Better Parental Engagement For remote learning to be effective schools need to upskill parents remotely, at scale, on-demand, so they know exactly HOW to help at home. And with primary aged children they absolutely have to support learning tasks, not just supervise them. This article builds upon a webinar delivered to COBIS members. Enjoy a

By now, it’s common knowledge that many teachers struggle with their workload. The UK government’s teacher workload survey found that teachers and middle leaders work 4.9 hours less in 2019 than they did in 2016. However, 21% reported that workload is still a ‘very serious problem.’  A high workload can have a big impact on

Tips on Engaging Hard-to-Reach Parents to Get Them More Involved It’s been well established that engaging parents or guardians more in their child’s education and school life can help every child achieve greater academic success. However, you might find that it’s difficult to engage some parents with your school’s events and day-to-day activities.  Focussing on

Getting parents actively involved in their child’s education can lead to pupils who are more confident, engaged and even more organised when it comes to their own learning. Studies have also shown that parental involvement can lead to measurable and quantifiable successes, such as improved attendance rates and higher test scores, for example.  In this

Engaging with Non-English Speaking Parents Reaching out and engaging with non-English speaking parents can be really difficult for teachers. If you have pupils who have English as an additional language (EAL), their parents may have a limited understanding of English. If you have an interpreter, it can be much easier to communicate efficiently, but if

How Do You Use Data in Schools? Data skills don’t come naturally to everyone. Knowing how to use data effectively can be difficult to master, and on top of that, turning raw figures into concise, readable reports is a skill in itself. In the education system, working with data can be unavoidable, as it often

Can’t tell your summative assessment from your formative assessment? Never fear, our answers about summative and formative assessments are here! What is summative assessment? Summative assessment is an assessment done at the end of a specified period of time. It is to assess a learner’s understanding or attainment. Summative assessment may take the form of

We all know that the word assessment can send a shiver down the spine of any teacher. The sense of dread and impending data drops. High stakes accountability and league tables have left a mark on education. You may or may not agree with the need for exams and tests and end of key stages.

As the newest member of the Learning Ladders team (with a teaching background), I have jumped at the opportunity to be a part of the team working on the new EYFS On Entry Assessment- even more so after learning of Jan Dubiel’s involvement.   During my time in Early Years I’ve seen the reincarnation of Learning

On Entry Assessment EYFS I have been championing EYFS at Learning Ladders for almost 5 years now and I am thrilled to be doing something that I feel will make a real difference.  The icing on the cake is to be working with Jan.  I very much look forward to hearing from you and developing

New EYFS Assessment Tool You asked us, so we’re going to build it – a specific module for Early Years is coming in 2020/21! We’ve also worked with Jan Dubiel to create a new ‘light-touch’ On-Entry Diagnostic Assessment tool for practitioners in YN, YR and Y1, addressing the specific post-C19 needs of 2020/21.  We’re making

Effective communication with parents can be a challenge in schools. Not least because everyone is very time poor in schools. The parents are often time poor too. They may have other distractions with their own work or other children or caring roles. How teachers communicate with parents has a lot of impact on how well

What is a VLE? A VLE (virtual learning environment) is a platform used in education to give access to educational content online. This can be via computers or mobile devices (tablets or phones or even games consoles). Most VLEs are set up by a specific educational institution. For example, a school, college, or university. The

It would be hard to find a school leader who does not value the importance of improving pupil progress. The same goes for every teacher, teaching assistant, parent or any other stakeholder around each child. Sometimes we see a divided debate about what the best way is to do this. For some the focus is

“Parental involvement in the form of ‘at-home good parenting’ has a significant positive effect on children’s achievement and adjustment even after all other factors shaping attainment have been taken out of the equation. In the primary age range the impact caused by different levels of parental involvement is much bigger than differences associated with variations