DfE 7
What Doesn’t Work in Education
The varied ability of teachers in schools is a well-known challenge in improving educational outcomes. The evidence is broad and pervasive and the best advocate of how to address the issue is the internationally renowned educationalist John Hattie (Professor and Director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Deputy […]
The Endowment Effect: relying too much on the initial piece of information offered when making decisions
In my 20 years in the business of UK education, tutoring was almost always seen by governments as ‘the love that dare not speak its name’. That political and ideological taboo has been shattered as a result of Covid-19, and in England we now have a state-funded, 3rd party-managed and 4th party-delivered National Tutoring Programme […]
Edu news or partisan spin?
Education remains a topic of interest and debate at every level of society. This should be positive but much of what I hear from well-known commentators is thinly-disguised politics or an attempt to make news rather than report it with any semblance of fact, depth or balance. Does this matter? Yes, I think so. Take […]
The importance of assessing Technical Debt & high-performance in early stage investments
I have read over a thousand pitch decks from start-up edtech companies. Less than 1% met my personal tests for investability. Not one covered two specific issues that should be important to investors from every sector, namely: What is the estimated Technical Debt in the business? Do you have a high-performing tech team? Technical […]
Month 4 of Covid 19’s impact on the UK education sector.
Right at the start of the crisis the UK Office of Budget Responsibility predicted that in the 2nd quarter of 2020 output in education would be down by 90%.Published c.24 May, the scale of the estimated downturn was dramatic news for those in the business of education. It should also have been a clarion call […]
An oddball army of weirdos and misfits
I have been thinking about Dominic Cummings’ plans to shake up the Civil Service by hiring a cadre of weirdos and misfits (most people I know seem to think I fit this criteria but I doubt my CV would make the cut with no tertiary qualifications, being too opinionated/old, Australian etc). However, I do have […]
My thoughts about the DfE’s new £4.6m EdTech Innovation Fund
A few weeks ago I attended the BESA event to explain the new DfE Edtech strategy. So popular was the announcement, BESA had to find a new venue. Ironically the same venue as my first-ever meeting, almost 20 years ago, when I was working for what was then called the Department for Education and Skills […]
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