Published in
In this section I archive features and articles that have been published elsewhere. I contribute regularly to the national press, including The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, and The Daily Mail.
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A Century of Teaching Creative Writing in Schools: the Newbolt Report and teaching creative writing
Newbolt strongly advocates imaginative ways of teaching writing, championing self-expression above rote-learning.
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The Haunted House: Teaching Creative Writing Through Collaborative Learning to 9-13 year olds
Many teachers of creative writing find teaching 9-13-year-olds tricky. What exactly should you teach? And how? I might have discovered an answer…
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Becoming the falconer: productive feedback for the redrafting of creative writing
Aspects of the neoliberal education system can preclude the development of young writers. Feedback can be unempathetic, but it can also be productive, creating an internal dialogue that develops the writer over time.
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Teaching Mindfulness in an Unmindful System
A case study of a mindfulness teacher, Beth, and her experiences of teaching mindfulness to 11- to 16-year-olds in several English schools
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A headteacher confesses: Naughtiness is sometimes a sign of being clever #lessonswecanlearnfromteachers
This article is an extract from a forthcoming book, The Long Game: The Lessons We Can Learn From Long-Serving Teachers. The aim was to interview long-serving teachers, listen to their stories and see if I could draw out any lessons from their experiences. Constructive comments are welcome; they will help me make it a better book. […]
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Spare the rod and save the child? #lessonswecanlearnfromteachers
This article is an extract from a forthcoming book, The Long Game: The Lessons We Can Learn From Long-Serving Teachers, which will be published in the near future. The aim was to interview long-serving teachers, listen to their stories and see if I could draw out any lessons from their experiences. Constructive comments are welcome; they will […]
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What my footballing father taught me: get a good education #lessonswecanlearnfromteachers
This article is an extract from a forthcoming book, The Long Game: The Lessons We Can Learn From Long-Serving Teachers. The aim was to interview long-serving teachers, listen to their stories and see if I could draw out any lessons from their experiences. Constructive comments are welcome; they will help me make it a better book. […]
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Corbyn? Blimey, yes!
We need him to move the Labour Party forward. Why is Jeremy Corbyn so popular? Here’s a backbench Labour MP, a serial rebel during the Blair/Brown era proclaiming the same ideas he’s spouted for decades and no one has listened to. Now he’s the favorite to win the Labour Party leadership. Even people, like me, […]
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Academies are an expensive red herring. Here’s how you really improve school standards
How many times must academies be discredited before policymakers look at the proven but less headline-grabbing solutionn but less headline-grabbing solution? The prime minister’s announcement today that, if elected, the Tories will force “mediocre” schools to convert to academies was important for a couple of reasons. First, it indicated that the government wants to make […]
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The tweeting headteacher who took over the world
GILBERT: Are there any sane headteachers out there? The longer I teach, the more I ask this question because I think, possibly like becoming Prime Minister, it’s a role which is both stressful, lonely and can create a massively over-inflated ego. I really liked Tom Sherrington because he appeared to be both sane, reasonable and […]
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#ResearchED 2014: therapy for a nervous wishy-washy teacher
Last weekend, I cycled from my home in Bethnal Green to the 2014 ResearchED conference at Raine’s Foundation School and was amazed to see so many teachers paying out of their own pockets to attend a conference about educational research on a Saturday. The impressive attendance, possibly over 600 delegates, was a real testament to […]
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What really matters
Why do 95% of teachers not know about what really works in the classroom? Why are the media and politicians even more clueless? According to Mike Bell, who runs the Evidence-Based Teachers’ Network (EBTN), very few people are actually aware of the teaching techniques that are proven to work across all the age ranges and subjects. […]
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It’s the Blob Wot Won It
Did the Blob get Michael Gove the sack? The mainstream media seems to think so. The Sun’s editorial said: “The Left-wing hate campaign against Michael Gove was hysterical, absurd and undeserved. Sadly, it worked. The teachers’ unions established the Tory Education Secretary as a wicked pantomime villain hell-bent on the destruction of a system which […]
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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 […]
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Teacher Toolkit: the Profession’s Great Freedom Fighter!
Teacher Toolkit, a.k.a. Ross McGill, is one of the most successful teacher-bloggers in the world. He has nearly 60K followers on Twitter, his blog is the number 1. educational blog in the UK, and his book, 100 Ideas for Secondary School Teachers, is one of the most successful books about school published in the […]
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Our dedicated teachers deserve greater respect
THE shocking, terrifying killing of Ann Maguire, an experienced, much loved teacher, has made the nation aware of how important it is not to take teachers for granted. It is tragically sad that it has taken this noble teacher’s death to make the public conscious of this because, let’s face it, there are too many […]
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A killer in the classroom
Is it possible that violent and unruly children pose a bigger problem than schools dare admit? Having taught for more than 20 years in various comprehensives, I can honestly say that there has been no more shocking news about the profession in the past couple of decades than the death of Anne Maguire, a […]
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Are teachers doing the best for the best pupils?
The biggest thing holding back bright pupils is the limiting structure of GCSEs, says a comprehensive teacher Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools, depressed me no end when I heard him on the radio yesterday morning. I was getting ready to teach my mixed ability classes in the large comprehensive where I work […]
Free schools policy fuels social segregation
The prime minister’s announcement that, if re-elected, he will open 500 new free schools in the next five years, has catapulted this dismal policy initiative back into the headlines. Most commentators had assumed that David Cameron would keep quiet about free schools because it is generally acknowledged that they’ve been a bit of a disaster […]