Willingham suggests that “if school work is always just a bit too difficult for a student, it should be no surprise that they don’t like school much”. A teacher can help students to like school more by ensuring a “student experiences the pleasurable rub of solving a problem”. However, is successful problem solving really sufficient to help students like their school and value the education they receive? The rite of passage has been taken away for the class of 2020. One of my students I bumped into in the corridor the following day joked “We’ll be a history question on future exam papers: ‘What was the academic year that didn’t do GCSEs?’” They will get some results, but it won’t be in the authentic way cohorts did before them and no doubt will after them. Students will have a rough idea what they are going to get. For them, there will be no sweaty, tingling fingers and racing hearts holding a letter containing information which they know close to nothing about. On Thursday morning, the headteacher confirmed: “This will be their last day at school.” No special leaving events for them. Prom is off. I once came across a paper that spoke to my disenchantment with politics academia. It argued that academics discuss a narrow range of topics among themselves without much external input. Now I find myself feeling a similar disenchantment with the narrow and insular debates of my profession.

Perhaps in the schools’ budget squeeze all this might seem an indulgence. But much of the above depends on effort and delivery, not excessive cost. With growing exam pressures from a more challenging GCSE we are in danger of losing sight of the broader purpose of education. It is all the more important that schools nurture fondness of school, to help students see their school exists for more than getting them grades. Unlike A-levels or degrees, they are the qualification that all teenagers take and that are most likely to appear on every CV.

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It’s been really good to see so many members of the local community attend as well as students. We also attracted funding from KPMG and have linked up with other University societies such as The Yorker, Nouse and the Debating Society to organise events.” Recently, my school ran a week focused on gratitude. As part of that, students gave speeches in assemblies. One student, who struggles behaviourally, thanked a teacher she clashes with for their care. This expression of thanks, in front of peers, generated a special moment with lasting impact beyond the hall. A student's daily experience at school is one of the most formative influences on their individual identity and character.

I expect most state teachers would not leave them, at least not for very long. This reflects the dominant behaviour management paradigm in schools. While not authoritarian, it is very contingent on the authority of the teacher. Seldon, Anthony (2000). The Foreign Office: The Illustrated History Of The Place And Its People. HarperCollins Illustrated. p.240. ISBN 000710118X. Benefit from accredited leadership training for your staff. Expert support for teachers at all levels. Could coursework be reformed? If it was more flexible, and say, research-led, as most university courses are, then students would arguably have the opportunity to study things they chose, and were therefore more engaged with. Spielman disagrees. “Then you have real problems with validity and comparability. The chances of you being able to meaningfully compare someone who has chosen some meaty, historical tome [for an English assignment, for example], and somebody else who has chosen the thinnest, lightest book on the list of options… It would be virtually impossible to get fairness across students in that regard.”Former pupils invited to help school celebrate centenary". Edenbridge Chronicle . Retrieved 5 July 2020. Exam cancellations during the pandemic sparked a fleeting renaissance of educational thinking. We asked whether a more capacious vision for our schools could be realised, but we have reverted to the norm. The Visualising a Characterful Society webinar forms a series that aims to promote greater awareness of vision health to fellow countries. Commonwealth Future’s 2020 strategy is to support countries across the Commonwealth with access to pioneering knowledge sharing and thought leadership in eyecare education and awareness. Without access to these solutions and services, many individuals will struggle to improve their own character and evolve to fulfil their own potential. It urges Hari to escape from his prison, and then the device promises to explain more of his mission at a later date. Hari asks what the device’s goal is. The Radiant says that it has a vested interest in humanity’s destiny.