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- Get children thinking: why philosophy is the perfect lockdown activity for youngsters - Yana Manyukhina. Lockdown unquestionably brings significant challenges into children’s education. But it also presents an opportunity for parents and carers – and teachers – to create new, more inspiring and more freeing learning environments for children learning at home. What…
- Social capital: in the days of Covid-19, good neighbours keep their distance - Francesca Borgonovi and Elodie Andrieu. In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam illustrated the decline of social capital in the United States and traced it to changes in how individuals spend time at work, family and leisure – alone. According to Putnam,…
- Making post-GCSE decisions during the Covid-19 crisis: the need for action - Lorna Unwin, Ruth Lupton, Stephanie Thompson, Sanne Velthuis, republished from the BERA blog. In the public debate about the impacts of the Covid-19 lockdown on education, much attention has understandably been given to concerns about disadvantaged children falling behind at school,…
- COVID-19: a defining moment for longitudinal research? - Rob Davies, republished from the CLOSER blog. It is clear the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for individuals, families and society will be deep and long-lasting. However, we still don’t fully understand the impact of the virus, nationally or regionally, or how…
- The phrase ‘online learning’ is alluring and misleading: the site of learning is the mind - Farid Panjwani. A plethora of packages, platforms and information sources have flooded the Internet to help locked-down children learn from home and advise parents on how to help them. There is no going back on this trend. With screens increasingly…
- When a pandemic causes school closures it has wide-ranging impacts beyond public health: our logic model can help in decision-making - James Thomas, Alison O’Mara-Eves, Dylan Kneale and Rebecca Rees. The closure of schools has been a recommended intervention in response to pandemics because of its potential for reducing the transmission of infection among children, school staff, and those they contact. Previous evidence has shown…
- What should teachers be prepared for when young children return after lockdown: lessons from China and elsewhere - Yuwei Xu and Clare Brooks. With the outbreak of COVID-19 globally, school closures and online education have become shared experiences for children, teachers, and parents around the world. As China emerges from lockdown, schools are preparing for re-opening. National guidelines, issued by…
- What are ‘stuck’ schools and what sort of fresh thinking can help them move on? - Bernie Munoz, Melanie Ehren and Jo Hutchinson. The government is making some assumptions about so-called ‘stuck’ or ‘intractable’ schools that need to be closely examined. One of these assumptions is that placing a small group of failing schools in special…
- The home schooling quagmire: it’s about more than laptops - Jennie Golding. The move to ‘home schooling’ has, quite rightly, triggered a storm of commentaries about how the gap between the disadvantaged and the middle class will widen. Last week the House of Commons Education Select Committee conducted a session…
- ‘Tell me a story from your head!’ – working with parents to design an app to help spark ideas - Sara Kalantari. Parents and children have been telling each other stories from time immemorial. In the extraordinary days we are living through, storytelling could take on increased importance, as families spend more time at home together seeking ways to make…
- It looked as though our regulators were finally willing to trust teachers – but Ofqual’s latest guidance suggests otherwise - Mary Richardson. Over recent decades England has seen the gradual erosion of trust in teachers and in teaching as a profession. This suspicion and casual condemnation happens across many public spheres and is most prominent during August each year…
- Education and Covid-19: why we need inspections when schools are shut down - Melanie Ehren. Ofsted’s decision to suspend all routine inspection from 17 March quickly became irrelevant, as schools closed and staff scrambled to organise distance learning and to support parents in homeschooling their children. Now that the lockdown looks set to…
- There is a chance to create a better world but it will require collective effort, reflection and remembrance of lessons from this crisis - Farid Panjwani. There are no natural disasters, only natural phenomena. We call some of them disasters because of their human consequences. Coronavirus is no exception. As a phenomenon it threatens us all in the same biological ways. But, as a…
- In memory of Professor Harvey Goldstein (1939-2020): living by the evidence - Gemma Moss. Harvey Goldstein, who has died of Covid-19 at the age of 80, has left a formidable legacy from his work, both as a statistician and as a campaigner for more careful scrutiny of assessment data in education –…
- ‘What put the goodness into your heart?’ the testimony of Bergen-Belsen survivors and how acts of compassion inspire us to face modern adversity - Ruth-Anne Lenga. We find ourselves in extraordinarily troubling times. The Covid-19 pandemic has affected all of us. Perhaps, now more than ever, it is important to remember defining moments of our collective history, in the hope we might be inspired…
- Education in quarantine: what can we learn from early childhood educators in China? - Jie Gao and Clare Brooks. While we are marching towards the third week of lockdown in the UK, Chinese early childhood practitioners are busy preparing for the re-opening of kindergartens after more than two months of quarantine. We asked…
- Education and Covid-19: how can we manage change when yesterday is no longer a predictor of tomorrow? - Will Brehm. Human life around the world has radically changed in a matter of weeks because of the novel coronavirus, known scientifically as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). Some see the possibility of new futures in the making. The…
- Covid-19 and education: Why have we waited until now to improve the accuracy of predicted grades? - Gill Wyness. For students expecting to take their A-Levels and BTECs this summer, the impact of COVID-19 will be profound. Instead of taking the formal examinations that they were preparing for, Ofqual confirmed today that school leavers will be provided…
- Mind the gap: will home learning reinforce inequality and what can we do about it? - Clare Brooks, Eleanor Kitto and Carole Scott. In the first of two blog posts on home learning and young children in these extraordinary times, we highlighted how clear and practical research evidence can help schools and parents find principles to guide…
- Educating young children at home: key lessons from research - Clare Brooks, Eleanor Kitto and Carole Scott. The closure of schools and early years settings to all except for the children of key workers will have a profound impact on all parents, particularly those with young children. Without adequate data as…
- GCSE results in English and maths: whatever approach is taken, here is how it should be validated - John Jerrim. We found out last week that GCSE grades for the 2019/20 cohort will be based upon judgments made by teachers. It has been announced that Ofqual will be working with the sector to provide guidance on how this should be…
- Will the Covid crisis spark a radical overhaul of schools and universities? - John White. Weeks ago I thought the climate emergency might be the spark, but now, especially as UK schools and universities are closing, I think Covid-19 is more likely. I had an email from a senior academic colleague in Wuhan who recently…
- Exam fever: more coursework and less reliance on final tests would make it easier to award accurate grades - Tina Isaacs and Mary Richardson. Yesterday Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Secretary of State for Education Gavin Williamson announced the cancellation of this year’s GCSEs and A level examinations. “We will make sure that pupils get the qualifications they need and…
- GCSEs are cancelled. Here's what the government should do - John Jerrim. Yesterday, the DfE took the extraordinary step of cancelling GCSE exams. this will mean that some children will suffer the consequences throughout their lifetime. This is obviously a very tricky situation, and any solution the government comes up…
This blog was written by academics at the UCL Institute of Education (IOE), for anyone interested in current issues in education and related social sciences.
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