Weekly Update 22/2/2014

A rare, quiet, half-term, week from the politicians. But this week's adventure was Five go to Ofsted with top bloggers Tom Bennett, Tom Sherrington, David Didau, Shena Lewington and Ross McGill invited to meet with Ofsted's schools director Mike Cladingbowl. Naturally there all blogged about it. (And Bill Lord wrote a good blog about the wider significant of the lack of primary presence at the meeting).

The big news was a bold statement from Mike Cladingbowl that inspectors shouldn't be grading individual lessons - and the meeting was followed up with new guidance from Ofsted on this issue. Quality of teaching - based on evidence beyond the lesson; such as pupils' books - can be graded, though. So there remains a dangerous lack of clarity that will, I expect, prevent many schools from dropping their own lesson grades (Alex Quigley would go further - and I agree). But it's a start and it's great to see Ofsted starting to engage with these issues - and with the blogging world.

Five go to Ofsted (thanks to @JamesTheo)

Other highlights

Joe Kirby on building a rigorous, content-led, curriculum.

Deputy John on the blight of constant interventions

Tessa Matthews on the forgotten children neither bad or good enough to get attention

Tom Loveless on the poor evidence base for professional development.

Robert Hill on the over-expansion of some academy chains and how to stop this happening in the future

And David Carter on chain accountability + expansion from the perspective of someone running an excellent one.

Michael Tidd with further thoughts on assessment after levels.

Rob Peal on teaching character (or rather why it can't be taught).

And Briar Lipson on why it can be taught.

David Weston on the consensus-driven Scottish education system