Mike Tomlinson wants to reintroduce apprenticeships, according to an interview in the Telegraph today (registration required). The key quote: “At 14, some students will spend up to two days a week in the workplace… Junior apprenticeships could easily happen at 14. A lot of people become disengaged at 14, if not before.” I think this…

Video files are large and slow to load over the internet; you can get around this by using “streaming” formats. These slice a video up; you can watch the first slice whilst the second is downloading, and so on. Last year, we experimented with incorporating streaming media into Paperless School. The results were disappointing; very…

So far I’ve only read the BBC’s coverage of the Tomlinson Report. First impression: a missed opportunity to make changes. Consider this quote: Coursework would be replaced by a personal project perhaps spanning a number of subjects, and demonstrating the ability to research and analyse, perhaps through a visual presentation or designing and constructing something.…

David Millband wants to ban home study leave, the practice by which students take time off before exams, because boys generally lack the self-discipline to make good use of it. I heartily concur with the analysis of the problem, but I have doubts about the solution. For one thing, girls do make use of home…

What is it about this “of the future” tag? Every time you see it you know someone’s heading for a prattfall. It conjures in my mind images of the Jetsons, Spandex suits and the Millenium Dome. The problem is that predictions are generally based on extrapolating a single trend, and assuming that everything else will…