Is what you're doing making a difference?

This blog focuses one way or another, on working out how well we are doing. There are lots of good things going on in school, but only some of them have a very big impact on pupils’ learning and so really help us meet our aspirations for them. There are obviously a lot of variables to take into account in weighing up what to focus on and do really well, and each of the news stories and details about research has been selected to help people think about just that.

Philippa's Autumn Blog

The Olympics gave us a glorious close to a very unglorious summer but I guess the cultural and sporting triumphs will long be remembered as rather special. New academic years are always exciting too, and the sunshine cheers us along even if it would have been nice to have more of it during the break. But with new years come new challenges and 2012-13 promises lots of them.

I spent two days in company of academics, government officials and teacher professional association representatives from around the world looking at this question.

This was a terrific event. Great presentations from a good range of perspectives, most kept to strict timescales and lots of debate amongst smart people form lots of countries. Things that stick in my mind and that I am still pondering:

The longer days and snowdrops are telling me that we are on our way out of winter’s gloom – even if the colder weather feels more wintry.

The second stop on my intensive learning journey was the 2011 British American Conference in London designed to help leaders from different fields expand their notion of what leadership means by working well beyond their field and through the lens of contrasting British and America approaches... This was certainly outside my field

I am still processing all that I learned during a ten day marathon tour of some very different sites of learning. And having spoken about some of this –and about the contrasts to various colleagues they all said write about it – so here are some thoughts and questions about some pretty amazing experiences that fell over each other in a journey, over 10x days to Belfast, London, Coventry, Newcastle, London, Coventry ,Cumbria and Oxford. And yes this was end on!