CEO of @AxiomMaths, raising the next generation of mathematicians. OBE for services to education. Former headteacher and DfE advisor.
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I enjoyed reading this and expected some lessons for govt from the venture capital style approach the vaccine taskforce took. But the biggest lesson is one that I didn’t expect.
(Short 🧵)
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@OakNational launches today. We built this in a week - it’s definitely not perfect. In the spirit of teachers helping teachers though, we’d be grateful for your feedback. We want to help, so tell us how we can do that better #LearnWithOak
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Lots of positive attention for @OakNational today, which I’m really grateful for. It’s important we don’t pretend it’s a panacea though. In that spirit, here’s what’s wrong with Oak National Academy: davidthomasblog.com/2020/04/…
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Poor school attendance is the biggest problem facing Britain today, in terms of its long-run impact. It's good that everyone's talking about it this morning, but I'm not convinced we've got the right solutions.
(A bit of a 🧵)
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New study from Norway: Banning smartphones in schools significantly decreases the proportion of girls presenting with mental health issues and bullying drops dramatically. Benefits most strongly felt by disadvantaged girls.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.…
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PISA 2022 is out! English schools and teachers should be phenomenally proud. Best ever ranking in maths - up to 11th in the world from 27th in 2009
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Tonight my 3yo had a full meltdown because twenty nine is followed by thirty instead of twenty ten.
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TIMSS 2023 is out! And England has done well. Year 5 maths scores have held despite the pandemic, and Year 9 scores have increased by quite some way. Teachers across the country should be feeling proud!
Details in the 🧵...
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Imagine if the full force of govt went into trying to make every contract a success, rather than keeping a distance so as to avoid the risk of being associated with a failure.
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Thank you to people who have said kind things today about me picking up some extra work. These next years are critical for education. Teachers and school staff are working their socks off to make a difference. I hope I can do just a little bit to help
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I’m late to this excellent @TheEconomist article about stagnating rich world test scores. We need fewer fads, higher standards, more freedom to innovate, and better paid teachers.
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Govt doesn’t work like this. It manages contracts by checking KPIs and looking for breaches. It is set up to veer between being disinterested and being adversarial.
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Attentiveness is contagious. Probably something every teacher knew, but fascinating to see the study. And interesting in light of my recent pondering on how to increase the volume of attention we pay to learning.
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Assistant heads are the most underrated people in the school system. Typically taking on huge responsibilities that rarely cohere in order to make all the special bits of a school work (without much of a timetable reduction).
What are an assistant head’s responsibilities? What is the salary like? @heymrshallahan gives you the information you need if you’re thinking about applying to be an assistant head
tes.com/magazine/leadership/…
tes.com/magazine/leadership/…
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But it should work like the vaccine taskforce. We have just as strong an interest in government investments paying off as VC firms do in theirs.
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I’ve been a maths teacher, a head of maths and a secondary headteacher (during which time I taught Y11 maths every year). So not great for you to post an untrue tweet telling them I’ve never taught maths. Did you listen to what I said and disagree with any of it?
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They got stuck in alongside vaccine manufacturers to make sure they were a success. They identified weaknesses in supply chains and plugged them. They spotted risks and mitigated them.
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Been thinking about this all weekend. It feels like "30 min Teams call" is the new "5 min chat". How do we build a work culture of conversations, not meetings?
Microsoft says meeting time has TRIPLED since 2020: typical workers are spending 57% of their time communicating [meetings, calls] with others: 'Today, knowledge work is, quantitatively speaking, less about creating new things than it is about talking about those things.’
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To me, this is why strong families of schools are so important. I couldn’t run a school in 2020 on my own. As part of @InspirationEast I can. Coming out of the pandemic we need to make sure all heads have the support that comes from being in a strong family of schools
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Huge thanks to everyone constructively sharing feedback on @OakNational lessons. We are acting on it as quickly as possible. Apologies if I haven’t had time to reply to your tweet, but all have been read!
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Just come across some of the awful and ignorant responses to @MuftiPatel’s appointment at Ofsted. Sir Hamid Patel is one of the country’s best school leaders. If I could I’d send my children to a school he runs.
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VC firms operate like this because they want their investments to be successful. When you work with VC you don’t just get their money, you get their support.
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Lords report out today totally misunderstands knowledge rich curricula. They’re not about memorising tonnes of isolated facts. They’re about building a schema through which to better understand the world.
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This is ridiculous and irresponsible journalism from the Telegraph. Learning maths is not equivalent to being flogged. This kind of language tells children our society judges people who like maths, and harms their education in the process.
telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2…
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This a thousand times over. I don’t want my children to be taught a “relevant” curriculum. I want them to wonder at things they wouldn’t otherwise have learned.
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It's not just the money cost here that's galling, it's the opportunity cost of all these people's time. Just think what could have been achieved if the thousands of people working on this had been able to do something productive.
exc @theipaper
Cost of planning application for the Lower Thames Crossing (15yrs in the making, not a spade in the ground), is now...
THREE HUNDRED MILLION POUNDS
(for comparison - this is nearly 4x the cost of covid inquiry)
Read here: inews.co.uk/news/politics/th…
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But the biggest lesson for me was the approach VTF took to contract management. They didn’t behave like a normal counterparty, they behaved like an investor.
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One of the new govt's first big calls in education is going to be teacher pay. So, what should we be doing about it?
A short 🧵
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(I did see one example of govt working like this on one contract in my time at DfE, and the team who did it were brilliant. But it was too little too late, and required top level sign off. They were breaking a norm, not following one.)
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In sum: attendance is bad (very bad), schools are facing higher expectations and more societal challenges, they need us to help tackle these challenges not demand more paperwork.
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What a clever way to announce the discovery of long lost sources about traditions associated with Eostre. Can’t wait for their publication.
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The problem is that we're expecting more of schools. They rose to the challenge in the pandemic and set the bar high. My staff delivered food, set up furniture, generally went above and beyond. People have come to expect this, and so feel let down when it doesn't happen.
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Super proud to launch specialist curriculum, signed lessons, sub-titling, and much more this week. @OakNational is for everyone, so we’re committed to it being accessible to everyone
🚨 We’ve got news! 🚨
Our initial specialist curriculum is now live. As are next week’s lessons, subtitles and our first @britishsignBSL. Plus, there’s some news about The Lion King 🦁!
Read our updates, based on your great feedback 👇
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Really proud to have worked with @matthewhood and others to set up @OakNational this Easter holiday. A huge privilege to work with incredibly talented teachers from schools across the country to put this together #LearnWithOak
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We’ll look back on this age of unfiltered social media for children in horror.
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CSJ are pushing for schools to write parental participation plans, and Labour for schools to write annual attendance reports. Writing plans is not the answer. They won't change practice, and they will take up the time of the staff who would otherwise be working with parents.
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Sorry Twitter, there are two GCSE exams tomorrow so I need to go to bed. Apologies if what I said made any teachers feel not valued. All I want to do is sing the praises of the fantastic team I am lucky to work with. They’re awesome!
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But I really doubt 8% of children have undiagnosed anxiety disorders that are severe enough for them to be *unable* to go to school. Schools are the ones who have to challenge this, without clinical backing, and so this creates tension.
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And whilst I like CSJ's Right to Sport idea, any Head of Year will tell you that there are plenty of kids who are always absent on PE day. So that's not a silver bullet!
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My top piece of unsolicited advice for @CMcKinnellMP: ask for every piece of guidance that schools have to follow to be physically printed out, brought into your office, and lock the schools DDs in until they’ve reduced it to the size you could take on a plane as hand luggage.
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I missed socio-economics from the above. 15% of disadvantaged pupils in the UK are top performers in PISA. This is **THE BEST IN THE DEVELOPED WORLD**.
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The suggestion in the report is that this is easy to fix with tech. I don't think they've tried to arrange many meetings with separated parents who don't speak to each other and have different working patterns! The extra admin is hugely demanding for school pastoral teams.
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I'm sure this will be controversial, but I think a lot of the NAO's criticism here is wrong and is grounded in a general Whitehall belief that government knows better than schools...
💸 The Department for Education 'cannot demonstrate it is achieving value for money' in the way it uses £9.2 billion a year to narrow the disadvantage gap, the spending watchdog has warned
Read more 🔽
buff.ly/4dcMxhh
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Quite an amazing turnaround here, and a reminder that we are making some tangible progress on the environment
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Big thanks to @tes for drawing attention to our research into Y7 transition and how peer groups change.
Here’s a quick 🧵 on the things that stick out for me, and the things we still don’t know.
Why do many high-attaining maths pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds lose interest in the subject early in secondary? The friends they hang out with play a big part, according to our research, says @dmthomas90 of @AxiomMaths
tes.com/magazine/teaching-le…
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My first blog on running a school: How do you measure behaviour? davidthomasblog.com/2018/06/…
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Persistent absence (missing more than 10% of school) is sky-rocketing. This chart is from @csjthinktank's report out today. More on which to come.
centreforsocialjustice.org.u…
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I expected the lessons about spreading risk across multiple investments and focusing on outcomes not process. They’re lessons we should learn.
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There are two ways to improve behaviour statistics: improving behaviour, and accepting bad behaviour.
We need to work hard to do the former, inc by rethinking AP and improving SEND support.
Our children cannot afford us to do the latter.
theguardian.com/education/ar…
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Relationships between schools and families are more strained now than pre-pandemic. I think this is because (a) expectations of schools are higher, and (b) schools are in a trickier position because of challenging trends in society.
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Once again British society signalling that maths is an unnecessary subject that only some people can do, and others shouldn’t have to.
This has a material negative impact on children who are made to feel like they’re unusual for liking maths.
You shouldn't need GCSE maths to teach, says university dean | The Times ow.ly/H0aC30syKgi
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Absolutely mad that this sign is still up on the entrance gate to a playground in 2024
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Shout out to every school leader who was picking up Y11s this morning, handing out bananas on the gate, resolving last minute revision worries, giving inspirational speeches. Thank you for what you do.
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And all these people keep saying maths isn’t useful for everyday life
Oxford University mathematician reveals how to avoid spilling your coffee ☕️
[📹 Oxford Sparks]
nitter.app/Levandov_2/status/1742…
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Because other countries do worse than us by Year 9, this puts us higher up in the rankings. We come 6th - the top performing country outside of East Asia.
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Huge thanks to all the people who’ve worked tirelessly in their holidays to make this happen
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It’s wild that we would simultaneously trust schools with the welfare/safety of our children and yet not trust them to choose a breakfast menu.
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I could not be happier today - very excited to be starting at @JaneAusten_Coll in the New Year! nitter.app/rachel_desouza/status/…
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Today we (@axiommaths) have released new research on how and why England is losing 30k children per year from being great at maths - and how changing this could unlock a new era of prosperity for our country.
(A 🧵...)
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Inspired by the Three Body Problem (read it if you haven't, it's great), I've written about how we might try to *radically* increase educational outcomes.
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@WilliamSitwell this kind of absurd language might sound clever but it has real world impacts on children who feel like they have to hide or abandon being good at maths to not be seen as weird in our society
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They argue that the bond of trust between schools and families is breaking, and this is leading to lower attendance. I think this is sort of true, but is missing the underlying problem.
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Why do we always think of STEM and the Arts as in competition?
I’m reading David Cannadine’a excellent history of Victorian Britain, and am struck by how they saw technology and the arts as bedfellows not competitors.
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The report also finds 8% of parents say their child has missed school due to undiagnosed anxiety. There are clearly some children with anxiety disorders that haven't yet been diagnosed, and which might be severe enough to limit attendance.
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Excellent.
theguardian.com/education/20…
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The CSJ report shares the complaints of separated parents who don't feel school communicates well enough with both of them. It also says half of 14yo first born children have separated parents.
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Digging into the report, it's clear that our success in maths isn't driven by rote learning at the expense of deeper understanding. Our mathematical reasoning score is one of the best in the OECD!
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In the rankings this puts us down one place, but still near the top and ahead of most other western countries.
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Frankly it’s a bit mad that we’ve got to a place where so many people think this wouldn’t be the case.
GCSE grades a good predictor of life chances and wellbeing, research shows theguardian.com/education/20…
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Crikey this is good.
“And then it arrives: the moment you walk into a lesson, the learning objective of which is ‘to understand DAFOREST’. And you realise, with an almost imperceptible shrinking of your soul, that the game is up…”
📚 'Literacy stagnates. Appreciation for the power of language dwindles. There is a systemic failure to nurture the next generation of readers, writers - and teachers'
@LawrenceEFoley
buff.ly/3ZzPO4Y
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I am crazy levels of delighted that @BrunoReddyMaths has been awarded an OBE. If it weren’t for his wisdom and generosity my career would’ve looked very different. Brilliant to see him recognised.
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Everyone believes that a core purpose of teaching reading is to get children reading for pleasure. Peter and I argue that it should be the same for maths. Bring on maths for pleasure!
➡️How to fix the primary maths curriculum
What should Labour do with primary maths? Prioritise fluency and pleasure, say Peter Foulds and @dmthomas90 - and here is a blueprint to do it.
A must read for primary and maths teachers and leaders!
tes.com/magazine/teaching-le…
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I do try to advocate for our decision not to have a car. But I’m finding it hard today having taken almost three hours to get thirty miles on the trains (and I’ve got many more to go). We have to improve reliability if public transport is to be a viable alternative to driving
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Very much enjoyed this short novel on the millennial condition (I think recommended by @j_amesmarriott). But now coming to to terms with how much of a millennial stereotype I am…
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Some reflections on other countries too. Finland (remember the Finnish miracle?) has dropped down to significantly below England after switching its educational model away from the one that has served them so well.
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So schools' jobs are getting more difficult. The solutions to this are hard, because they involve addressing much deeper issues in society. But some things being suggested today are not the answer.
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Year 5 maths scores held relatively constant. English performance in 2019 was a significant increase on previous years and an historic high point. Maintaining this despite the pandemic is a great result.
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When we had them both in one week in Covid it shocked me how much of a difference it made. Much better.
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Moving SEND and AP in with the rest of schools policy is a very sensible thing to do. Too often they don't cohere together well enough.
Breaking: Kevan Collins has been formally appointed to @educationgov as school standards adviser. It has also been confirmed SEND and AP policy will be moved into the schools brief at the Department. tes.com/magazine/news/genera…
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You’re right they’re clearly not directly comparable, and the VTF went well beyond what a VC firm would do (I don’t see VC buying factories for their portfolio firms!). If govt can take that mindset and use the advantages that make it different then we could see some big wins!
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Year 9 maths scores have gone up ten points, which is a big result. As Y9 has been essentially stagnant for 15 years this is a good sign. It doesn't quite hit the statistical significance threshold though.
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The British public are far more pro-maths than we tend to think. Two thirds of people fall into one of our pro-maths segments, and about half say they enjoy doing maths.
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You missed the bit where they conclude that abolishing exams in favour of an immersive life skills assessment is nonetheless the only conclusion.
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This is all just some elaborate ritual to make lobby groups feel happy they’ve extracted a concession, without any regard for whether outcomes are actually improved.
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Delighted to publish our @AxiomMaths report into the state of maths education today, with some extensive polling into the public’s attitudes to maths.
We found…
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It appears the MoJ are, in effect, closing down @unlockedgrads. This is a catastrophically bad decision, shutting down a top graduate employment route that gets 40 applicants per place dedicated to serving some of the most vulnerable in society.
unlockedgrads.org.uk/news-it…
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So lots of encouraging news. It looks like the success we've seen at primary is starting to flow through into secondary, and that much of the ambition of mastery teaching is being achieved.
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Agree with @RogersHistory on this. When at DfE I tried to set a rule for round tables that at least half the people invited had to have *done* the thing being discussed. It was surprisingly hard to implement.
Personally, I’m more interested in hearing from ppl who have taught 1000 lessons rather than ‘worked with’ or ‘walked into’ 1000 schools.
I still don’t hear enough from classroom teachers. I still don’t think there’s enough value on them.
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Real pleasure to talk to @RealGeoffBarton today about oracy and maths. I'm delighted by how deeply Geoff and the team are thinking about different subjects and the disciplinary nature of oracy.
Our #OracyCommission conversations continue: how oracy is inextricably linked to success in Maths: my conversation today with @dmthomas90 @AxiomMaths buff.ly/4d6Gn38
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In Year 5 the constraint on our score was a growing number of low attainers. We have more pupils getting a low or very low score than we did in 2019. It looks like a group of children who were middling have slipped down during the pandemic years.
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Crikey these are some good appointments from outside of politics into ministerial roles.
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We surveyed Y6 pupils to find out how they felt about school and maths before coming to secondary school, and found four disadvantage gaps that I wasn't expecting to see.
🧵...
New blog: The disadvantage gap in Y6 pupils' experience of maths.
We asked Y6s about school and maths this summer, and found big disadvantage gaps in their experience of problem-solving, maths anxiety, and whether school makes them a better person.
axiommaths.com/blog/the-disa…
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