What do you think of this line in the Ofsted Education Inspection Framework: “Leaders understand the limitations of assessment and do not use it in a way that creates unnecessary burdens for staff or learners.” My own feeling is that this is symptomatic of a very poor understanding of assessment, and comes from that well-worn, but misleading phrase: Teaching, Learning & Assessment. When you think carefully about the implied chronology of TLA, it says: we teach, they learn, and then […]

There’s something very special about training at this time of year, on any subject, but particularly self assessment. Formal teaching is still going on, and learning cultures and study routines are all, hopefully, working their magic – helping learners fly evermore independently towards the end of the year. The mad rush of assignment deadlines, marking and those extra one-to-one support sessions haven’t hit their high point either.. (I hope this isn’t sounding too utopian!) So now is the perfect time […]

At the beginning of last month, I learnt the term ‘Connectivism’. The lovely irony of this was that I learnt it when I pulled together a team of FE professionals to form the ‘Learning Theory Research Group‘. The ‘lovely irony’ was that the process of connecting with this team was, itself, a Connectivist approach. An approach, I have to say, that I’ve loved long before learning the term. The group kindly contributed to my work on ‘A Unified Theory of […]

Back in the noughties, I had one of the best jobs in first the Adult Learning Inspectorate, then Ofsted, and finally LSIS. I used to work on the inspectorates’ Preparing for Inspection Events with the wonderful Nigel Evans and Jane Shaw. Do any of you nominees remember them? One of my favourite sessions was on self assessment. After several months of running the same session week in week out to hundreds of nominees, I remember expressing a little frustration to […]

Creating a blueprint for outstanding individual progress review practice Location     Zoom Time           Thursday February 11th (13:00 – 16:30) Cost            £39 To book onto this session, please click the Request Invoice (if you are an organisation) or PayPal  (if you are an individual). Please remember to add the name, organisation and email address of the delegates so that the joining instructions can be forwarded. Typical inspection issue Teachers do not use progress […]