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When is student choice a good idea? Here’s an extract from a document from the Scottish Curriculum, on best practice in maths teaching. Children were asked about ways the school could improve learning…

In 2011, Scott Young set himself the challenge of learning MIT’s entire 4-year computer science degree, despite not being a student at the university. He succeeded. His new book Ultralearning is all a…

In my last blog, I showed how the PISA tests have been updated to take account of the fact we do more reading online. Not only are the tests computer-based, but they also feature tasks that mimic the…

Every three years, the OECD’s PISA tests report on student performance in maths, reading and science in dozens of countries. They also choose one subject in particular to focus on in more detail. This…

Imagine a class of 20 students, ten boys, ten girls. They all sit a maths exam which is graded from 0 – 9. On average, the boys and girls do equally well. The average grade of all the pupils is 4.5, a…

Over the last couple of years the idea of a ‘mastery curriculum’ has become ever more popular – and ever more nebulous. I’ve heard the word ‘mastery’ applied to very different approaches to the curric…

In my book Making Good Progress I developed an analogy between education and marathon running. Put simply, you wouldn’t train for a marathon by trying to run 26.2 miles in every training session. And…

  My experience of English Mastery In 2013 I started working at Ark Schools, a network of academy schools based in London, Birmingham, Portsmouth and Hastings. Part of my job was to develop Ark’s…

In no particular order… Learning How to Learn by Barbara Oakley, Terrence Sejnowski and Alistair McConville This book is a fun, witty and very, very practical summary of how we learn, and…