Blog

Sitting in my office writing this article feels rather surreal. This is likely to be my last piece that I write for SSAT. Earlier in the year I was interviewed for a book on leadership. The author asked me about my style.

Last weekend The Guardian published a piece by John Harris about the teachers’ strike. As usual, he made some astute observations. He highlights the extent to which teachers’ pay has decreased in real terms (20% since 2010) and key data
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SSAT’s Leadership Legacy Project has been a core part of our membership offer for several years now. It is designed to support teachers who are in the early stages of their career and showing clear leadership potential. As schools start
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Starting your first teaching job in September? Some advice from those who have been there. As we near the end of this term, those teachers preparing to take up their first posts in September will be looking ahead. I think
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Laura Burton, Senior Education Lead at SSAT and head of our Primary Network, reflects upon the key themes from the SSAT Primary Conference – Principled Leadership: reconnect, re-inspire, restore, which took place earlier this term.  Dr Dan Belcher, Senior Education
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Recently, I went back to where I started my teaching career. I met up with a former colleague, Andy. He joined the history team in my second year. We operated within a humanities faculty, and I, as a mature entrant,
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On Tuesday 27 June, we had a drop-in session for MPs – this event was sponsored by Rosie Duffield, MP. We had conversations with MPs from all parties, and it was pleasing to hear how passionate they were about schools in their own constituencies. Conversations varied in length, but we covered the following:

A new partnership between the Chartered College of Teaching and SSAT will support teachers to embed formative assessment practices in their classrooms.

Evidence-informed practice is now a common phrase used across schools in the UK. Teachers and school leaders are actively seeking out research to identify the ‘best bets’ to implement in the classroom.

The embedding formative assessment programme was created following over ten years of research by Dylan Wiliam and Siobhan Leahy. All elements of the programme underwent rapid prototype testing, from the size of teacher learning community groups, the time between workshops and the structure of the sessions. The structure of the session alone is on its approximately thirteenth iteration.