I’d like to say I’m surprised but given the outcome we were left with being so unpalatable to the majority inside the sector, they absolutely need to cling to the mantra we are giving the people what they want! It’s pure Orwellian double speak!

You have an ever increasing burden being borne by a system that might have coped without the decade long per pupil decline in spending! Increase funding to allow schools not just to deliver their basic function but to have scope to meet (early) emerging needs and you might slow EHCP applications!

If you define EHCP need as students needing more than the 6k worth of support schools were supposed to provide. Then don’t increase this with inflation. Then consider all the additional costs that come with consulting, justifying, responding, managing legally mandated support.

19.5% pupils with SEND, but don’t believe the hype: Most are still educated in mainstream schools - Special Needs Jungle NEW POST: 19.5% pupils with SEND in England in 2025, but don’t believe the hype: Most are still educated in mainstream schools.

Our “crisis” in SEND is a direct symptom of poor funding and hasn’t simply been exacerbated by poor funding. Had per pupil funding kept up with inflation and the expected £6k spend per child likewise would we have this many students needing EHCPs?

www.specialneedsjungle.com/19-5-pupils-...

Being a reader in the world not just “doing” reading.

Love this by @carlhendrick.substack.com

Lol to the way old things get new names in education and then some people act as though they just invented them. 'Turn and talk' or what we used to call pair work or talk partners before the idea that group work was a bad thing got rammed down our throats. 🙄

Known unknowns: Exploring In-Service Teachers' Metacognitive Sensitivity and Efficiency: https://osf.io/49ynr

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.

The eye of the storm What can we reasonably expect of teachers?

open.substack.com/pub/matthewe...

🚨 LIBERAL OVERREACH

When applying our values backfires:

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Evidence, expertise, and the self-improving school system (9 minute read) Rob Coe used his 2013 inaugural lecture at Durham to survey the evidence on long-run change in the performance of the English school system. He concluded that standards had not impr…

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...

Why Schools Don’t Report Uncertainty in Test Scores Why “probably” is (probably) precise enough

I’d love to see this level of statistical understanding among the population at large, or even teachers in general. The important point for teachers to realise is that test scores are indicative, not descriptive or prescriptive surely?

100assessment.substack.com/p/why-school...

I think this has nicely summarised my fear of an education landscape dominated by MATs with packaged formulae which work…overall the bottom line may be up but does the lack of “messiness” provide a more vanilla diet that never captures or inspires to the same heights? And if so for how many?

What a fantastic and much needed dose of positivity from @strickomaster.bsky.social. It resonates because it is true!

When NHS services that are designed to support CYP in school, with early help, (however limited they may be) require parental support and an acceptance of recording on a CYP’s NHS record this presents yet another barrier to uptake of preventative early help.

It is so important for schools to be part of the solution for parents. How to do so in those areas with high suspicion of authority and institutions is the gnarly issue!

Couldn’t agree more!

The Words of the Week - Oct. 17 Dictionary lookups from baseball, R&B, and Indigenous Peoples’ Day

These are your words of the week

indigenous
visionary
triskaidekaphobia
remigrate
pococurante
www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/the...

Standards in school geography, 1991–2023 - Geographical Association The new GA Research Report considers findings from a series of Ofsted reports on standards in school geography going back to the 1990s...

Excellent work here from @geographicalassoc.bsky.social drawing together the lessons from the Ofsted subject reports into geography. A lot here for teachers and leaders to take away and reflect on.

geography.org.uk/standards-in...

Even a core teacher will only have a cursory understanding by week 3 surely? But I get the pressure to spread them throughout the year for staff wellbeing not sure it actually works though!

Totally agree. It removes the all important relationship which at best takes until Christmas to develop owing to the sheer scale of the job!

Quite the spectacle to see media outlets who've cheered on austerity saying 'oh god, SEND spending is out of control'. Well, if you gut councils, fail to provide local special school spaces, collapse SureStart and leave public/collective transport to rot, that's what happens. Cuts are expensive

I’m in a room where a whole ass faculty member said “Chat GPT 5 would be able to write a better NSF proposal than me” and… well…

My inside thoughts got the best of me BC I said loud as fuck “that’s unfortunate, because there’s not a machine on earth that writes better than me.”

For example bsky.app/profile/napc...

That’s potentially 240 students with mental health issues, passports for additional needs and strategies without any other sen need.

When a secondary teacher might have 15 classes of 30-32 children this can be really difficult and this would be common for most subjects outside of the core (English, Maths, Science). I agree it’s a problem of scale classes need to be smaller.

However even allowing that detailed knowledge isn’t always possible what will another test do that should be simply reinforcing what internal data can already tell? Unless there is time, resources or focus given to it a test alone will not raise standards. Less content in curricula anyone?

This is a really important point. 15 years ago the answer would absolutely be yes for most secondary teachers now with every class of 32 having a complete cacophony of SEN need, trauma and other mental health as well as access arrangements I am not so sure.

So if the Y8 reading test shows a teacher - who probably already knows - that the child is working below the “expected standard” (whatever they decide this is) for reading. Exactly what resources and expertise will the overstretched secondary school have to address this?

Regardless of changes to inspection frameworks one of the most important advances in recent years has been thoughtful planning and sequencing, in a lot of schools, of the declarative, procedural and conditional knowledge within our entire curriculum!

A great summary of why deliberate and joined up thinking of the curriculum is needed within every subject. The demands of the KS4 specifications would just be too much if you hadn’t already sequenced KS3 to lay the foundations and bridge the KS2 to 4 gap.