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 🧵)
David Thomas
7,398 posts
David Thomas
@dmthomas90
CEO of @AxiomMaths, raising the next generation of mathematicians. OBE for services to education. Former headteacher and DfE advisor.
Joined November 2010
- @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
- 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/whats-…
- 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 🧵)
- 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.cf…
- 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
- Tonight my 3yo had a full meltdown because twenty nine is followed by thirty instead of twenty ten.
- 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 🧵...
- Replying to @dmthomas90Imagine 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.
- 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
- 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.
- Replying to @dmthomas90Govt 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.
- 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.
