University faculties and departments of education… too small, isolated, underfunded, prone to fads, and ineffective at driving forward education strategy in the U.K.
It was a Labour government, empowered by socialist ideals, that significantly reduced grammar-school education in the latter half of the twentieth century. It is a Conservative government, striving to meet the demands of middle-class families, that is now reversing this long-standing decision. So the pendulum swings once more, from non-selective to selective schooling… from more coursework to more exams, from less setting to more setting, from separating students with special needs to including them in mainstream schools… Teachers who grow old in the system get used to the state of things returning to a time gone by, before the first grey hairs had appeared and the wrinkles set in.
Continue reading “The Need for Large-Scale Education Research”