Commentary

As part of our commitment to research and development, we have invested in the review of our Future Teaching Scholars Assessment Centres. Our new Data Insights report examines the validity and reliability of the assessment centres, and correlations between candidates’ performance in different aspects of the initial assessment and later classroom performance. Here, we summarise our findings and their significance for teacher recruitment, and provide seven recommendations for improved teacher selection.

As education systems around the world begin to emerge from Covid-19-related lockdown, governments are facing the difficult decision of when and how to reopen schools, balancing the risks of widespread learning loss – and the impact this will have on a generation of learners – with the risks of virus transmission, which are more significant in low-income settings. In this report, we propose a middle way between full closure and reopening, which would not only enable schools to reopen more safely, but also holds real potential to improve learning outcomes for some of the world’s most vulnerable children.

The Schools Partnership Programme (SPP) is Education Development Trust’s cluster-based school improvement model, designed to support continuous improvement through cycles of peer review and school-to-school support. As a model which typically involves group training and close interaction between school leaders, and with the added pressures school leaders are currently facing, some impact to the programme was to be expected. However, in a time of unprecedented disruption to the UK education system, collaboration and school to school support is arguably more important than ever, and we have been thrilled to see that the collaborative spirit of SPP schools had persevered. To further support our schools, the team have rapidly adapted the programme to include options for remote peer review and evidence gathering, as well as developing new lines of enquiry to support schools with their Covid-19 recovery. Following the disruption of the programme’s evaluation by the pandemic, an extra year of delivery has been funded by the Education Endowment Foundation to complete the evaluation process.

Amid all the recent disruption faced by education systems worldwide, teachers have remained central to successful learning and will continue to have a critical role in mitigating the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on learners. However, given the new demands of the pandemic, focused support and professional development will be crucial. As social distancing and safety measures will preclude traditional, in-person training for the foreseeable future, remote professional development programmes will be needed to ensure teachers are supported, both now and in the post-Covid world. Drawing on our research and wealth of experience in developing teacher professional development programmes, in this article, we provide a breakdown of key principles for remote teacher professional development.

While the benefits of using neuroscience and psychology to inform pedagogical techniques may seem obvious – not to mention appealing – a disconnect between research and classroom practice has long presented challenges of translation. In response, a team of education and neuroscience researchers, led by Richard Churches, Lead Adviser for Education Reform and Evidence-Based Practice and Programme Director for Future Teaching Scholars at Education Development Trust, has pioneered an exciting, new, teacher-led research programme to bridge the gap from laboratory experiments to actual teaching practice.

As schools in many countries begin to reopen, the focus and efforts of governments, system leaders and decision-makers must not be limited to the health and safety implications of reopening. To mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on education, there also needs to be an emphasis on ensuring the quality of the education that pupils receive – especially where a proportion of their schooling continues to be conducted remotely. This also generates urgent and important questions of equity – not least in terms of the ‘digital divide’ – and of the longer-term resilience of education systems around the world.