Improving Teaching: Chalk and Change podcast with Harry Fletcher-Wood

In this episode, we’re talking to Lucy Crehan. Over a decade ago, she waved goodbye to science teaching in London, and set out to visit the highest-performing education systems in the world. Her book, Cleverlands, describes what schools are really like, in countries as diverse as Finland, Canada, Singapore and Japan. Today she’s one of the world’s foremost experts in comparative education, and has supported nation...

"You can have a lovely building but if the teaching's no good, the thing's not going to work."

In this episode, we speak to Sir Dan Moynihan, CEO of the Harris Federation. Beginning as an economics teacher in Tower Hamlets in the 1980s, he became a head teacher in 1999, and the principal of what was then the Harris City Technology College in 2005. The Harris Federation was founded the following year, and now runs 55 schools. He has ...

"I hate the idea of settling for mediocrity."

In this episode, we talk to Baron Gove of Torry. Entering Parliament in 2005, as MP for Surrey Heath, Michael Gove was Shadow Education Secretary from 2007, and Secretary of State for Education from 2010 to 2014. His subsequent government roles included being Minister for Justice, and Secretary of State for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs. Standing down as an MP in 2024, he now ...

"You can learn a great deal from Finland, but you have to get into a time machine."

In this episode, we speak to Tim Oates, CBE. Tim was an education researcher and evaluator of youth training schemes, then worked at the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, before joining Cambridge Assessment in 2006, where he was the Group Director of Assessment, Research and Development for almost 20 years. He’s currently a fellow of Chu...

In this episode, we talk to Professor Rob Coe. Rob was a maths teacher, then, for many years, Director of the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring. He is now both Director of Research and Development at Evidence Based Education (EBE) and Senior Associate at the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). Rob has been doing thoughtful, critical, uncompromising educational research for longer than I've been working in schools. When new thi...

Daisy Christodoulou is the Director of Education at No More Marking. Daisy was at the forefront of a movement of bloggers and thinkers which sought to change how teachers thought about student learning, and what they did in the classroom. Her 2013 book, Seven Myths about Education, contrasted good practice - as described by school inspection reports - with the evidence around how people learn.

Daisy trained with Teach First, worked ...

Sir Nick Gibb focused on education as an opposition MP from the early 2000s. From 2010-2023, with two brief interruptions, he was Minister for Schools. Nick's interest in specific aspects of teaching - notably phonics and knowledge-rich teaching - go back over twenty years. He spent his time in government pursuing lasting change in what and how English schools teach. With headteacher Robert Peal, Nick recently published Reforming L...

John Jerrim is a Professor of Education and Social Statistics, and the Director of the Quantitative Social Science Research Centre at UCL Institute of Education.

I particularly wanted to learn from him about England's performance in international tests - one of his specialist subjects.

We discussed:

• How John came to write so many papers - and how knows what makes a paper a good idea
• The world of international tests: who runs them, ...