Having recently completed my final fulltime career appointment as a school leader, and being suddenly confined to restricted living due to lockdown, I have had an unexpected opportunity to reflect on a lifetime in schools and to wonder what was it all about? ‘Life is short’ was something I used to hear venerable older people say long ago, it seems, when I was young, and…
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In a January 2020 pre-Covid blog I commented on school-leaving assessment via the anvil of terminal examinations. These examinations were thrown into very sharp relief in recent months, in England, Ireland and at the International Baccalaureate Organisation for example, as authorities struggled to publish accurate predicted grade results for the class of 2020 in their…
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The current Covid-19 outbreak has resulted in school closures in many countries. Student learning faces significant disruption at an important time of the year (northern hemisphere) as exam season approaches for particular cohorts, and more generally for all students. Into the breach has stepped online learning, employed by many schools to maintain as regular a…
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Increasingly throughout my career, first as a teacher and later as a school leader I have been exercised by the conundrum of how should we assess fairly within schools and, most significantly, at school leaving examination time. For this terminal examination, in large measure, is the tool employed across the world to recognise the achievements,…
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‘A few months into my post as Western Co-Principal of Shanghai United International School my Chinese Co-Principal offered an observation which has stuck with me since as incorporating a wealth of meaning in a seemingly simple statement. This colleague was a lady of perspicacity and wisdom with whom I had established a great professional relationship…
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There has long been discussion as to what should be taught and learned in schools, how it should be taught and applied in life. In the early years of this century the discussion is no less relevant. I was reminded of this recently as I reflected on two conversations with prospective parents from very different…
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