Why would we choose to be disadvantaged? I was talking to a group of Grade 12 students last week about how they were feeling about AI. More specifically, we were talking about the IB Diploma and the increasingly complicated business of deciding what students should and shouldn’t use gen-AI to do. The question wasn’t whether […]
“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck”. So said my dad, often (1947-2016) Today I’m writing about the proposed changes to the school curriculum and assessment in England from 2027. Obviously, it helps if you read the review itself, but I […]
Whilst helping my daughter with her maths homework this week, I heard myself say, “Show working” I immediately kicked myself. First, because it was clear I was just repeating something I’d been told as a child — and there’s nothing more annoying than that. Second, because only now, years later, do I fully understand why […]
Princess Leia Organa, arguably the greatest rebel of them all In search of a perfectly average teacher Driving to the airport on the way to an overseas recruitment trip last week, I made a fairly innocuous comment in a conversation I was having with my kids about a teacher who had recently left our school. […]
Sitting down with a glass of wine this week, half-heartily trying to read (Politics on the Edge), I noticed my son was utterly absorbed by something he was reading on the computer. Even from where I was sitting on the other side of the room, I could see he was on Wikipedia. Curious, I asked […]
If I’m hearing correctly, educational standards are worse than ever. Teachers are saying that kids don’t just dislike reading more than a few words; they can’t. They don’t just hate writing more than a few words; they can’t. And even when they do write, you either can’t read it, or the grammar and spelling are […]
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