The new Key Stage 2 tests measure quite different aspects of pupil attainment to the 2015 ones. Schools will differ in how well they have prepared for these new tests and here we explore the extent to which there are local authority differences in success rates across the new and old tests. The chart below [...]
Academic selection into separate schools tends to polarise commentators into those that think it is acceptable and those who think it is wrong. And yet most people agree that selection is acceptable at 18 and wrong at age 4. So the point of contention is surely what the right age to allow academic selection is. [...]
Yesterday's GCSE results showed schools strongly switching students away from non-EBacc subjects as they try to fill up the Progress 8 EBacc slots. Religious Studies GCSE, which was controversially not deemed to be suitable as an EBacc humanity, is one subject bucking this trend with yet another year-on-year increase in entries. However, this is not [...]
Today will not be a happy occasion for the typical 17 year old re-taking GCSE maths and/or English. The government now requires them to continue studying these subjects if they did not achieve a grade C at age 16 and many are entered for these qualifications again after just a year of additional study. For [...]
A-Level examination sittings, which stretch from mid-May through to the end of June, often overlap with an international football tournament. Unfortunately, football lovers, who are more likely to be boys than girls, can find this a distraction from their revision schedule. Economists at the University of Bristol have noticed how this has damaged English boys [...]
One of the reasons that decisions to open new selective schools should not be devolved to local decision-makers is that it affects pupils and schools in other local authorities. This is because families are able to seek a school for their child in a different local authority to the one they live in, thanks to [...]
Today, Sutton Trust published our report on the 300 secondary schools who transformed their curriculum between 2010 and 2013 in response to government policy, achieving a rise in the proportion of pupils entering the EBacc from 8% to 48%. Understanding the experiences of pupils in these schools gives us a little window on what might [...]
Today two new pieces of research on teacher training routes are published. The Institute for Fiscal Studies have published a Nuffield-funded report, authored jointly with Education Datalab and NFER, that summarises the relative costs and benefits of the different teacher training routes. Separately, we have published a report on careers of Teach First Ambassadors who [...]
In this report we explore the careers of former Teach First participants who choose to remain in state-funded schools as Ambassadors. We compare the career profiles of the 2008 to 2012 cohorts to a matched group of teachers who began a full-time Higher Education Institution led PGCE course at a same time and have similar [...]
