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Recent Posts
- Zola : a political reading. August 13, 2023
- Hotter than July? August 5, 2023
- Rethinking work July 30, 2023
- Educating for political literacy in an age of crisis. July 21, 2023
- Savoirs et valeurs : pratiquer et conjuguer July 21, 2023
- ‘Transformative Teaching and Learning in Further Education – Pedagogies of Hope and Social Justice’ July 18, 2023
- Dilemmas of Growth June 14, 2023
- A broader view of skills? June 7, 2023
- In praise of ‘low value’ subjects. February 27, 2023
- Frigga Haug and the mystery of learning December 6, 2022
- Debating Growth. November 29, 2022
- Code red for human survival November 8, 2022
- The politics of silence. September 4, 2022
- Posts on Corsican themes. August 10, 2022
- When Corsica welcomed thousands of Serb refugees (1916) August 9, 2022
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Category Archives: Education
How to make a strong college application
How can students make sure that their sixth form application is as strong as possible and does justice to their achievements, interests and aspirations? If you are in Year 11, you need to be thinking about where you want to … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Learning resources, NewVIc, Parents, Students
Tagged Colleges, Education, information advice and guidance, Sixth form, Sixth form college, young people
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Russell Group university progression: dispelling the myths
Since the Russell group of universities started publishing their ‘Informed Choices’ guide and launched the concept of facilitating A-level subjects, their advice has often been misrepresented or misunderstood. ‘Informed choices’ is a helpful contribution to advising and guiding students about sensible subject choices … Continue reading
Demonstrating high achievement in comprehensive settings
Comprehensive schools and colleges can face a challenge when trying to show how well their highest achieving students do and how many of them there are. They can suffer from ‘bog standard’ syndrome and the assumption that all their students … Continue reading
Posted in Education, NewVIc
Tagged A levels, comprehensive education, Education, Newham Sixth Form College, NewVIc, selection
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Inspectors make the case for comprehensive colleges
A report by the national education inspectorate makes a strong case for comprehensive sixth form colleges rather than vocational colleges. The case is based on evidence that comprehensive colleges are more socially mixed and achieve better results. The report has … Continue reading
Post-16 performance tables: taking the long view
The recently published 2014 post-16 performance tables show that A-level students at Newham Sixth Form College (NewVIc) improved their performance faster than the national average for the second year running. They also show that our advanced vocational students performed better … Continue reading
Posted in Education, NewVIc
Tagged A levels, Education, Newham Sixth Form College, NewVIc, performance tables, vocational education
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NewVIc: highest number of disadvantaged students going to university
Which sixth forms help the most disadvantaged students progress to university? The latest university progression data has just been published. This relates to sixth form students who completed their advanced qualifications in 2012. The figures include the numbers of students … Continue reading
‘True worth’ in the education market
“In future we could try to link qualifications to tax data to demonstrate the true worth of certain subjects.” Nicky Morgan, Education Secretary (Jan 2015). Flash forward to 2020 and 17 year-old Amina is meeting her progress coach at the end … Continue reading
Colleges and violent extremism
I work in a large inner city sixth form college with 2,600 students in London’s 3rd most socio-economically deprived borough where unemployment, poverty and homelessness are more common than average. Another way of describing the college is that it is also … Continue reading
Do qualifications create wealth?
Does education make us richer? A ridiculous question perhaps, but the belief that educational achievement leads to economic growth is strongly held by many politicians despite all evidence to the contrary. The recent Department for Education press release claiming that … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Education policy
Tagged Alison Wolf, economy, Education, employment, Ha-Joon Chang, qualifications, wealth, young people
2 Comments
Where do all our A level students go?
NewVIc’s A-level university progression suggests that sixth forms which set excessively high A-level entry requirements are missing out on many students who could progress to higher education, including to the most selective universities. I have already posted here about the university destinations of the … Continue reading
Vocational education: rejecting the narrative of failure
According to Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, we have a ‘lamentable record on vocational education’ which is ‘failing to deliver the needs of both young people and society’. Criticism of vocational courses is echoed by many, including the Labour Party in … Continue reading
Berkeley and the promise of the public university
Frederick Wiseman’s brilliant documentary ‘At Berkeley’ which takes a long (4 hour) look at this large Californian university as it was in one semester of 2010. Despite its length, I warmly recommend it to anyone interested in education. As viewers … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Reviews
Tagged 'At Berkeley', Berkeley, California, film, Frederick Wiseman, Public education, student loans
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5 New Year wishes for post-16 education
Here are my 5 personal post-16 education wishes for 2015. I think they are modest, realistic and realisable and could probably be progressed at no net cost. I believe that, taken together, these 5 changes could start to yield tangible benefits for … Continue reading
What I blogged about in 2014
I’ve been blogging for just over a year now and when I started I had no idea what I would write about, how it would go and whether I’d want to continue. A year on, I’m much clearer about the … Continue reading
People’s College and Top Academy: which is best?
Imagine two colleges, let’s call them People’s College and Top Academy. We want to compare them, so we turn to the national performance tables which tell us that the average A-level point score for People’s College is 200 (C-) compared … Continue reading
Eddie Playfair 