Robin Young 🌈♾️

UK gets first female Astronomer Royal in 350 years Prof Michele Dougherty is the first woman to be appointed to the influential post.

Big day for the matriarchy! 🥳 Huge congrats to the awesome Prof. Doughtery, lead on the Jupiter-bound ESA JUICE mission & STFC Exec Chair.

If anyone's confused on the astro royal hierarchy: Michele and I are the astro equivalents of 🇬🇧Westminster and 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Holyrood 🤗

ℹ️: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... 👩‍🔬🔭🧪

Ok

Why would you call it that?

Extended certificate. I think I’m teaching 1.5 hours a week and my department head the same, so only 6 hours a fortnight. I still haven’t got my head around my timetable though. New school after 18 years! Good to change.

Pearson. Y13 are doing the old spec and we’re bringing the new one in with Y12. We don’t have enough teaching hours to sit all three exams by May 2026 for Y12, do we’re thinking of doing course work first. This could be a very good or a very bad idea. I wish I knew which.

It’s time to bury fossil fuels and nuclear power for good There are moments when we need good news. The Guardian has one with this report this morning: The world is on the brink of a breakthrough in the climate fight and fossil fuels are running out of road...

Renewable energy is by far the cheapest way to meet global energy needs now. It's time to celebrate this, and demand that politicians require all investment be directed its way now. Nothing else makes any sense at all. www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/07...

… haven’t worked my head around Btec level 3 yet. Any tips about whether to start with content first or coursework first on the new spec?

KS4 biology, chemistry, physics, A Level physics, Btec Applied Science

Congratulations Kate! I’m starting to teach this course next year and your post came up in my search.

Labour’s benefit cuts will have ‘devastating’ impact on disabled women, say charities Organisations say planned four-point rule will not properly take into account menstruation and other hygiene needs

Keir Starmer’s disability cuts will have a “devastating” impact on women’s health and dignity and could breach equality law, the government has been warned

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Still looking … I’ll be back shortly

Autism Is Not A Disease: The Politics of Neurodiversity Autism Is Not A Disease: The Politics of Neurodiversity eBook : Hare, Jodie: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

But I am referring specifically to the ‘social model of disability’ rather than the social context. Recommended: www.amazon.co.uk/Autism-Not-D...

Dyslexia, Dyscalcula: Give them technology that really works (overlays only if needed). Etc etc. What it all boils down to is politics and how much we value equality in our society. This government want to take it away and that means less equality of access. It’s not neuroscience it’s politics.

Autism: We are really wired differently, but it’s not a disease, it’s human diversity, it is who we are. It’s really not a problem (aside from other comorbidities). But we are not mind readers, so just say what you really mean otherwise we start to become disabled by ableism.

You give the example of ADHD. Severely undiagnosed. Having all those busy thoughts in your head constantly and for some the urge to physically move, is constant from waking up to burnout and bed time. If medication works, let us have medication if it gives us some bloody peace of mind (literally). 4

When you apply the social model, we stop focusing on the impairments of an individual as the problem but rather on how the environment is stopping that person accessing the same opportunities as a person without those impairments. #3

Disabled learners are disabled by their environments, not their impairments. So all the stuff about differentiation and adaptive teaching are sticking plasters to the real issues, that classrooms are not designed to suit all learners, and disabled learners often do not access learning equally. #2

Thanks for your article Ben. From my perspective, I don’t see two opposing paradigms: neuroscience vs denial. More the social model of disability vs medical model (and denial/neglect). What happens in the classroom or in the world outside is steered by politics. #1

According to research, apparently yes. From personal experience, hard to say what works these days other than teaching seems so much harder to get the same results, the curriculum is really boring, everyone is stressed … so no, it’s not working really.

8. Families and children continue to be penalised by benefits cuts and the continuation of the draconian two-child cap. Some hope with widening access to free school meals, but why not make it available to all at Primary? And stop OFSTED and the bloody P8 blighting lives of tchrs, leaders and stdnts

7. So thank you Adrian for drawing our attention to well-being. It has to be prioritised before anything else. In the UK, this government are proposing to make strident well-fare cuts and once again, disabled people are disproportionately affected by changes to PIP and Access to Work Funding.

6. Lack of support and inaccessible and a restricted curricular focus to prioritise P8 profit, are adversely affecting the academic progress and wellbeing of disabled students.
(With disability, I refer to the social model and include neurodivergent people throughout).

5. For disabled educators and students, the adverse effects on wellbeing and performance are disproportionally higher. How many disabled educators are leaving or even being forced out of mainstream schools through intolerable pressures, lack of reasonable adjustments or even blatant discrimination?

4. Mental health and well-being crisis for students. Burn out for educators and support staff. Recruitment and retention crisis in many schools. Kids coming to school really, really hungry and with an array of anxiety disorders that staff are not trained or able to cope with.

3. So what’s the caveat? As you say, well-being, well-being, well-being. None of this should be at the expense of well being. P8 is the profit margin for the shareholders at the expense of the teachers and the products (students). It’s a complete nonsense and there are mounting casualties.

2. My go to’s are the evidence cited by Barak Rosenshine, Kirshner, Willingham, Prof Coe, Sweller, Clark. The last decade has been transformative in the education sector for providing the tools students and educators need to making learning stick and addressing wider SEND needs.

1. I’m all for Ed research and evidence based theories of learning to harness good teaching and learning strategies. We should promote retrieval, interleaving, spaced practice, elaboration, etc. Understand cog load, dual coding, blah blah. It works and students become better more efficient learners

Subject knowledge for physics teaching intensive 1-year programmes, 10 face-to-face sessions (London) 60 hours of self-paced online learning, tutor support in a collaborative learning community

📢Teaching KS3/4 physics out of specialism in an English state school and in need of some physics therapy?

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😆

That’s why Reform can’t be trusted. What about the Gregg’s sausage rolls?