In 2019, the English Premier League introduced the Video Assistant Referee (VAR), a way of using technology to review and correct the on-field referee’s decisions. It’s been a disaster: players hate it, managers hate it, pundits line up to pour scorn on its decisions, and fans have coined the chant ‘it’s not football any more’ to describe its effect on the game.

Almost every other sport in the world has managed to integrate technology into its decision-making process. Why is football failing so badly? Is it a special case, or have the game’s authorities got something wrong? And what does the controversy about VAR tell us about the nature of authority, rationality and technology in the 21st century?

Ed tech has so much potential, both for teachers and learners, so why hasn’t it yet had the transformative impact on education that has long been promised?

Assessment is a vital part of education, but done badly it can lead to distortions of classroom practice. Making Good Progress outlines the difference between formative and summative assessment and evaluates the effectiveness of a range of different assessment techniques and systems.

Knowledge matters more than we think.

Project-based learning, 21st century schools and transferable learning: modern education is full of such apparently innovative ideas. But how many of them are based on evidence? In this book, Daisy Christodoulou shows through a wide range of examples and case studies just how many popular ideas about education contradict basic scientific principles.

“This may well be the most important book of the decade on teaching” From the foreword by Dylan Wiliam