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Recent Posts
- ‘The Ministry of the Future’ by Kim Stanley Robinson December 20, 2020
- Why the comprehensive college? September 20, 2020
- Exam results – what just happened? August 23, 2020
- Starting to rethink education. June 10, 2020
- Knowledge and education for the future. May 25, 2020
- England’s unexpected exam revolution. May 5, 2020
- Tsitsi Dangarembga’s ‘Nervous Conditions’. May 3, 2020
- Rebecca Solnit on Hope. April 23, 2020
- In praise of lightness – Calvino’s Leggerezza. March 29, 2020
- An A-Z for a world which has to change. March 22, 2020
- Decarbonising education. March 15, 2020
- The mighty pencil November 2, 2019
- Knowledge-rich and skills-rich August 18, 2019
- ‘Unsheltered’ by Barbara Kingsolver August 11, 2019
- ‘The Overstory’ by Richard Powers. March 10, 2019
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Tag Archives: Area-based Reviews
More area reviews?
More area reviews of post-16 education? We’ve only just got through the last lot and that took up loads of everyone’s time for very little benefit. Surely this can’t be a serious suggestion… Well, it might not be guaranteed to … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Education policy
Tagged Area-based Reviews, collaboration, Colleges, efficiency, partnership, quality, school sixth forms, schools, Sixth form, sufficiency
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Sixth form resolutions for 2017
Like its predecessor, this year will no doubt be full of challenges and opportunities for colleges and sixth forms. 16-19 year-olds remain the worst funded full-time students in England while rapid qualification and assessment reform continues to affect almost every course … Continue reading
What future for Sixth Form Colleges?
I was asked to give a personal view on the future of sixth form colleges at the 2016 FE Staff Governors Conference on 2nd December, organised by a group of education unions: UNISON, ATL/AMIE, UCU and NAS/UWT together with the … Continue reading
London’s sixth forms.
There are around 165,000 students studying in London’s publicly funded sixth forms. These students are enrolled across 380 different institutions of many types and sizes which can be grouped into 4 broad categories: School sixth forms (as part of a … Continue reading
The challenge of small sixth forms.
The Department for Education has recently published new advice for academies intending to make significant changes. Amongst other things, the document requires them to make a full business case if they wish to add sixth form provision. This is a … Continue reading
16-19 education: from independence to interdependence.
I want to say a little about where we’ve been, where we find ourselves today and where we might be heading. When I say ‘we’ I am referring to 16-19 provision in colleges and most specifically sixth form colleges, although … Continue reading
A sixth form profile for the ‘Local London’ area.
‘Local London‘ is one of London’s subregional local authority groupings. It consist of 8 boroughs and corresponds roughly to the East London sub-region for the post-16 area review. School sixth forms will not be part of the reviews but the … Continue reading
New Year wishes for sixth form education in 2016
A year ago I posted 5 New Year wishes for post-16 education. I thought they were modest, realistic and realisable while also offering tangible benefits. My 5 wishes were: Recognise that innovation does not necessarily require the creation of new … Continue reading
Reviewing post-16 education in London
Principals and chairs of governors from most of London’s colleges assembled at City Hall last week for a briefing on the post-16 area review process. It’s not often that this group meets and although it happened without any great fanfare … Continue reading
The problem with England’s post-16 area reviews
There is a contradiction at the heart of the government’s post-16 area reviews for England and it was clearly exposed the other day by the very civil servants tasked with implementing them. Sixth form college principals and chairs of governors … Continue reading
Posted in Education policy
Tagged Area-based Reviews, Colleges, Education, efficiency, England, marketisation, Post-16 funding, Sixth form, Sixth form college
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Imagining a better future is the first step
My article on the post-16 area-based reviews from this week’s Times Education Supplement. Think of all the 16-18 year olds in your area. What do you see? Talented and ambitious young people keen to improve their knowledge and skills? Students … Continue reading
What’s at stake in the new post-16 Area-based Reviews?
Large and cost-effective v. small and inefficient? In Reviewing post-16 Education and Training Institutions published 3 days ago the government suggests that we need ‘fewer, often larger, more resilient and efficient providers’. The implication is that larger colleges are better … Continue reading
