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Who is Herbert Simon? Herbert Simon was one of the great scholars of the twentieth century, whose discoveries and inventions ranged from political science (where he began his career) to economics (in…

One of the great things about the Research Ed conferences is that whilst their aim is to promote a sceptical, dispassionate and evidence-based approach to education, at the end of them I always end up…

  I have blogged a bit before about comparative judgment and how it could help make marking more efficient and more reliable, and help to free the teaching of writing from tick box approaches. I…

A good friend of mine, Maria Egan, has just set up a new education blog. It’s called the Razor Blade in the Candy Floss. Maria has been an enormous influence on my thinking and writing so I am really…

I can remember taking part in marking moderation sessions using the Assessing Pupil Progress grids. We marked using ‘best fit’ judgments. At their worst, such ‘best fit’ judgments were really flawed….

I’m a bit late to this, but I just wanted to write about how much I enjoyed Ouroboros by Greg Ashman. It’s a very elegantly and sparely written account of Greg’s experiences of teaching in England and…

Recently, a friend of mine sent me a link to ‪Oxford University’s History Aptitude Tests (HAT). These tests are designed for 18 year olds applying for admission to Oxford. I really liked the look of t…

Yesterday I went to a brilliant day of professional development at Ark Globe Academy called Teach Like a Top Athlete: Coaching and Mastery Methods. I went to a workshop run by the amazing Jo Facer on…

I spent yesterday at the Michaela Community School Debating Education event, which was absolutely brilliant. I spoke against the motion ‘Sir Ken is right: traditional education kills creativity’, and…