January 2022

A process of curriculum review is usual at this time of the year; what has gone well and what are your next steps? To ensure pupils get access to the breadth of the curriculum in geography and in the light of the Ofsted Research Review and recent Blog, this will be more important than ever. What can you do that will make an impact?

It's official!  Our new next-generation Rocket Phonics programme is now a DfE validated SSP programme. In this blog, we answer some of your most frequently asked questions about using Rocket Phonics in your school. 

Last week the DfE released their latest guidance offering help and support to schools and colleges as they they develop a whole-school approach to mental health and wellbeing. They also announced that they would be offering grants for training to develop a senior mental health lead in every Primary and Secondary state school or college from autumn 2021.

We’ve picked out four key areas from the guidance that we think award winning Wellbeing and Attitudes to Learning: Survey and Strategies can help you with.

In this series of blogs our Publishing Director, Katie Blainey, puts the microscope on our latest white paper about the impact of school closures on spring 2021 attainment. Following on from last week's blog, this week the focus is on the following: during the spring term, regional differences showed no consistent patterns across all year groups and subjects. This was in contrast to our previous findings at the end of the autumn term.

In this series of blogs our Publishing Director, Katie Blainey, puts the microscope on our latest white paper about the impact of school closures on spring 2021 attainment. Following on from last week's blog, this week the focus is on the following: children attending schools in more deprived areas, and schools with higher proportions of children receiving Free School Meals (FSM), tended to show greater declines in attainment than their peers. Schools with a high percentage of children eligible for FSM experienced decreases in scores approximately twice as severe as schools with a low percentage of FSM eligible children.

In this series of blogs our Publishing Director, Katie Blainey, puts the microscope on our latest white paper about the impact of school closures on spring 2021 attainment. Following on from last week's blog, this week the focus is on the following: younger year groups, Years 1 and 2 in particular, generally showed bigger reductions in attainment than older year groups. 

Ahead of the release of the standardised scores for the summer New PiRA and New PUMA papers in August 2021, we have written this blog to help break down which outcomes will be available when.

In this series of blogs our Publishing Director, Katie Blainey, puts the microscope on our latest white paper about the impact of school closures on spring 2021 attainment. This week the focus is on the following: GPS and maths showed the largest declines — representing a gap of on average three months' learning loss across all year groups — and reading, on average, showed a two-month gap.

Back in March we ran a Short Story Competition to celebrate World Book Day and encourage children to share a story. 

According to recent analysis*, there were measurable declines in attainment across virtually all subjects and year groups. Schools have done what schools do best… had an impact on children’s learning to ensure that they are as close as they can be to the expected standard for their year group.  To continue to accelerate progress in English across all year groups, Read in to Writing can help!