A personal perspective on education, technology and culture
Before Roehampton I was a teacher, including three years as a head teacher. But the job I do now I love. There are a number of different strands to it. A big part of it is training new teachers, but I get pulled into other things too, and a lot of my work over the last few years has been about curriculum development. That started back in 2012, as England was changing its national curriculum, and…
Physical computing has a long and distinguished history in UK computing education, stretching back to the BBC Micro of the early 1980s. That machine arrived in schools not through the Department of Education but through the DTI, which wanted every school in the country to have at least one computer. The BBC’s branding gave the project a reach and legitimacy that a commercial product could not have…
Vygotsky’s insight was that learning happens through language: not just external speech but the internal speech of rehearsing arguments and explaining your thinking to yourself. Papert and his heirs took this further with constructionism. You make something in the world to make something in your head. The essay is not just evidence of learning. It is how the learning takes place. This reframes the…
Why any of this matters My day job is training computing teachers at the University of Roehampton. Part of what that means, beyond the classroom practice, is tracking what actually happens to computing as a subject once it is taught in school: how many schools offer a GCSE, how many pupils take it, and what grades they get. These are straightforward questions, but the moment you start making…
This subject knowledge enhancement day brought the PGCE computing trainees together for a full day focused on two advanced programming paradigms - object-oriented programming (OOP) and an introduction to functional programming (FP) - with an afternoon session from Mark Campbell of Ada College covering Level 3 computing pathways beyond A-level. The day opened with a brief discussion of Ofsted’s…
This lecture brought together four perspectives on diversity in computing, structured around ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic disadvantage. The day included contributions from Lynda Chinaka (Roehampton) and Miranda Simmons (City of London School for Girls), an afternoon session from Dr Pete Kemp (King’s College London), and was framed and closed by Prof Miles Berry. Framing the Day (Miles…
Working with assessment data sits at the intersection of classroom practice, research thinking, and professional judgement. Productive use of assessment depends not simply on collecting scores but on using evidence to inform decisions and improve learning. Good assessment avoids being misled by surface impressions such as how busy pupils appear, requires clarity about the decisions it will…
Adaptive teaching centres on responding to the strengths, needs, and prior knowledge of all pupils while maintaining high expectations. Pupils learn at different rates and require different forms of support, so effective teaching involves understanding these differences and adjusting instruction responsively rather than delivering identical experiences to everyone. At the same time, adaptation…
Assessment is central to effective teaching because it provides information about what pupils understand, what they can do, and what they need next. When used well, it supports instructional decisions, enables meaningful feedback, and helps pupils regulate their own learning over time. Assessment therefore functions not as an endpoint but as part of the learning process itself. At its simplest,…
Entering the teaching profession involves a structured recruitment process shaped by school needs, national workforce trends, and expectations about professional identity. Understanding this landscape enables trainees to make informed decisions, present themselves convincingly, and select contexts that support long-term professional growth. The recruitment process Securing a teaching post usually…
Language plays a central role in learning. Thought, understanding, and knowledge formation are shaped through communication with others and through internal dialogue. Sociocultural theory explains learning as a process that begins between people and becomes internal to the individual, meaning that reasoning first develops in shared interaction before becoming part of personal thinking. This…
Teachers come across the claim that large language models, and chatbots built upon them, are biased. This is often presented as a settled view. The models do not represent the world in a fair way and do not reflect the values we would hope to see in education or public life. People then jump straight to the view that bias is a fault to be removed. It is worth slowing down before we accept those…
Computing is a national curriculum subject. That simple statement does a surprising amount of work, because it reminds us that computing is an entitlement. Not for the self-selecting few who arrive with a passion for algorithms, not for those already writing games in Year 6, but for every child who walks through the door. That little word every includes pupils with special educational needs,…
Live coding works best when mentors frame it as a way of modelling thought rather than presenting polished answers. Trainees often approach programming lessons with a focus on correctness. They want to type without error and reach the final solution quickly. Pupils need something different. They need to hear the quiet decisions that sit behind each line. They need to witness the checks,…
Generative AI has a multifaceted relationship to the professional formation of teachers. First, they need to understand the role this technology can play in their pupils’ education and in their own professional role. As with other students, many will make use of these technologies for the academic aspects of the course. Beyond this, we might also consider how AI can support trainees directly in…
Every few years, education policy throws up a moment that changes the tone of the whole conversation. The publication of the curriculum and assessment review — and the Department for Education’s swift response — doesn’t quite feel like one of those moments. However, it does show a surprisingly clear vision of where the system thinks it ought to be heading. And that vision includes the words “for…
Online safety begins with values, not filters. The desired end is pupils who choose to be kind, honest and responsible in digital spaces. Class norms should make that visible: pupils challenge unkind pile-ons in group chats, avoid sharing without consent, and help peers when something goes wrong. Rules still matter, but norms shape behaviour when adults are not present. Mentors can look for…
The conversation about AI in schools often begins with excitement about transformation. Personalised learning! Automated marking! Infinite revision questions! All very encouraging. Yet if we pull back a little, the more important question is not what AI can do, but who it helps and on what terms. Whenever a new technology rolls into education, the ethics of access matter far more than the novelty.…
The Curriculum and Assessment Review final report was published today. It recommends that the DfE “Replaces GCSE Computer Science with a Computing GCSE which reflects the full breadth of the Computing curriculum and supports students to develop the digital skills they need.” This is something that we’ve long campaigned for, see here , and here . Here are our initial thoughts on what such a GCSE…
In computing education, we often talk about progression as if it’s a neat, linear path. Pupils start with ScratchJr, move on to Scratch , and then, somewhere between eleven and fourteen, we ask them to leave behind those bright, friendly blocks and begin writing code in text. By GCSE, they’re wrestling with OCR Exam Reference Language, and by A level, they’re coding in Python or Java. On paper, it…