Welcome to Celebrating Education! A space for discussion and ideas that celebrate the work of educators.

The crisis created by the Covid-19 pandemic has thrown up many questions about the future of education.

Education is at a cross roads. When schools & colleges re-open, they will look very different from the way they looked a few weeks ago. What are the most urgent priorities for our children and young people? Should we return to ‘normal’, to the same as before the crisis? Or should we be re-examining and re-modelling our curriculum, pedagogy and assessment?

National examinations and testing have already been cancelled for 2020. A debate over the best ways to assess children’s learning has now emerged – what is the role of formal tests and exams? Is ‘norm referencing’ still acceptable? What role should teacher assessment play? There are also big questions to ask about the future curriculum. How can we make fit for the 21st century?

We also need to revisit the debates around pedagogy. These have never gone away, at least if you follow #edutwitter. In recent years many have argued for the primacy of a ‘knowledge- rich curriculum’ over skills. ‘Direct instruction’ is the latest buzzword in many education blogs. We need professional debates to develop the best possible pedagogy, curriculum and assessment. We need to work together to create a high quality and socially just education system.
Celebrating Education began as a conference. It was a coming together of educators who had something to share. We wanted to take the debates away from those “at the top”. Government ministers, DfE policy advisers and select media pundits have dominated education debates. We wanted to showcase the work that educators do in classrooms every day of the week. We wanted to celebrate the huge variety of approaches that are available to us. But we also wanted to offer a space for genuine and collegiate debate.

It is in this spirit that this website is being established. We want to explore answers to questions that educators face. We make no apologies for being educationalists who believe in teacher creativity, dialogic approaches to education and a social model of learning. We want genuine debate. We are not interested in endless Twitter mud-slinging with the ‘new Traditionalists’.

So if you have something you would like to write; a question you would like to raise; or an idea that needs exploring, please let us know. You can send it to us.

Together, through discussion and collaboration, we can shape the future of education. We can give our children and young people a better education.