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  • Fires, Trees and Mud Pies – all in a day's schooling

    If it's a forest school, that is, or so the Guardian said in a feature last week.  Maybe every school teacher should find time to read this.  There are even positive stories about Ofsted.

  • Separate tracks, real synergy or a strategic error?

    Separate Tracks or Real Synergy? Achieving a Closer Relationship between Education and SD, Post-2015, is the title of a new article by Stephen Sterling based upon a longer concept paper: ‘Winning the Future We Want — the pivotal role of education...

  • My! How smart those Americans are getting

    A while back, The Economist recently had a brief piece (and nice graph) on grade inflation in the Ivy league, reporting that the median grade at Harvard is now A–, with A as the mode.  But hang on, the Economist said,...

  • COP out in Peru

    Is it any real surprise that 11000 'delegates' in Peru failed to come to a decisive outcome over the last couple of weeks in COP20?  How was that supposed to happen?  The COPs, which started out as modest affairs, have grown...

  • Climate Update – no change

    This morning's Guardian has a gloomy update on COP20 from Lima which shows that all the usual fault lines are still in place – not enough cash and bad faith galore.  The piece ends: In addition to finance, one of the...

  • Strong Winds in Scotland – not many dead

    In fact, despite warnings of biblical proportion from an increasingly frit Met Office, there were no dead at all, and I did wonder whether that rather irked the media outfits that had spent £zillions sending news teams to north-west Scotland to cover what...

  • COP20 – are they really closing the gap?

    The United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP20, comes at yet another "crucial moment, and talks continue on a draft international climate agreement due to be fanfared in Paris in 2015.  Carbon Brief has a comment on proceedings so far, as governments back away from accountability...

  • Who's afraid of Natural Capital?

    I know that some prefer not to use the concept of natural capital; this can be for a variety of reasons, ranging from its association with the idea of money and monetary value, and worries that they will be labelled 'neo-liberal', across to...

  • Ofsted's UKIP style shaping of the Curriculum

    Ofsted is proposing that the same inspection framework can apply to two-year olds, teenagers, those in FE, and those taking apprenticeships.  This is a ridiculous idea – great for Ofsted though, which is clearly what matters. There is much emphasis in...

  • Christiana Figueres redefines zero

    The UN is meeting in Peru to sort out climate change before it's too late – although many (which includes me on my more gloomy days) think it was already too some time ago.  Still, you have to meet to show...