This *is* really interesting - I'm convinced parents being out of work is a (not the only) key factor driving low school attendance.

Anyone know how to talk to regional DWP leaders about this?

(and Stephen is right. The centre of govt needs the bandwidth to tackle these wicked problems)

Opportunity with @channel4news.bsky.social in Leeds:

⏳Applications for the Production Training Scheme are open until the 27th of April.

🔗It is for people with few links to the industry.

🎥They are offering 12-month paid roles in TV production.

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Do knowledge-rich curriculums cause mental health problems? And do skills-based curriculums make kids love school?

Great piece by @daisychristo.bsky.social debunking the idea that England's more rigorous school curriculum and assessment caused the decline in mental health.

TL:DR: Scotland + Wales have parallel declines - despite implementing opposite school policies.

substack.nomoremarking.com/p/do-knowled...

There's a bit of a window while the new curriculum is being written I suppose. It's not encouraging.

Also lol at agility.

‘Exam-obsessed’ schools leave pupils unready for work, Alan Milburn says Former minister leading review into young people and work cites survey showing most teachers decry lack of ‘soft skills’

Blaming the poor state of the economy, especially youth unemployment, on the school curriculum is really dumb.

And Milburn's suggestion to teach more 'life skills' without lowering standards, has been proven to lower standards wherever it's been tried.

www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Hey Ya

Bart goes to special ed class (The Simpsons) YouTube video by puzzlebox

youtu.be/YgrCJMhNTWk?...

Hope you both enjoy and you get what you're after!

Oh no! I got really invested in this.

Maybe it's a reflection of asking Dunning-Kruger'ed generalists to groupthink their way to a solution.

*Coughs* DfE *coughs*

I'd roll the dice on 7am

#FridayFive.
Your five favourite songs by your five favourite artists. Don't overthink it.
1. Gimmie Shelter. The Rolling Stones.
2. Come As You Are. Nirvana.
3. Let England Shake. P J Harvey.
4. Under the Pressure. The War on Drugs.
5. Don't Delete the Kisses. Wolf Alice.

A list of as thoughtful sector leaders as you can get for this important work on KS3. Encouraging.

Thanks for taking the time to understand how this stuff works.

I hadn't thought about the policy implications of the parent issue before but of course you are right (and the cases you cite demand it).

Spat tea

Building a high participation classroom: key steps If they aren’t listening, they aren’t learning. But knowing where to start to build a high participation classroom can be hard, so we’ve mapped out the key steps.

New Post!

In many classrooms, lots of students aren’t listening, meaning they aren’t learning. Here we outline a few common mistakes and simple techniques for building classrooms where ALL students participate.

Please share if you can 🙏

carouselteachlearnlead.substack.com/p/building-a...

This is excellent from @stephenkb.bsky.social and shows the three key issues:

1. Bad culture across services
2. There is no policy response at present for kids who are really into violence without ideology
3. The system hasn't thought about how to handle parents

Sometimes you just have to admire genius at work.

Well I hope we get a proper debate and some progress at least

Hopefully the bluntness of the report helps to surface this stuff.

Or possibly misaligned accountability. You will be in trouble if your budget isn't balanced and your case metrics aren't headed in the right direction.

But you'll be long gone and in another role by the time a public inquiry finds the buck was supposed to stop with you.

Maybe the former inculcates and selects for the latter.

Not really sure I can articulate how. Lack of accountability, revolving door leadership, failing upwards have to be factors.

Paragraphs from the Southport Inquiry report saying no one took responsibility

List from the Southport Inquiry report of all the agencies that passed the buck in a referral merry-go-round

I am very impressed with the Southport Inquiry report. It pulls no punches and calls out the elephants in the room.

Everyone passed the buck and no one took responsibility.

Safeguarding leads will find these sections all too familiar.

This is excellent and a good statement of what schools have to be doing these days.

Like many things the govt does, I'm broadly in favour of higher food standards in schools.

But it can't do that and claim cost of living is its number one priority. It will make school lunches more expensive.

It was, however, very shrewd to expand FSM eligibility before doing this.

God, yeah, it's like if the French elected a guy called Charles the Gaul

Also, migrant kids are great for schools. The preponderance of evidence is they do very well on aggregate, and create positive benefits beyond their own results.

Most importantly, it's *nice*. I love seeing Free Syria, Kurdistan, Rohingya etc etc flags and symbols at school culture days.

'In 2024 only 5 per cent of students across England and Wales studied a whole text by a female author at GCSE, while even fewer studied one by an author of colour.'

Good article on the constraints around text choice.

I'm not expecting the new curric will significantly alter this (p'haps poetry) 😔.

Think that just as with computing, AI will change the economy, will change what is on school curriculums, will change what and how teachers do administrative tasks…but in terms of best practice in classroom teaching, not that much.

There are some things in teaching that AI won’t change ‘Knowledge-rich’ curriculums will still be crucial in a world shaped by the technology

To the trad-mobile!

Ticking on in the background, the government's consultation on taking rights away from disabled children rolls on.

The system isn't good enough to make this work, and what is being proposed might well make it worse.

It's great @tom-richmond.com is covering this.