Curriculum K: Giving children the best possible start

Stressed, anxious, tired, unfocused children will not learn. At Kensington, when we started to look at why children were struggling, so often the reasons were health-related. Combine this with a mental and physical health pandemic for our young people and we knew that something needed to change.
The race for office

Let’s be frank, when the votes have been counted and the King invites Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer to form the next government, tackling racial inequality will not be high on the incoming administration’s agenda. It just won’t. Race, quite simply, doesn’t matter.
Too much division

We have come to a point in education where it seems division and dichotomy are prevalent, and possibly felt by some as necessary to justify claims for a high-quality education system. There have been many debates around the best way to run education in England and a lot of these debates are historical, semantic and have been exacerbated by spats on social media, with often toxic consequences for scholarly activity.
Opportunity and Optimism

The goal of education is to expand life chances. How do we do that? It is not by valuing norm reference and measurement by solely academic standards. Our current high stakes exam system, where exams are preceded by a curriculum which values the most academic subjects, whatever the child’s needs and interests, has led to a situation in schools which has become unsustainable.
Speech, language and deceptively simple solutions

It is said that when we established a national education system, there was a brief debate as to whether schools should teach children about spoken language. This was quickly concluded with the decision that in fact that was their parents’ job. Who knows whether that was the right decision then, but it is absolutely the wrong policy right now.
Wired to ignite: developing learning powers through metacognition

Hello, fellow educators and curious minds! My name is Gloria Gomez Barrera, and I am a Year 1 teacher and, part of the Next Big 10 Change Team for Atelier 21. In this blog, I am excited to share with you some insights into how we unlock learning powers in our students through metacognition at our school.
Learner Profiles: assessment for an expansive curriculum

As a pioneering school, Atelier 21 prides itself on crafting meaningful, joyful, and relevant learning experiences for our future changemakers. However, with diverse cohorts from Reception to Year 11, one of the many challenges we face is how to authentically assess and document student progress while delivering a fluid, emergent curriculum.
Balancing the Paradox: Rethinking Leadership for Teacher Agency

Given the current context our school leaders work in – where funding shortages, an exponential rise in child poverty, squeezed public services and a growing teacher recruitment and retention crisis are creating unparalleled pressures. I believe it is more important than ever that they are prepared and developed to tackle the complexities of the job.
Big Books for Big Learning

‘Do you remember what we learned last term in Science?’ A familiar, yet challenging question for children and quite often adults in schools to answer. Looking at displays or at previous exercise books where children have presented or recorded their work could be the answer. However, at Drew, learning journeys for foundational subjects can be found within the pages of what we call ‘Big Books’. These can sometimes be referred to as ‘floor books’ and this is a whole school approach. This teaching tool supports the development of children’s long-term memory, as they record the full journey the children experience throughout a Learning Adventure.
Who will get your vote on education? Let us measure what we value

As an experienced educator, I firmly believe in the power of an education system to transform society. However, the needs of young people are often at the back of the queue when it comes to deciding upon who gets our votes. Is education truly valued in our country? Money is spent on it and decisions are made about it. Agreed. But are these decisions made in the best interests of the students?