Month: February 2022

Ofsted – Part 2 The birth of the revised inspection framework Many Ofsted inspectors must have experienced something of a Damascene moment in 2017 when confronted by the reality that learning is invisible and not something that they can ‘see’, even if the inspection framework and the training process told them otherwise. (See: http://educonned.co.uk/ofsted-1) With… Continue reading Ofsted -The Education Deceptions

Multi-Academy Trust A private enterprise group that has acquired a whole herd of cash cows, making up into a very nice little earner indeed, and never mind the olfactory and climatic effects of the resultant methane emissions. National Literacy Strategy A set of ideas about the teaching of reading and writing of extraordinary longevity, complexity… Continue reading The Devil’s Educational Glossary M-Z

The Devil’s Educational Glossary was inspired unashamedly by ‘The Devil’s Dictionary’, written by the American journalist Ambrose Bierce and published in 1911. If there is a single entry in that work that epitomises it, and him, it would be this one: Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as… Continue reading The Devil’s Educational Glossary A-L

Ofsted – Part 1 The observation of the unobservable Imagine that you’re attending a hospital outpatient department for a routine medical procedure and just before it starts (or maybe it’s started) someone enters the room and explains that he or she is an inspector who is there to observe how much your health improves during… Continue reading The Education Deceptions