Comment

“A system that weaponizes education into an instrument of silent subjugation”

17 January 2025

A former trainee teacher at the flagship school of a multi-academy trust which has been at the centre of allegations of creating "emotional harm” in pupils –which the trust has said it does not recognise - has written a first-person piece on his experiences there.

“It’s as if none of the writings about children’s understanding in history published in the past half century had ever been written”

18 March 2021

An 1829 engraving of Elizabeth 1. Image: iStock/Getty Images.

The Missing Million: Bridging the Digital Divide

10 February 2021

Jon Barr

“We were treated like numbers on a spreadsheet”, says supply teacher now being paid 80 per cent of salary not to work

12 June 2020

Pic: iStock/Getty Images

Ofsted is delivering…but what?

10 October 2019

Colin Richards

If we really want to reduce teacher workload, first we need to measure it properly

14 May 2019

Ofsted: a learning organisation?

21 March 2019

Colin Richards

An uncomfortable truth about exclusions

20 March 2019

The writer wishes to remain anonymous

What’s wrong with parent-promoted free schools?

5 March 2019

The writer wishes to remain anonymous

Seven thoughts on Ofsted’s curriculum thinking

7 January 2019

Without any sense of irony, the chief inspector criticises schools for “a weak theoretical understanding of the curriculum” - a shortcoming certainly illustrated by her own commentary and by the lack of any theoretical work on the school curriculum by Ofsted since its inception twenty-five years ago. This understanding could well come not from Ofsted itself but at least in part from those working in academies and independent schools untrammelled by the impoverished “national” curriculum. Who knows, that theoretical understanding could even be developed by those academics vilified by Michael Gove as “the Blob”.

Voice of a parent

1 October 2018

Recent protests outside Springfield primary school, Birmingham

Why RSCs need to be accountable to parents, not heads

4 May 2018

Ben Gibbs carries out research and consultancy to improve schools as organisations through his company, Restart-Ed. An early member of the Department for Education & Skills Business Development team and long-time governor, he has extensive experience of academies policy and practice.

Giving teaching back to teachers

29 November 2017

Mel Ainscow, of the University of Manchester, and Maija Salokangas, of Trinity College Dublin, discuss the findings of their new book, Inside the Autonomous School, which is published tomorrow.

Why have an ethical leadership commission?

13 November 2017

Schools are where society looks after its young until they can become adult citizens. Emerging adults in the UK will have had up to 14 years of schooling, perhaps just in two institutions. In that time, they’ll not only have learned something of the knowledge valued by society but also the personal attitudes or characteristics valued by society. Headteachers, school leaders, are traditionally understood to provide both of those.

School governance: redressing the democratic deficit

19 October 2017

One of the most significant pieces of legislation to affect education policy in England is the Academies Act 2010 introduced by the Coalition government. Overturning previous legislation which limited academy conversions to ‘failing’ and ‘underperforming’ schools, the Academies Act 2010 made it possible for all ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ schools (and, for the first time, primary schools and special schools) to convert to academy status through the acquisition of a foundation or trust. Both ambitious and brazen, the Academies Act 2010 not only expanded opportunities for further private sector involvement in the running of public sector schools but enabled a whole set of new techniques and strategies designed to bring the gaze of government to bear upon the actions of others.

The “massive need” for more academy trustees

19 October 2017

The English education system’s move towards a structure of multi-academy trusts seems to me to be placing huge pressures on the supply chain of people who will perform the role of academy trustee.

The academies programme: very different now

19 October 2017

It's time to look again at the academies policy, argues Ben Gibbs.