Turncoat? The life and death of school systems

Propelled into Troubled Waters

A Recap: Where we are now.  During the first five or six years of this century the Initiative had put enormous energies into delivering lectures and training programmes in response to numerous invitations in England from local education authorities; from the Canadian Council on Learning, and comparable groups in other countries.  In England (the home […]

Get More, Want More or how to think our way out of a bad end.

A review of Spencer Wells, ‘Pandora’s Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilisation’

Battling for the Soul of Education

A review of Diane Ravitch, ‘The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How testing and choice are undermining education’.

Magnanimity

The oft forgotten part of Milton’s trinity – justice, skilfulness and a generous heart

Competitive or Collaborative?

It is an ages-old question; are humans predominantly competitive or collaborative? If we can be both what conditions how we behave from moment to moment?

The Urgent and the Important

It is nearly forty years ago that, as a newly appointed Head, an older colleague gave me a piece of priceless advice. “Divide the morning’s mail into two piles, the urgent and the important. Immediately deal with the important and leave the urgent until later in the day when you will probably find that somebody else has sorted it out.”

Who will take Education Where

Like many others in recent weeks I have become something of a ‘party policy watcher’, comparable to those who watch the fascinating antics of dolphins so as to try and understand how their brains work. As the General Election gets ever nearer, the behaviour of these policy wonks seems to have become ever more erratic, eccentric and represents apparently hopeless organisation behind the scenes.

Assessing the Manifestos

Last evening’s (8/2/10) BBC’s Newsnight report on the Swedish Private (for profit) School system prompts the question as to whether any other country can teach English schools how to improve, without the English first rigorously and honestly analysising what is the essence of their educational predicament. Contrary to what I suspect their glossy Party Manifestos will say shortly there is no one panacea that can deal with the numerous, yet inter-related, problems which have placed English education in a difficult, unpleasant and often embarrassing situation.

Finding the missing piece

Intelligent behaviour One of the delights of Christmas is doing jigsaws.  The easy part is sorting out the straight pieces, the hard slog is working out the innumerable shades of blue in the sky, or the green and brown in the trees.   It is easy to give up, but return after a short break, and […]