Blog
Seven Myths: The evidence base, part I
Posted on February 7, 2014
In Seven Myths about Education, I make two claims: first, that in English education, a certain set of ideas about education are predominant; second, that these ideas are misguided. Finding the evidenc…
Nate Silver and E.D. Hirsch
Posted on February 2, 2014
Over Christmas I read Nate Silver’s excellent book The Signal and the Noise. Silver runs the FiveThirtyEight politics blog and became famous for his uncannily accurate predictions of US elections. Bef…
Ofsted and my book
Posted on January 26, 2014
Andrew Old frequently tells me that the way to get lots of people visiting your blog is to mention Ofsted in the title, so here goes. If you are an Ofsted-watcher, you might be interested in my book,…
Why teaching to the test is so bad
Posted on January 19, 2014
This is part three of my summary of Daniel Koretz’s book Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us. Part one, How useful are tests?, is here and part two, Validity and reliability, is her…
Validity and reliability
Posted on December 17, 2013
This is part two of my summary of Daniel Koretz’s book Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us. Part one, How useful are tests?, is here. Part three, Why teaching to the test is so bad,…
A-level maths and earning potential
Posted on December 11, 2013
This week, the Institute of Physics have published a report on gender imbalances in certain subjects. They look at 6 A-level subjects: the typically ‘male’ ones of maths, physics and economics, and th…
How useful are tests?
Posted on December 8, 2013
This is part one of my review of Daniel Koretz’s Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us. Part two, Validity and reliability, is here. Part three, Why teaching to the test is so bad, is…
Do national curriculum levels provide us with a shared language?
Posted on December 1, 2013
In a few recent posts I’ve talked about the difficulties with using criteria as the sole reference point for exams. I think these difficulties can be seen very clearly with national curriculum levels,…
The adverb problem
Posted on November 24, 2013
In a previous blog I looked at how hard it is to set exams based on criteria. I quoted Tim Oates: The first issue is the slippery nature of standards. Even a well-crafted statement of what you need to…