Too often, engaging and varied assessment practice is the casualty of a couple of bits of well-established custom and practice: ‘thick’ schemes of work, and the phrase ‘teaching, learning and assessment’. If you’ve a moment, try these tests yourself, and see if you empathise with the challenges. There’s also one more issue, but let’s look at the other two first. TLA. We say it without really thinking about it. It basically says: We teach. They learn. We check learning. This […]

In this Thursday’s open session, we’ll be looking at how to run the evaluative conversation following a lesson observation. It might sound counterintuitive, but the last people you should look to for a model of good practice are Ofsted inspectors. I mean no disrespect, I was a full-time inspector for many years, it’s just that they have a different job to do. Their job is a condition of funding. Your job is at the heart of your organisation’s culture. When […]