum. This week, pledge to ditch YouTube just once and #GetReadingIntoIt

My Twitter/X account has been hacked, and I can no longer access it. In other words, I'm no longer on Twitter/X and any new messages aren't from me. You can still follow me on BlueSky. Please spread the word here and also on Twitter/X.

Banning children from social media risks undermining the role of schools as ‘places where pornography, extremist views, and addictive shortform video content can be encountered reflectively and with support’. There. Fixed the post for you.

Not everything that feels supportive actually helps. Coloured paper and invented retention rates tell a bigger story about why bad ideas persist in schools. open.substack.com/pub/daviddid...

School leaders tend to have a "make it work" mentality. If they didn't, the system would collapse. But by propping up a broken and underfunded system it demonstrates that actually it does work. The funding is enough. So schools will never get the funding they need unless we let the wheels fall off.

🚨New Blog Alert🚨 Get Reading Into It We examine some of the barriers to reading for pleasure, and dig into some of the classroom practice that puts reading on the sideline. There's also 5 Top Tips to get reading into your lessons! literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/20...

And this is why our resources are pdf not some digital platform. The experience of reading words on paper, discussing content, and questioning language in a paper based text is one of the most powerful learning experiences a student can have. Literacyengine.co.uk

EdTech tools get an investment of £23m. Secondary schools get £5m for books. Now tell me where reading sits on the government's list of priorities. #YearOfReading #GoAllIn2026

Angela Rayner was hounded out by the media over one £40k underpayment. Farage breaches the MPs code of conduct 17 times and failures to declare £380k of outside interests. I wonder what treatment he'll get from the press... 🤔

But what happens in practice? Last week only 17% of secondary teachers left site, compared with 33% of primary. Lunch was the most common time for primary; non-teaching time for secondary. One tapper then asked: how enforceable are “no leaving site” rules? We’re checking 👀

A tapper got in touch after seeing a TikTok of a teacher using their lunch break to go clothes shopping 👀 They asked: can teachers leave site? Rules say many can ✅: 73% of primary and 57% of secondary can leave at lunch. Bans are more common in secondary (21%) than primary (3%).

When we talk about recruitment & retention and the impact of workload we don't often include the intensity of the school day. The sustained cognitive load and relentless nature of a teaching/leading load is often as difficult to manage as the long hours or volume of work. #SaveEducation

Received my advance copies of 'Leading Secondary English' from @bloomsburyed.bsky.social today. A great feeling to finally hold it in my hands! 😍 Out on 12 February. Pre-order now: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/leading-s...

Spent the morning planning, writing resources, and working on admin for @literacyengine.bsky.social. I am properly excited by some of the things we have in store for 2026 from new packs to new CPD. #GoAllIn2026 #NationalYearOfReading Literacyengine.co.uk