For a very long time, I was optimistic about the future of education in this country. This time last year, @amymayforrester and I predicted that when the next round of PISA results came out, England would tick up. There had been 15 years of positive change in the sector, and we thought that would pay dividends. That then came to fruition. England is doing well, especially compared to countries that are similar in many demographic and social respects, but have different education systems. But now, I am worried. There are lots of things going on that I think are problematic. The current government and DfE seem hell-bent on reforming a sector that does not need reform, and introducing changes that will row back some of the gradual improvements we have seen. Ofsted seem stuck in a mire of unpopularity, and are unable to convince the profession or the public that they are a force for school improvement. Big, respected, organisations that hold government contracts and an important place in the sector do not seem to be delivering. None of these groups are bad actors, and I really do believe they all want what's best, but that isn't always enough. Alongside that, we seem to now lack the public discourse infrastructure to adequately challenge these issues. The 2012-2019 years on Twitter were ones of fierce debate and criticality, and ideas could be well-tested before, during and after implementation. That doesn't exist any more. The debate seems so much flatter. That's partly a numbers game: social media has become a less popular place. But also, politically and commercially, more and more "big voices" find it harder to make public statements and take strong positions on things. It's easier to get in line and bend with whatever winds happen to be blowing at the minute, and you often see people taking surprising and contradictory positions. Critically, I don't exempt myself from this, and know that there are things I would have said 5 years ago that I won't now. For the first time in a while, I'm worried. I am certainly no longer optimistic.

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My opinion is that YouTube is a good example of a technology that has harmed education. The "good" use case is for when you need to show a film of something you can't directly do yourself, or by definition cannot be done without access to video. In science, that might be a slow motion film of crystal growth or a clip of a rocket launch, or blowing up a lump of caesium in a bath tub. In English, it might be a great actor reading a sonnet. In geography, it might be the waves acting on a cliff. You get the point, and it makes sense. Unfortunately, what it *became* is teachers offloading their explanation. You open YouTube, type in the topic, and presto you get a video. At best, you get BBC Bitesize. At worst, and ordinarily, you get some American cartoon with nice graphics and a good jingle in the background. Even the best option isn't great. These videos are almost always completely unsuitable. They move too fast, include vocabulary your students don't know, aren't tied to your curriculum, and rarely adhere to the basic principles of how to construct an explanation. I see this a LOT in my journeys around different schools. And I always test my theories. I ask students basic questions about the videos and the content, and invariably they just don't understand it (or worse, actively pick up misconceptions). One of the sadder things here is that the construction of an explanation is the beating heart of the lesson, and it should be a thing of joy and excitement for a teacher to sit and really figure out how they are going to communicate their subject. After watching a lesson with a video, I'll almost always ask the teacher "do you really not think you could have done a better job yourself?" It's a punchy thing to say, but I've never had anyone reply "no" yet. Can YouTube be used well? Sure. Is it? No. Can we all do better? Hells yeah.