The Introduction to this series of blogs, HERE, sets out the background and goals.
There are many different senses in which people discuss ‘standards’. Sometimes they mean an overall judgement on the performance of the system as judged by an international test like PISA. Sometimes they mean judgements based on performance in official exams such as KS2 SATs (at 11) or GCSEs. Sometimes they mean the number of schools above or below a DfE ‘floor target’. Sometimes they mean the number of schools and/or pupils in Ofsted-defined categories. Sometimes people talk about ‘the quality of teachers’. Sometimes they mean ‘the standards required of pupils when they take certain exams’. Today, the media is asking ‘have Academies raised standards?’ because of the Select Committee Report (which, after a brief flick through, seems to have ignored most of the most interesting academic studies done on a randomised/pseudo-randomised basis).
This blog in…
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The Echo Chamber 