Newsround

What’s caught my eye this week?

• Here is a collection of the most read articles of 2018 in Education.
• The DfE has published the exam papers and mark schemes for Sats taken by around 600,000 year 6 pupils earlier this month; Maths, English reading and SPaG.
• How to stretch and challenge the “more able” pupils in your class…and everyone else! A practical and interesting read with plenty of activities to take away and use from me at Third Space Learning.
• The Education Endowment Fund is looking for schools to take part in a trial of Young Journalist Academy. The project aims to develop Year 5 pupils’ writing by involving them in journalism incl. writing newspaper articles, radio production and video journalism.
• Stats from the Department of Education show that more than one in five parental requests for an assessment for additional support for children with special educational needs was turned down last year.
• A poll commissioned by the Maths Mission programme, the charity Nesta, and the company Tata, has found that boys are almost twice as likely as girls to call themselves a “natural” at maths.
• A poll by Parentkind has found that fewer parents say schools are acting on their feedback, and the majority believe schools should be more accountable.
• Want to know more about retrieval practice, interleaving and transfer? Here’s a collection of downloadable PDF guides.
• Listen to Sean Harford on the curriculum, ‘stickers’ and making sure there’s clarity in discussions we have with schools: http://ow.ly/dJrk30k92u4 
• Research by the LSE and the University of Bristol claims that pupils in secondary schools with a more diverse racial mix are much more positive about people of different ethnicities.
• Eight myths about Prevent via the DfE.
• A study published by Hill and Jones (2018) suggests that when pupils have the same teacher two years in a row, this may improve academic performance because teachers get to know their pupils and are able to adjust and target their teaching styles accordingly.
• To Build Truly Intelligent Machines, Teach Them Cause and Effect by Keving Hartnett is worth a read.
• See Maria Granvik Saminathen et al (2018) and their research relating to ‘Effective schools, school segregation, and the link with school achievement‘ where they find that

…when teachers identify a school’s leadership as strong and supportive and teachers in a school work together and are in agreement regarding goals and approaches towards teaching, students perform better, regardless of their own sociodemographic background.

• International Media Executive, Elizabeth Murdoch, commissioned this film made by Henry Ward, Head of Education at her charity, Freelands Foundation. It explores Mike Fairclough’s approach to working outside, creative education, as well as cultivating grit and resilience within young children at West Rise School.