The Department for Education has published ‘The Writing Framework’.

It will be of interest for leaders & teachers in primary looking to improve writing standards and refine their practice (but it’ll be of interest to many secondary school colleagues too).

Find it here: lnkd.in/gkBw-QHJ

What Happened to the Kamikaze Pilots Who Returned? Desperate times called for desperate measures for Japan at the end of 1944. The Americans were sweeping through the Pacific, winning battle after battle. They were destroying Japanese warships in the ...

One for anyone teaching the poem Tissue

www.historydefined.net/kamikaze-pil...

Stevenson's intent

Dickens' intent

Shakespeare's intent

Priestley's intent

NEW BLOG: Making writers sexy and appealing - Part 1 (author's intent)

learningfrommymistakesenglish.blogspot.com/2025/05/maki...

#engchat #engchatuk

Have just added the ‘Macbeth’ cycle to this revision folder. As always, use/chuck/change as you see fit! 👉🏻 www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/s9x6l...

What is happening with writing? Writing problems, and solutions, can too often go undetected in schools. Unlike reading, there are relatively few specific writing assessments to detect issues that schools can use, so it is hard to f...

*** NEW POST ***

'What is happening with writing?'

"Schools are trying to support struggling writers with ‘build-your-own’ approaches & interventions. Writing lacks good diagnostic assessment as well as interventions to address problems that emerge..."

alexquigley.co.uk/what-is-happ...

Here are some revision lessons on language and literature I’ve made for the 2025 run up to exams. Use/chuck/change as you see fit! Help yourselves 👍🏻

www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/s9x6l...

It's half term, which means I have a copy of Primary Reading Simplified to give away.

Simply *repost* this post for your chance to win.

I will choose a winner at random this Saturday (22nd February).

*** 'Why word consciousness matters' ***

"Word consciousness refers to the knowledge and dispositions necessary for students to learn, appreciate, and effectively use words."

It is vital to promote the curiosity students need to read & learn.

alexquigley.co.uk/why-word-con...

NEW BLOG: Precision and laser sharp thinking

learningfrommymistakesenglish.blogspot.com/2025/02/prec...

#engchat #engchatuk

Free PDF guide for Year 6s about the SATs from @lbqorg.bsky.social 👇🏼

Useful if you’re doing a SATs info evening for parents soon (or even just to hand out at parents’ evening)

www.lbq.org/filestore/Gu...

#EduSkyPrimary

DfE to set out ‘common approach’ to teaching writing Half of a £2m DfE funding pot is set aside for secondaries to buy resources for struggling readers

Feels significant that half of this fund is set aside for helping struggling readers at *secondary* school - perhaps a reflection of post-Covid challenges and an apparent fall in children/teens reading for pleasure.

GCSE English Language: updates to our assessments for summer 2026 Announcing changes to increase exam paper and mark scheme clarity for GCSE English Language.

Updates to 2026 AQA English Language exam:

‘The changes will affect current Year 10 students taking exams in summer 2026 and onwards. Current Year 11 and those students resitting exams in November 2025 will not see any changes to the exam papers.’

www.aqa.org.uk/news/gcse-en...

Might be behind on the game here, but this podcast is a fantastic performance of AIC. Will definitely be using alongside our upcoming read of the play for a quality experience.

Last Friday was some of the best CPD I’ve ever had. On a mission to better support our hearing impaired students to learn to read at Carlton Academy Trust, my colleague and I visited Thomasson Memorial School for the Deaf in Bolton.

What did we learn? 👇🧵 1/

NEW BLOG: Narrowing those feelings
learningfrommymistakesenglish.blogspot.com/2024/09/effe...
#engchat #engchatuk

*NEW* for AQA: 2025 exam date posters for Lang & Lit. There’s about 20 in here, including new set texts. Help yourself 😊

www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/f0kwd...

Teaching Writing; Intentions Before Techniques Barbara Bleiman argues that focusing too much on form when teaching writing can be counter-productive.

New blog by me on @engmediacentre.bsky.social website on the teaching of writing. www.englishandmedia.co.uk/blog/teachin...

Yes, of course.

It’s true. Found out off my ECT.

It’s bonkers! Couldn’t believe it when I found out.

Not helped by the fact Lit paper 2 had PGCE students marking it!

We can’t continue with a system that puts so much emphasis on results, with huge consequences for students and schools, and yet put up with such awful unreliability.

Experts raise concerns over ‘unreliable’ marking of GCSE English Some high-achieving pupils in England received lower than expected grades that rose after being re-marked

So glad to see this piece. It's a national scandal that results in English GCSE are so unreliable that grades can go up by 2 or even 3 grades (as reported by some HoDs). Also that remarks are limited by schools' finances. A major social justice issue. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Streaked tenrecs and improving reading Have you ever seen a ‘streaky tenrec’? Probably not. For pupils sitting the key stage 2 SATs reading assessment, they likely met the tenrec and the wildlife of Madagascar for the first time.  The fir...

🚨 NEW POST 🚨

'Streaked tenrecs and improving reading'

"No assessment is perfect – and the KS2 SATs reading certainly isn’t. So, we should replace it with something better, right?"

alexquigley.co.uk/streaked-ten...

Humans first, professionals second Well hello there, and welcome to update #089!

New post

Humans first, professionals second

As we think about how we treat one another at the start of the new year

open.substack.com/pub/marymyat...

*NEW* AQA Lang & Lit mock exam trackers using June 24 boundaries. RAG rated cell formatting and formula columns locked to prevent accidental data corruption, like so 👇 Help yourselves and RT for a wider audience. #teamenglish

www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/2cx4a...

I haven’t seen this analysed much, but the post-Covid English performance needs exploring further.

#TeamEnglish - A synthesis and summary of the AQA English Language Paper 1 Examiners' Report for June 2024: 1drv.ms/w/c/4ca27bf9...

(Paper 2 to follow shortly)

Thanks for this 🙂

Following the Paper 1 exam report shared earlier, please find a synthesis and summary of the AQA English Language Paper 2 Examiners' Report for June 2024 here: 1drv.ms/w/c/4ca27bf9...