Shall I let you into a secret? I shall. Tough luck. Hard as it may be to credit, my life has not been a stream of unbroken success! There has been at least one occasion – in fact I think there may have been thousands – when I have failed to achieve what I...
Despite a huge investment in tests, initiatives, and political aspirations, the English education system fails to inspire confidence. Those of us who advocate slow education believe it is the actual process of schooling that matters – not the invention of more ways of inspecting and assessing, or more types of schools. These are all blunt instruments. Slow education is...
Managerial talk has become so embedded in education that there’s always some minister or local councillor telling us that the task for schools and teachers is “driving up standards”. The message is crisp, with no explanation – whatever is meant by standards, they are there to be driven up, all the time. There’s no limit...
I don’t think the current debate about reforms to the National Curriculum and assessment has quite hit the nail on the head: while many complain that what the DfE are proposing is overambitious and impossible to have ready in time for first implementation, I would like to argue that what has been proposed is,...
I’ve been very excited recently to see the fantastic work being developed at St Silas Primary School in Blackburn. There is a great deal in common with many of the key ideas of Slow Education, as I discovered when I spoke with the staff yesterday, and visited the school to see what happens in practice… In a Slow School you would see….: learners being able to have space and time to follow and develop interests towards greater depth and understanding. St...
Traditionally, English governments have taken the view that education was a professional activity, like medicine, best advanced by the teachers and lecturers who had to make it work. It all changed when Mrs Thatcher embraced free-market economics, requiring institutions to compete with one another to implement centrally-determined policies. Professions must give way to market...
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