What this piece brought home was how lousy a job those of us who have spent years talking to each other about ed on social media, going to confs, blogging etc have done of communicating to anyone outside of teaching. Leaves the field wide open to stuff like this. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

‘Tiger mum’ Lucy Powell on Labour’s vocational skills drive: ‘It’s about ambition for everybody’

Lucy Powell says it is ‘false trade-off’ by critics to suggest schools in England can’t pursue academic excellence alongside technical skills

theguardian.com

"Students whose teachers had access to the AI tool rated their classes as less enjoyable, less interesting and less important than students in the control group." 👀 This seems...important? hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

Teachers save time with AI. Their students may pay the price

Students say AI-assisted classes feel less interesting, less enjoyable and less important

hechingerreport.org

At the heart of this very weird discourse is a belief that adults have the ability to minutely dictate a child's identity. Lots of people have pointed out that this bans George from the Famous Five; it bans children choosing clothing, haircuts and nicknames. It denies children social individuality.

Robert Dallas Gray@robertdallasgray.com · 4w ago

I find it frankly bizarre that the government should be so afraid of children wearing clothing and using names that might not align with the gender they were assigned at birth. you want me to get a doctor’s note so my daughter can wear trousers? I’m sorry but that’s just extremely weird

We are not doing anything about inclusion at Advantage Schools. A blog from Sallie Stanton, Chief Education Officer: t.co/sWGx0u2gA2

A shocking thought that you could be legally obliged to implement interventions that evidence shows have no benefit - and indeed could have negative impacts

Ben Newmark@bennewmark.bsky.social · 4w ago

Evidence Informed? My recent speech from ResearchED on why I'm so worried about our direction of travel and why once again we may need to fight for evidence informed education. bennewmark.wordpress.com/2026/07/07/e...

Evidence Informed? My recent speech from ResearchED on why I'm so worried about our direction of travel and why once again we may need to fight for evidence informed education. bennewmark.wordpress.com/2026/07/07/e...

11 minutes? 11 minutes?!

The positive of Balogun is it's the first time a Republican has intervened to reduce a black man's sentence.

Happy 78th Birthday to the NHS 🥳 Nye Bevan’s vision of universal healthcare became reality on 5 July 1948 "Illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be penalised, but a misfortune, the cost of which should be shared by the community"

Kind of weird how many left wing Americans are using the World Cup to advance the FN talking point that Black people can't be French...

In addition to 'Assessment Reform Week' sounding like the world's worst festival, I'm not sure it's a great use of our time to spend a week of after school conference calls to negotiate how to change GCSEs based on the recent CAR when it sounds like the next PM wants another one...

All 'net zero clampdowns' in future to be published by Telegraph Money. Couldn't build an underground swimming pool in my terraced house in Kensington because of woke.

Saw somewhere that they'd observed that these shenanigans had resulted in the deaths of several tiny ducklings and I cannot stress how quickly a British PM who did that would be forced from office.

Pawel Swidlicki@pswidlicki.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Is being on bluesky making me even more terminally US-brained? Yes. Am I living my best life following the algae situation in the Reflecting Pool? Also yes.

No jury convicted them of terrorism. The jury convicted them of grievous bodily harm because they fractured the spine of a police officer with a sledgehammer. The judge said that there was 'no justification for the extreme and gratuitous force' they used in attacking police officers. Another rake.

Zack Polanski@zackpolanski.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Gut wrenching to see four young people jailed for direct action against an arms supplier to Israel. Years in prison for protesting to save lives in Gaza, with 'terrorism' used despite no jury convicting them of it. A truly dangerous attack on the right to protest.

So what's the point of his leadership bid then? What would he do differently?

Mark Chadbourn@chadbourn.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Labour hopeful Andy Burnham has u-turned on rejoining the EU, Bloomberg reports. “I am not proposing rejoining the EU…I respect the decision that was made at the referendum…The last thing we should do now is re-run those arguments.” Screeching 180 from just 7 months ago.

Public First conducted new public attitudes research ahead of yesterdsy's marches. Tommy Robinson had 17% approval and 47% approval. He is barred from the Reform Party, as a former BNP member, but its supporters are split 35% approve & 31% disapprove

What Tommy Robinson is saying, which never changes, is less newsworthy than how many people he's addressing. It's a few paragraphs before the numbers appear; organisers claim millions, reality 60,000, less than half of his last rally. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Tommy Robinson tells tens of thousands at London rally to prepare for ‘battle of Britain’

Turnout down at second ‘unite the kingdom’ march featuring Islamophobic and ethnonationalist hate speech and flyers

theguardian.com

So, Timothy Chalamet, if no one cares about ballet anymore, why is *every* channel on my TV showing Swan Lake right now?

Green manifesto for Walthamstow doesn’t even mention police, let alone commit to work with them-as Labour MP know nothing progressive about abandoning fight against mobile phone theft, antisocial behaviour, street safety or car crime and work with council, police and community to tackle them.

There's also a European Space Agency. The ESA provides life support, power and propulsion for the central module in the Artemis II mission. This has been achievable despite having a lower GDP per capita and universal healthcare.

Katie Mack@astrokatie.com · 4mo ago

NASA isn't why the US doesn't have universal healthcare, or a social safety net. The US doesn't have those things because politicians with the power to provide them choose specifically not to (with varying levels of support from voters). Enthusiasm for human spaceflight doesn't drive that choice.

Do all of the recent Ofsted reports include tables of GCSE results in which the most recent are 23/24, despite the fact that 24/25 was the most recent year of GCSEs? Might this paint improving schools in rather a bad light?

It is just as important, in my experience, for school leaders to make sure they are stopping initiatives that haven't worked, before they start to implement anything new.

4. Except we're building this on an assumption that's highly suspect at least. The @schoolsweek.bsky.social investigation into what was on EHCPs was hair raising. So much dubious practice. schoolsweek.co.uk/send-provisi...

Too many of our SEND interventions make provision worse

We must call out unevidenced practices and debunked ideas pervading EHCPs

schoolsweek.co.uk

1. The fundamental problem with the SEND white paper is it's working off the assumption there's lots of expertise and great practice available and the issue is it's too hard to get. The underpinning belief is if this support got to children faster and without a fight things will get better fast.

This was, as was Daisy's keynote last year, an absolutely brilliant and eye-opening talk!

Daisy Christodoulou@daisychristo.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Great day at Research Ed Birmingham yesterday. I spoke about AI & education: what needs to change. You can download my slides here: bit.ly/DCBrum2026 Subscribe to our Substack here: substack.nomoremarking.com Next intro webinar in April - register here: www.nomoremarking.com/events

Just naked racism from Farage and the Mail. Only British and commonwealth citizens are allowed to vote. It's not 'stealing' to legally take part in your own country's elections

The theory is that Muslim patriarchs forced their families to vote for a party led by a gay Jewish man; and if they hadn't exercised this coercive control their wives and children would have instead voted to deport themselves. This is not a normal level of cope.

Adam Bienkov@adambienkov.bsky.social · 5mo ago

The real threat to democracy doesn't come from 'family voting'. It comes from the losing side refusing go accept they've lost

Presenting a potted history of Ofsted in Session 3 at @researchedbrum.bsky.social . Join me in the Library to look at missed inspections, missing schools, poor financial records, and misleading statements to Parliament, as we seek to answer the question 'Does Ofsted make sense?' #rEDBrum

PROGRAMME DROP TOMORROW AND IT IS *IMMENSE* 🔥 #rEDBRUM @bethgg.bsky.social @isaacmoore7.bsky.social @jonhutchinson.bsky.social @bennewmark.bsky.social @tombennett71.bsky.social @claresealy.bsky.social @didau.bsky.social FEW TIX LEFT HERE FOR 28TH FEB: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/researched...