Really inspired today by @LucyMPowell Have reflected on it here danmorrow244665.substack.com…

A message from us oldies It's about choosing the BLEND of approaches that best matches what & who is being taught at the time. And from what I notice, that's what most teachers are doing. Maths teachers were fortunate in being reminded about this in 1982 (Cockcroft para 243)

It is possible for children to undertake a traditionally academic curriculum coupled with vocational courses to supplement at both KS4/5. This isn’t the end of the world as we know it.

I don’t generally engage with inflammatory posts on X. It’s the nature of this platform that being shocking is often a deliberate ploy to provoke engagement and feed the poster’s need for attention. However, I’ll make an exception for @tomhfh ’s grotesquely offensive views…

STOP CALLING KIDS “BAD.” I was one of those kids. I got in trouble. I struggled to sit still, focus, stay organized and control impulses. Adults saw the behavior. They did not see what was underneath it. I had what we would now recognize as ADHD. My body needed movement. I had undiagnosed anxiety and a brain that worried constantly. My family moved repeatedly across the country. I had an undiagnosed learning disability in reading and writing and sometimes would rather get in trouble than risk people thinking I was dumb. I was gifted in math, so some work felt painfully easy while other work felt almost impossible. I had severe asthma that limited sports and activity. My dad lost his job. I received free and reduced lunch. At 9, I lost my grandfather, one of my biggest cheerleaders. Then, in third grade, Mrs. Mott told me I probably was not college material. So yes, I sometimes behaved badly. But I was not a bad kid. I was a kid carrying a lot. That is what we miss when we only look at behavior. Anxiety can look like refusal. Grief can look like anger. Boredom can look like defiance. Confusion can look like avoidance. Exhaustion can look like laziness. ADHD can look like “not caring.” A learning disability can look like “not trying.” Behavior is often the EFFECT. Our job is to look for the CAUSE. That does not mean ignoring accountability. Kids need boundaries and expectations. But shame, yelling, labels and bigger punishments do not fix anxiety, grief, ADHD, learning differences or overwhelm. TRY THIS INSTEAD: 1. PAUSE before reacting. 2. ASK what happened right before the behavior. 3. CHECK the need: anxious, tired, hungry, confused, bored, embarrassed, overwhelmed? 4. LOWER the load: smaller task, movement, break, clearer direction, one step at a time. 5. TEACH what to do differently next time. Hold the boundary AND protect the relationship. “That behavior is not okay. But I am going to help you figure out what happened and what to do next.” Today, the “bad kid” who was told he probably was not college material became a teacher, principal, therapist, educational psychology professor and author. Also, Mrs. Mott was wrong - I have 4 degrees now! Kids are unfinished stories. Before you label a child by their hardest moment, ask: “What am I not seeing yet?” How many “bad kids” are actually good kids carrying more than we know? — Dr. Bryan Pearlman #MentalHealth #Parenting #Teachers #ADHD #TraumaInformed

As an alternative to the advice offered by @teacherhead here, is a different statement I suggest that @LucyMPowell might make. The PISA results for England are out. Given their outlier nature, they should be treated with interest and care. The data certainly do not justify a policy of more direct instruction and super-strict behaviour management in what is becoming a global policy business for former Ministers @michaelgove & @NickGibbUK and adviser @tombennett71. First, as my measurement colleagues tell me at Stanford, in Canada, & elsewhere, the skills that @OECDEduSkills PISA claims to measure are not achieved through direct instruction. Even if England's PISA results are valid and authentic, they are not a mandate for more direct instruction. If indeed the results are valid, congratulations to all those teachers who have successfully taught the applied and creative knowledge that PISA claims to measure, despite the policy directions of my political predecessors to the contrary. Second, consider that Englands PISA results may be less valid and reliable than is claimed by the direct instruction advocates. The sample size submitted by the previous government compared to Wales and Scotland was so low that, for OECD, it became a borderline case of whether it would qualify at all. The same problems are evident in the US. The sample also appears to be biased in terms of unusually high numbers of exclusions of FSM pupils. Furthermore, most of the gains, it seems, come from young people in higher socioeconomic groups. Excellence is not being accompanied by equity. Performance in lower groups is not significantly different from the trajectory in other countries. PISA is measuring England's better-off pupils against a wider range of pupils elsewhere. Note also that neither Canada nor the Republic of Ireland have results strikingly different from England's but have historic commitments to care and support rather than strictness and exclusion, and certainly they have no tradition of direct instruction or recent initiatives in that direction. Claiming that England's PISA results are the consequence of a Conservative push for more direct instruction therefore has no basis in evidence. As a government, we are very concerned about the 20 year PISA decline in almost all Western nations of which Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Canada and others are a part. Young people everywhere are suffering from widening inequalities, conflict and displacement, the distractions and addictions of digital technologies among their parents as well as themselves, and the lingering mental health consequences of the worst pandemic in a century that our PISA performers experienced for two years when they were just 10-12 years old. A bit more phonics or strictness is not going to be the answer to these global trends - especially when the UK's young people are among the worst in the world on happiness and wellbeing indicators. As a government, we vow to raise performance for everyone, not just the few. We are committed to authentic participation and proper sampling in PISA, and to working in partnership with our UK colleagues and their systems to build a brighter future for all our young people. We believe that vocational education, and projects that get children using head, heart and hand together, should begin for all children in primary school, and not just be reserved for those at 14 who have been unsuccessful in traditional academics. We believe in wellbeing policies that don't just support or compensate for approaches to learning that disengage young people, but in policies that will rest on having more stimulating and engaging learning for all young people and their teachers. We take these PISA points seriously, but most of all, with other Western nations, we are committed to securing educational quality for all young people. We are committed to increasing engagement of pupils and teachers along with achievement. We are committed to parity of esteem for all forms of knowledge from the earliest years, not just after 14. And we are committed to open enquiry and transparency regarding all forms of data concerning our young people's achievement. The consequences of decades of neo-liberalism of which our PM has spoken so eloquently, have left our young people exposed too much to narrow targets and testing, and to restricted ideas about what our teachers are capable of accomplishing in their classrooms. Our world is in manifest disrepair. We will not fix it with a bit more phonics or by tightening up on strictness. Quick political fixes and lucrative global careers for those who advance them are not what our young people need and deserve now. They need a government who will face head on what is happening to our democracies in our schools as well as beyond them. Greater equality, better opportunity, in a system that brings head, hand and heart together for all young people, with proper public funding behind it, and honesty rather than trickery about what all the data mean, is what we will set out to accomplish. @jon_severs @CharteredColl @dizdarm @steve_munby @LesWalton500 @LucyMPowell @greg_ashman @NAHTnews