I have to say, I find this letter completely baffling for a number of reasons:

Absolutely agree, @mrjlauder.bsky.social

A big part of my work is facilitating students speaking up for themselves, and on behalf of their peers, in political contexts. We've had students speaking truth to MPs, ministers, Mayors, councillors, NHS leaders etc. Oracy in principle is fine. The issue is always centralisation and edu diktat.

On the theme of ideological capture - very similar to, but much more serious than what we've seen in education - the natural birth movement still seems pretty entrenched in midwife education which causes huge issues. Great journalism again from @shaunlintern.bsky.social

🚨 INVESTIGATION: Britain's maternity crisis has deeper roots, extending into the universities trusted to train the next generation of midwives. A majority are still promoting a normal birth ideology while women are more complex than ever: READ: www.thetimes.com/article/b4fe...

This has always been the fear with the oracy agenda - that it will lead to the DfE dictating pedagogy and the return of compulsory group work by the back door. The devil will be in the detail but this isn't encouraging. www.thetimes.com/article/40e5...

A tale from the commission - when Prince Charles (as he then was) called for the slave trade to be on the curriculum as the Holocaust is, one v good journalist at the Jewish News wrote a v good piece on that debate after speaking to me and others:

oh my god yes. you only have to look at how often people complain about not being taught something in school that they absolutely were taught in school. education isn't a magic bullet!

The left thinks state information is compromised because it’s produced by a western patriarchy. The right thinks it’s produced by a woke establishment elite. And so we have given up on building and propagating any kind of shared knowledge infrastructure. Instead we say “put it in the curriculum”

Reducing the number of assistant heads in schools most probably means reducing the 'fourth emergency service' role that schools have played post-austerity. Sadly an example of siloed, short termist thinking from govt.

The Liverpool City Region has been growing strongly in recent years – not too far behind Greater Manchester and third in the leaderboard of Northern productivity growth. But why is this the case? And what can we learn for the UK productivity problem? Short 🧵 1/5

underpinned by its endorsement of “the principle that non-exam assessment should be used only when it is the only valid way to assess essential elements of a subject” which reflects the risks emphasised in CEPEO’s evidence of bias from teacher assessment.

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...

Teachers! DfE seeks class teachers to help shape policy. Must have a 60% teaching timetable, not in snr role, have contributed to policy implementation & be able to deminstrate inclusive practice. www.tes.com/magazine/new...

She's been! She's been! @beckyfrancis.bsky.social curriculum santa has been!

🚨 Reform the National Funding Formula 🚨 Previous changes to the NFF have had a disproportionately negative impact on schools in deprived areas. We're calling for it to be reformed to rebalance funding back towards schools that need it the most.

A non-zero number of young people are, sadly, really into violence. Kids are very much just watching murder videos on their phones. A small minority, but it's definitely there and not something that used to happen.

Friday's pumpkin and last night's Greek veg turned into tonight's lasagne.

Encouraging teaser from the Curriculum and Assessment Review due out this week. The recommendation of an entitlement to triple science speaks to a serious drive for equity and social mobility in the curriculum. 1/3 www.thetimes.com/uk/education...

For those asking for background - I was in Sudan twice this year and wrote about it www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

Made a caramelised onion and goat's cheese crustless quiche for lunch. Worst thing I've made in years. Onions were bland, couldn't taste the cheese and I overcooked the whole thing to oblivion. Eldest made the much better choice of pre-grated Asda cheddar, chosen because of the blue pack.

Alł

@theeef.bsky.social has published their initial evaluation of Dixons' 9-day fortnight. It's been great for recruitment, retention and wellbeing. It's not for everyone and there are next steps and trade-offs, but I'm really glad we've done it. educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects-and...

Great article that puts into words my experience of often having to go around the “system” to make it work for children and families in education. Particularly with respect to SEND.

Well worth a read - this is the kind of thing so many of our communities need.

How do we turn bureaucratic services and systems into something more human? A new long read 👇

Hero journalism from @rhyswilliamsnews.bsky.social whose investigations are holding the Welsh government's feet to the fire for its support of discredited reading strategies. Strongly recommend everyone involved looks as the success of Mississippi.

Been lucky enough to have some homemade haleem this afternoon. Divine.

Very interesting idea here to pilot more collaborative, place-based working between schools to tackle the attainment gap in specific areas, and suspend Ofsted inspections during those pilots.

New vision of hell just dropped

Said deep dive on this is here, thanks @oldandrewuk.bsky.social. TL;DR: the headline numbers aren't plausible. More research would be good on this topic. It would also be good to figure out what's happening here, as the underlying dataset is nationally important. open.substack.com/pub/andrewol...

I'm sure others have pointed this out, but Amin removing Ugandan Asians worked out really well for the UK and terribly for Uganda.

The points @msjasminemn.bsky.social makes in the body of the article are important. Rhetoric around immigration has now moved against not only illegal immigration, but legal immigration. schoolsweek.co.uk/ive-given-my...

Much sensible in here, and it gets to the heart of lots of the key tensions with where we stand currently.

Aside from the moral case this is also why anti immigration rhetoric damages Britain. The people we need most are the most globally mobile. They'll look at this and think.. "there are better places." This will last a long time. We'll be seeing the effects of this for years.

The Guardian today has a front page story calling for massive restrictions on the powers of heads to run calm and orderly schools. One of the reasons I'm v supportive of @bphillipsonmp.bsky.social is she has no truck with this sort of thing.

This is for the best IMO. Send campaigners should use the time to make the case for mainstream classrooms that are as inclusive as possible, with a very high bar for any form of segregation that isn't special schools for those with the most specialised needs.

School closures, and the failure to properly fund Covid catch-up, were disastrous choices, and we are still living with the impacts. www.thetimes.com/article/3a27...

This is brilliant from @lizrobinson.bsky.social - we need pluralism, diversity and autonomy across the schools system. And leaders who have the courage to be different, whatever that might look like.

Latest from me: on what Liverpool says about the housing crisis, and the uneasy state of politics www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Your regular reminder that scrapping ILR for people who have come here and played by the rules, which is what Lam proposes here, is a position supported by 3% of the public

Assuming my white skin makes me culturally coherent in whatever cesspit the conservatives have disappeared into.

#FridayFive is pleasantly lost. 1. Mushaboom. Feist. 2. Hotel California. The Eagles. 3. Moonlit Mile. The Rolling Stones. 4. Time after Time. Cyndi Lauper. 5. America. Simon and Garfunkel.

So pleased our schools have been a part of this. And Darley Street Market is fabulous!

So here’s what happened on Happy World Food Day yesterday…thanks to @nspnuk.bsky.social @foodsavers.bsky.social & everyone at Darley Street Market in Bradford, all the wonderful market traders, the children & #DeliKitchen for making #WFD2025 so special. 🎥 Just a sneak peek for now!

This has been one of those reports that makes you feel worse and worse as you uncover the layers of a system that just isn't working. Change is desperately needed so that all children can thrive in education without having to rely on parents spending money they may not even have to get support.

This basic failure again to understand the housing market. Say I buy a house in a pricey new development without that many services nearby. I might like that! Then someone can buy my house, which does have services nearby. Building one new house has given two (at least) people a house they want!

The new framework is toothless on inclusion without looking at intake and mobility. Just tokenistic window dressing.

Heads of Department/SLT What do you do for pupils who have missed lessons due to being absent? Do you give extra work, catch up work, direct them somewhere etc? What does it look like? Would appreciate RTs for a wider range 👍

They can still leave the legal implementation of admissions policy with Adjudicator but still look at impact, who attends the school, who leaves and why. Not doing so is a choice