July 2021

I'm at home (of course) watching the rain pelt down.  I remember such July days from my childhood when rain stopped play in what I really wanted: all day cricket. It's an airless day, and checking my grid carbon app,...

I sometimes despair at Countryfile.  There was an outwardly commendable segment on Sunday’s programme about pollinators.  It was a coming together of Countryfile's Plant Britain scheme and Radio 2's Big Bee Challenge.  A bloke from Radio 2 interviewed the London...

Thanks (I think) to the NAEE weekly round up for the info on the latest UNESCO wheeeeeeze.  It's another research commission; this time on the Futures of Education.  Note the plural.  The commissioners seem a random selection from the great...

ok; that's maybe a bit premature, but I've been reading Hemingway (again). That said, the arguments against this time warp of an exam certainly continue to mount.  It was good to see Philip Collins adding to them last week.  If...

What seems likely to come to be seen as the most significant policy decision of recent times was not enacted by a vote in parliament after a considered debate, but was taken by means of a statutory instrument.  This is...

It seems that I am now a climate leader – or so says the 26,000 conversations campaign. Who'd have thought it?  The campaign was created by Oxford University School of Geography and the Environment students and recent graduates, and is collecting "conversation...

In his 1997 paper: Environmental Education: Historical roots, comparative perspectives, and current issues in Britain and the United States, William E Marsden begins by exploring the origins of the designation environmental education.  In this he mentions Liberty Hyde Bailey: "... as...

In January 2021, the government published the Skills for Jobs White Paper, with a clear focus on the pivotal role that further and technical education has in helping people get skills for good jobs now and in the future.  The Government followed...

I have learned that we've been failing to Keep Britain Tidy since 1954.  This Wikipedia page shows the timeline of mergers and identity change since that time.  The strategy keeps changing, but remains ineffectual.  Are we just a very dirty...

Despite my confident reporting back in February that the DfE had decided to give the go-ahead for the next stage of the development of the GCSE in Natural History, it seems I was premature.  If DfE has made a decision,...