It’s just depressing. Further education has been cut to ribbons. Higher education is in crisis. Labour turns its eyes to the bit of the education system which is turning out the highest literacy rates in the western world and goes “that’s the bit that needs to change”

Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social · 2h ago

A must-read by @daisychristo.bsky.social:

You heard that a big meta-review of ChatGPT effects on learning got retracted? Here's a short thread of studies unpacking why it - but also many other AIED studies - should not be trusted as guides for policymakers or educators. arstechnica.com/ai/2026/05/i...

Ben Williamson@benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 2d ago

The evidence about AI in education remains terrible as a basis for policy or practice. As schools in some places come back from summer next week (oh Scotland it's too early), here's a wee roundup on just how truly woefully AIED research has stood up and why educators shouldn't call on it 1/

If Arday was Professor of Suicidal Empathy and Luxury Beliefs, the reactionary commentariat wouldn’t have bat an eyelid.

Article that blames ‘progressive neoliberalism’ (Fraser) for the Arday affair: archive.is/2026.08.08-0...

Let’s close unis, make the remaining few prohibitively expensive, defund accountable independent media, allow radicalised bad faith actors to replace it with its opposite, outsource knowledge acquisition & critical thought to AI, divide the world into patriots &. traitors, & see how it plays out.

The What if Reform Wins? book underestimates how quickly the project would unravel in chaos. Imagine ordering the Navy to invade France using war ships to drag rafts to shore, drowning people live on tv. While insulting France like this. Wonder if Goodwin is having buyer’s remorse.

Rob Jacques@knutcrosswords.bsky.social · 6d ago

This is profoundly upsetting

The sociology of education can lack rigour but its absence in other fields such as evolutionary psychology is arguably much more harmful, while other fields get a special pass.

🎯 the discourse above vocational v academic is frustrating - as if schools can be grammar schools and FE colleges at the same time and teach apprenticeships in plumbing and AI

Laura McInerney@missmc.bsky.social · 6d ago

Smaller class sizes, absolute top quality teaching, strong pastoral support, and tasks that are just difficult enough to be hard yet do-able. If you get those right, it often doesn’t really matter that the subject is. The question of how to achieve that for such students is the real conversation.

The arrogant private school to Oxbridge types with unfalsifiable belief systems mocking and deriding sociology are hard to ignore.

Huw C. Davies@huwcdavies.bsky.social · last wk.

This whole affair is so damaging for the discipline and any response is going to be too little too late. If it goes mainstream and becomes a running joke, it will become a symbol of the field in the public imagination and fuel more racism. It had to be Cofnas, of all people too.

With a month to go until our PUBLIC LECTURE in September, @mit.edu’s Angela Saini shares her thoughts on the importance of sociology in medical research, why classifications of race and sex matter, and the links between power, knowledge and science. buff.ly/KnRoD80

This whole affair is so damaging for the discipline and any response is going to be too little too late. If it goes mainstream and becomes a running joke, it will become a symbol of the field in the public imagination and fuel more racism. It had to be Cofnas, of all people too.

Will Davies@will-davies.bsky.social · last wk.

Remarkable piece of journalism, using the reputation of the journalist and newspaper (which some will no doubt discredit) to try and circumvent the heat surrounding this case www.theguardian.com/education/ng...

The is poor and disappointing both on lab leak and school closures. Lab leakers aren’t posing legitimate questions the scientific community can answer. They only have unfalsiable opinions. Many vulnerable people worked in schools. This isn’t about ‘the left’ over-trusting institutions.

The News Agents@thenewsagents.co.uk · last wk.

“I’m glad we live in a country that is deferential to expertise - but at times in the pandemic, that did go too far.” “I’m not sure school closures were a price worth paying.” Lewis on how ‘legitimate questions’ have emerged - and should be asked - about how we handled Covid.

Pure ideological tosh and magical thinking that now defines even the most intellectual forms of conservativism.

James Murray@james-bg.bsky.social · last wk.

This is even worse than Badenoch’s letter yesterday, as she has space to explain what she would do instead of net zero targets to tackle the climate change she accepts is real but then doesn’t. She accuses Labour of not having a plan, then insists we should trust her unannounced plan will be better.

As ever, these journalists use the skills they acquired at elite schools and universities on humanities courses to mobilise bigotry and ignorance with sophistry, as if it's a parlour game.

Nate O@nateo.bsky.social · last wk.

As predictable as the rising sun, a plagiarism scandal becomes denouncing critical race theory as an entire discipline (no evidence, no examples), relies on Charlotte Gill’s uncanny journalistic ability to find and print niche PhD dissertation titles from the humanities

Lableakers: the lab engineered a bio-weapon that was less deadly than flu, a bit like a cold, could be cured by Vitamin D or horse de-wormer & its first host drove from the lab to the wet market without contaminating anyone in between and infected the shoppers and scientists want to cover this up.

Stephen Nuñez@socio-steve.bsky.social · last wk.

I still don't understand the purpose of this conspiracy theory exactly. Why would everyone be trying to cover up that the virus (which was clearly not bioengineered) was loosed through a lab leak as opposed to spread in wet markets?

This is excellent on the current politicisation of academia by the Right, ending by taking up Wendy Brown’s heavily caveated Weberianism www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...

In the Grip of Politics | Greg Afinogenov

All of us, from academics to fishermen, have now internalized a practice of reading the social world as a field of political or latently political signs. TV watching habits, food choices, clothing, in...

nplusonemag.com

“The evidence is stacking up”. WTF? The evidence was stacked forty years ago, which was the right time to act. Nevertheless, Stanley will be vilified for breaking with r/w orthodoxy.

Leo Hickman@leohickman.carbonbrief.org · 2w ago

++BREAKING++ The Daily Telegraph has... *rubs eyes* ...published something sensible about climate change: "I’m coming to the view that the Online Right is going wrong, eschewing compassion or charm, talking itself into corners of angry irrelevance. Take climate change."

Have some research to be published later this year that shows that this is true of female teachers too. Misogyny is the lodestar of this ‘hyper-politics’.

Jason Wilson@jasonaw.bsky.social · 2w ago

I do empathize with the stuff journalists in this story are dealing with. That said, don’t self-censor. Just don’t do it. www.theguardian.com/media/2026/j...

C’mon guys please stop doing those unacceptable hand gestures and celebrate community friendship because the Commonwealth Games are on.

Huw C. Davies@huwcdavies.bsky.social · 2w ago

This is poor. Especially posting on X, with the replies turned off.

This is poor. Especially posting on X, with the replies turned off.

Private Eye tells me that How Green Was My Valley is one of Andy Burnham’s favourite books. Oh dear. I write a PhD on 1930s Welsh mining novels, including a whole chapter on Llewellyn’s work. I even read the terrible sequels. It really, really isn’t a story of working-class solidarity etc.

I went to CPAC GB for The Economist. It was... interesting

What’s this era going to be? Ultra-mega-hyper politics?

Dave Andress@davidandress.bsky.social · 2w ago

Cambridge PhD, Oxford job, the word "climate" appears exactly once in the piece, dismissively. People like this will be preaching at us from the ruins. But we'll be living in them.

You'd be forgiven for believing the same strategy is being pursued in the UK.

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2w ago

1. The new Trump / Kratsios plan for US science appears explicitly designed to destroy US universities. Diverting money to tech donors is probably just a bonus. Gift link.

Climate “hysteria” is also highly female-coded. A politics that sees women as impediments to “progress” and “prosperity”.

Toby Buckle@polphilpod.bsky.social · 3w ago

the new right makes men *undisguiseably* repellent then frames that as women's fault

According to ONS projections, with zero net migration by 2050 almost 1 in 3 of us will be over 65.

Mark O’Neill 🐻@radiobeartime.com · 3w ago

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Sam Freedman@samfr.bsky.social · 3w ago

I wrote about what Burnham and Co should do on universities for @theobserveruk.bsky.social observer.co.uk/news/columni...

Argentina disgracing themselves with classless, MAGA-esque behaviour.

Wonder if means that teams that hold on to possession with quick inter passing and movement that frustrates and tires opponents are in the final. Too simplistic?

Huw C. Davies@huwcdavies.bsky.social · 3w ago

Don’t normally bother with football. Watched a few World Cup games, including England v Argentina. Is preventing players from running with the ball by playing the man rather than the ball, feigning injury, harassing the referee, and seemingly arbitrary added time really all just part of the game?

Don’t normally bother with football. Watched a few World Cup games, including England v Argentina. Is preventing players from running with the ball by playing the man rather than the ball, feigning injury, harassing the referee, and seemingly arbitrary added time really all just part of the game?