Evidence Fair 25th January 2018

Our Evidence Fair series began last week with a visit from EEF chief Executive Sir Kevan Collins to Blackpool. Evidence Fairs are short twilight sessions designed to kickstart a dialogue around a particular aspect of evidence: our subsequent sessions for this academic year will focus on Feedback, Metacognition and Memory.

Sir Kevan provided an overview of the use of evidence in education, with a particular focus on the impact on disadvantaged students.

Speaking about his early years as a teacher, he referred to how he was carrying out “uninformed professionalism”, using intuition more than anything else, and about the use of evidence in education as being a key to ensuring that teachers’ practice is based upon evidence not prejudice.

He talked about three key areas of current focus:

Early years
Teaching and pedagogy – which form the focus of the EEF toolkit – feedback (not marking!) and metacognition are critical here (watch out for the EEF guidance report on metacognition coming soon)
Post 16 and the “forgotten 40%” who do not pass maths and English first time

A key message from the event was about caution (“don’t jump very far, and do so infrequently”), and about brave leadership which empowers staff to use the evidence available to them. “You don’t need to be the best, but you can strive to be the best at getting better”.

Sir Kevan Collins discussing evidence in education, with a particular focus on the impact on disadvantaged students.

Many thanks to Sir Kevan for taking the time to visit Blackpool Research School. See our website for tickets to subsequent Evidence Fair events.

26 January, 2018 —