BBC 2 Newsnight

  • What makes good teaching and how can we encourage it?

    I appeared on Newsnight last night discussing the teaching profession with presenter Kirsty Wark and Sean Worth, who is a Fellow of the think-tank, Policy Exchange, which was set up by a few people, including Michael Gove. We were talking about Michael Gove’s comment on Newsnight the previous night that outstanding teachers supported his reforms […]

  • Are standards getting worse in our schools? What is education for?

    It depends what you mean by standards. Exam pass rates have gone up, but does that mean standards are higher? I argued on Newsnight that teachers like me are now like foreman in factories; supervising, cajoling, bribing, lecturering children to pass exams. The net result is that children are getting better at passing exams, but […]