Welcome to the Rethinking Education Round-Up!

June 06, 2023

Hello my fathomless friends

This is the first in a series of occasional newsletters called the Rethinking Education Round-up. Sometimes, I'll provide a quick round-up of exciting stuff happening in education reform-land. Other times, I’ll hone in on a single issue.

Today, I’d like to draw your attention to three exciting things - well, I think they’re exciting anyway:

  1. The Education Policy Alliance

  2. Upcoming events

  3. An amazing pod-stat

But first… do you like free stuff?

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Also, if there's anything you would like me to boost the signal of in future newsletters - upcoming events, book launches, news stories - please feel free to drop me a line here. We have an audience of around 2.5K so far.

OK, let’s get into it:

1. THE EDUCATION POLICY ALLIANCE

For the last 6 months or so, I’ve been beavering away behind the scenes with a lovely group of people to see whether we might come up with some sensible education policies. We’re calling ourselves the Education Policy Alliance.

Our aim is to create an education system that a) works for all young people and b) is centred around human flourishing. We’ve identified five policy areas that we’re going to look at initially:

  • Ofsted

  • Mental health and wellbeing

  • Recruitment & retention

  • Autonomy, innovation and diversification

  • The policy environment

We plan to publish our first consultation paper, focusing on Ofsted, in the next week or so. Watch this space!

2. THREE UPCOMING EVENTS

These are either free, or have discount codes for friends of Rethinking Ed.

  • Making Change Stick: A Practical Guide to Implementing School Improvement

    • A FREE 1h webinar on implementation science

    • Who’s it for? Anyone interested in change management, or becoming a more effective human being

    • Wed 14th June, 4-5pM

    • Sign up for FREE here

  • Metacognition in Action: A one-day workshop for Senior Leaders and Teaching and Learning Leads

    • Who’s it for? School leaders mainly, but really for anyone with an interest in metacognition. My recent blog Metacognition will set you free explains why you should come

    • Fri 23rd June, 9.30am-4pm

    • Tickets here - use the promo code REMET20 for a 20% discount

  • The Rethinking Education conference 2023

    • Who’s it for? Literally anyone with an interest in doing education differently - age 8 to 108. The line-up will be announced soon - it’s shaping up nicely...

    • Sat 23rd September, 2023, 9am-4.30pm

    • Tickets here - use the promo code RE20FRIEND for a 20% discount. There are also free and reduced price tickets available for those that need them. Budget need not be a barrier to attendance

3. AN AMAZING POD-STAT

It recently came to my attention that the Rethinking Education podcast is in the top 3% listened to podcasts on the planet, out of over 3 million podcasts globally. Not bad for a long-form podcast about education reform!

Here are a couple of recent highlights, in case you missed them:

Derry Hannam on becoming a democratic teacher in a state school

An astonishing conversation with Derry Hannam, a fascinating thinker and writer and practitioner of democratic education, and the author of ‘Another Way is Possible - Becoming a Democratic Teacher in a State School’. In his 20 years as a teacher in English state secondary schools, Derry Hannam always tried to create environments where students could make choices about - and take control of - their own learning in a democratic and rights respe

www.rethinking-ed.org/derry-hannam

"It needs to be broken up" - Frank Norris and Julie Grimshaw on the ongoing crisis at Ofsted

Frank Norris is a former headteacher and HMI (His Majesty’s Inspector) with decades of experience leading and inspecting a wide range of schools and other settings including secure units, independent schools, prisons, initial teacher education as well as secondary and primary schools in England and abroad. From 2014-19, Frank was the CEO of the Coop Academies Trust. The Coop Trust is highly regarded and is one of the highest performing for disadvantaged students ac

www.rethinking-ed.org/frank-norris-julie-grimshaw

Right, that should keep you going for a while.

Until the next time…

James