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368: More Than A Score with Alison Ali

Children are More Than A Score

More Than A Score is here to change the way children are assessed and schools are judged.

Primary school children in England are let down by a system that cares more about measurement than education. It’s damaging, and they deserve better.

We want pupils to enjoy an exciting learning experience and then move on to secondary school with a love of learning. We don’t want them spending months cramming for government tests. We believe schools should be judged on the overall quality of education they provide, not the results of a narrow set of standardised tests.

Our campaign supports school leaders and teachers who want to stimulate young minds and expand their knowledge and creative problem-solving skills, rather than having to “teach to the test”.

It’s time to fundamentally change the high-stakes, high-pressure assessment system in primary schools and make good mental health the basis for good learning.

But the evidence against the current system is growing. Parents, teachers and heads are united in calling for change.

In 2022, only 3% of heads wanted SATs to go ahead. 89% of parents say they would support an alternative. And 1 in 10 year 6 pupils didn’t sleep well in the run-up to the tests.

SATs and other government tests don’t help learning and cause unnecessary stress and pressure.

Let’s speak out for children.

Alison Ali Director/Owner Can Can Campaigns

Alison began her career in journalism, moving into international consumer publishing. Her experience runs from human rights and global finance reporting, to launching premium multilanguage magazines and digital platforms for household brand names. She has run her own successful creative agency Can Can Creative since 2006 and, in 2019, launched sister agency Can Can Campaigns to harness the collective’s exceptional skills for greater good.

Website

www.morethanascore.org.uk

Social Media Information

FB @morethanascore

T @MoreThanScore

Insta @morethanascore

TikTok @morethanascore_

Show Sponsor – National Association for Primary Education (NAPE)

www.nape.org.uk/rosemary-evans-award-2023

Get access to all 20 videos from the ‘Visions for the Future’ summit 2023 www.nape.org.uk/summit

For support with podcasting & video please visit www.educationonfire.com/media 

Watch the Education on Fire Live Show every Tuesday www.educationonfire.com/youtube

367: Positive Mindset Habits for Teachers with Grace Stevens

A former corporate girl, Grace quit her VP life to pursue her dream job as a public school teacher. After 20 years in the classroom, she now focuses full-time on helping educators have a more positive teaching experience.

Grace combines her signature mantra, “Your energy teaches more than your lesson plans,” with two decades of study in behavioral therapy, positive psychology, and NLP to create science-based habits for overwhelmed educators. She is the author of the best-selling Positive Mindset Habits for Teachers and the One New Habit book series.

Website

www.gracestevens.com

Social Media Information

TikTok: @gracestevensteacher

www.facebook.com/GraceStevensTeacher

Resources Mentioned

Stephen Covey -7 Habits of Highly Effective People

https://www.gracestevens.com/happy

Show Sponsor – National Association for Primary Education (NAPE)

Watch Mark Taylor interview Al Kingsley – ‘Creating Digital Strategies for Schools’ from the Primary Education Summit – ‘Visions for the Future’ – 2023

Get access to all 20 videos from the the summit at www.nape.org.uk/summit

For support with podcasting & video please visit www.educationonfire.com/media 

Watch the Education on Fire Live Show every Tuesday www.educationonfire.com/youtube

366: Little Troopers with Louise Fetigan

Little Troopers is a registered charity supporting service children who have parent(s) serving in our British Armed Forces, regular or reserve. These children often face unique challenges including frequent house and school moves, as well as regular periods of separation from their serving parent(s) for varying lengths of time due to exercises, training, operations and other service commitments.

As a charity, Little Troopers ensures our British Armed Forces children and their families have access to child-focused support wherever they are in the world and whatever community they live in. They provide fundamental resources and initiatives to help ease repeated separation periods and keep parent and child connected even when miles apart. They are the only charity in the UK dedicated to celebrating just how special all our Little Troopers out there really are.

Louise Fetigan, founder, is a British Army veteran who saw active service in Kosovo. Her husband was also a serving soldier for 24 years, and undertook seven operational tours of duty. Together they have a daughter who spent her whole childhood as a military child and is the inspiration behind the charity, Little Troopers.

Website

www.littletroopers.net

Social Media Information

Facebook @littletroopersathome

Instagram @littletroopers_ and @louiselittletroopers

Twitter @littletroopers_

Resources Mentioned

www.littletroopers.net/teen-podcast/

Show Sponsor – National Association for Primary Education (NAPE)

Watch Mark Taylor interview Al Kingsley – ‘Creating Digital Strategies for Schools’ from the Primary Education Summit – ‘Visions for the Future’ – 2023

Get access to all 20 videos from the the summit at www.nape.org.uk/summit

For support with podcasting & video please visit www.educationonfire.com/media 

Watch the Education Live Show every Tuesday www.educationonfire.com/youtube

365: The Socratic Experience with Michael Strong

Michael Strong is the most experienced developer of innovative educational programs in the US and the Founder of The Socratic Experience, an online school based on Socratic dialogue that emphasizes personalized and purpose-driven education for students in grades 3-12.

His remarkable career in education spans over three decades, and includes creating many high-performance school programs that promote critical thinking, creativity, and entrepreneurship in students across the country.

Some of Michael’s notable projects include a public school program in which minority female students gained four years’ worth of critical thinking gains in four months (on the Watson-Glaser) and Moreno Valley High School, a Paideia charter high school, which was ranked the 36th-best US public high school by Newsweek.

He also created The Winston Academy, where middle school students passed Advanced Placement (AP) exams, making it the most academically advanced school in the US at the time. Thousands of his students have been admitted to top universities, including Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown, and many other post-secondary institutions.

Michael’s impact on education extends beyond the classroom, as he is also the author of The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice and Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems, which includes a foreword by John Mackey, the Co-Founder and former CEO of Whole Foods Market, with whom he has collaborated on initiatives related to conscious capitalism and entrepreneurship.

He has spoken at Harvard, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell, the University of Chicago, and dozens of other universities, and his work has been featured in academic journals.

Website

www.socraticexperience.com

Social Media Information

www.facebook.com/socraticexperience

www.instagram.com/thesocraticexperience/?hl=en

www.youtube.com/channel/UCvu2SVvM4aj-nzAiuuq5iHA/featured

twitter.com/socraticexp

www.linkedin.com/school/socraticexperience/

Resources Mentioned

Teaching with your mouth shut – Donald L. Finkel

Show Sponsor – National Association for Primary Education (NAPE)

Watch Mark Taylor interview Al Kingsley – ‘Creating Digital Strategies for Schools’ from the Primary Education Summit – ‘Visions for the Future’ – 2023

Get access to all 20 videos from the the summit at www.nape.org.uk/summit

For support with podcasting & video please visit www.educationonfire.com/media 

364: Are you stuck? Try BREAKTHROUGHS with Keith Nelson

Keith Nelson’s academic foundations include a B.A. from Harvard, Ph.D from Yale, and stimulating experiences as a collaborative faculty member at Stanford, Graduate Faculty of New School for Social research, and the Developmental Psychology mecca called Penn State University. His teaching includes courses on Fostering Creative Breakthroughs.

Basic theory-based research has been translated widely into new procedures for helping to accelerate developmental progress in children with autism, language delay, dyslexia, and deafness. Publications have included 12 volumes in the book series, Children’s Language, as well as over 100 journal articles and book chapters. Very few peers have attempted and achieved impressive causal experimental results across fields as diverse as Art Education, Language Delay, Poverty, Dyslexia, Deafness, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Basic Language Acquisition, Creativity, Preschool Education, Communication Disorders, Environmental Stewardship, and Adult Learning. In addition to publications Keith regularly gives papers and workshops at conferences all around the world. For example, presentations have included Vienna, Vancouver, Austin, Madrid, Stockholm, Istanbul, Madeira, and Tokyo.

Here’s a bit more about his book, BREAKTHROUGHS… Everyone gets STUCK sometimes. Perhaps you have recently been Stuck in some important way–not making progress with a child, a business project, a creative endeavor, a community project?

Stuck Now? BREAKTHROUGHS is here to inspire and help. In short, fun chapters you will explore a remarkable variety of ways that others have been really STUCK–and then found a way to Break Through, to Leap Forward. Your thinking and planning and real-life exploring will open up and feed in strongly to your own Breakthrough Successes.

Breakthroughs : Realizing Our Potentials Through Dynamic Tricky Mixes – Keith Nelson

Show Sponsor – National Association for Primary Education (NAPE)

Watch Mark Taylor interview Al Kingsley – ‘Creating Digital Strategies for Schools’ from the Primary Education Summit – ‘Visions for the Future’ – 2023

Get access to all 20 videos from the the summit at www.nape.org.uk/summit

For support with podcasting & video please visit www.educationonfire.com/media 

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