Earlier this week, I went over to the new Littleport and East Cambridgeshire Academy, which is a Research School funded as part of the Fenland and East Cambridgeshire Opportunity Area. The school is part of the Cambridge East Partnership with my school.They had organised a free conference called the Golden Thread.
There were plenty of bonuses to this free event: a useful goody bag, a nice size for follow-on use, and with Education Endowment Foundation reports in it.
There were 2 main speakers and some teacher workshops / seminars to follow on from that.
Daniel Muijs is from OFSTED, and he spoke about the new inspection framework.
He reminded people that the words Intent, Implementation and Impact were supposed to be used by OFSTED to help their thinking, but had "taken on a life of their own which is not so helpful". He said he had heard of schools looking for Deputy Heads in charge of an 'I' which he said was not what was supposed to happen. Lots of 'unintended consequences' it seems of any framework, which quickly becomes a checklist and a school policy...
Alex Quigley has written the book 'Closing the Vocabulary Gap' which is popular with English colleagues.
There were some interesting workshops on the sort of things that are popular these days: no geography specific ones sadly.
For those who weren't able to attend the event, and have had their curiousity piqued, here is a link to all the presentations on the day.
Comments