Latest articles from the Innovate My School community.

With teachers and school leaders across the UK enjoying a well-deserved break, we're taking a look at the academic year ahead. What can educators expect? How can they go about boosting their own wellbeing and student achievement alike?

We've gathered writers from a variety of backgrounds to tackle this Countdown to 2018/19. What's more, August's content is powered by Bett Global Series, whose new Bett Innovation Index gives a major selection of insights in itself...

Inspiration (92)

How your school can pay it forward

The usual school grading system rewards and highlights academic success, but as educators, we have a responsibility to prepare our pupils to be responsible, active members of the community, with a moral and social responsibility to improve the world they live in and to fight discrimination and reduce inequality. As teachers, we know that theory is one thing, but to embed a thought behaviour, or an action, one must practise ...

5 essential insights into student futures

How best to prepare students for the shrouded world ahead of them? Here, we present a few of the insights put forward in the Innovate My School Guide 2017/18...

4 steps to helping every student develop their BRAND

What comes to mind when I say Nike, Apple, Google, Amazon, Kanye West, Beyoncé? Each of these have a reputation that surrounds their “brand”. Something that is expressed through their art, their product, their services. The brand that makes us love them or loathe them.

Image credit: Burst // Shopify Partners.

Close the gap between school and work

Education systems are failing both students and businesses, claims research by Intern Tech. A shocking 48 per cent of UK graduates stated that they struggle to secure jobs in the technology and marketing industries due to lack of skills, and 93 per cent of UK tech firms claimed that the lack of skills holds their businesses back; surely this is the time for change. So before students even reach university, what more ...

5 ways that schools can live long and prosper through geek culture

Not so long ago, geeks were often considered outcasts - both in schools and in society at large. Although they bonded with other like-minded people, geeks didn’t typically mingle in mainstream culture.

How to encourage financial careers in female students

In 1995, the number of female Fortune 500 CEOs was a grand total of zero; while over the years this has increased, the progress has been slow. In more recent years, the figure rose but remained below five per cent, and in 2016, not one of the 50 new Fortune 500 CEOs were women.

Don’t fail students by neglecting local expertise

The African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” expresses the universal truth that the responsibility for child-rearing rests with the broader community and not just the parents. Yet within many schools, this adage is neglected. Parents are perceived as being prone to unhelpful interventions, previous generations of students are abandoned, and local businesses are ignored.

Saving the world one flush at a time

In September 2017, the world’s imagination was captured by the ‘monster fatberg’ - considered the world’s biggest - that was found blocking the sewers in Whitechapel, London.

Get pupils to write their own songs!

By the time children finish at Primary school they will have written stories, poems, factual accounts, autobiographies essays and plays. But their own song? Hmm, possibly not. It just seems too difficult, too personal and, for many years, way beyond my comfort zone! And yet I’m aware children know hundreds and hundreds of songs. Their whole lives are wrapped in sound, from early nursery rhymes to the latest chart ...

This is why your child is learning Pythagoras

“When am I ever going to use Pythagoras?”; “Why do I need to know what a noun is?”; “What’s the point in learning this?”... Sound familiar? You must be a teacher. If you’ve been teaching for some time, you probably know that questioning the purpose of education is nothing new. Do you ever wonder what your parents were like at school? Did they ask the same questions when ...

Image courtesy of author // Masefield Primary pupils get stuck into LbQ.

What are school suppliers thinking?

When your school buys from an education company, you do much more than engage in a simple sales transaction. Securing a new educational resource, whether it’s a piece of furniture or an edtech solution, can be the beginning of a great adventure. When it comes to the suppliers with whom you work, it’s well worth looking into why they do what they do.

Raise the curtain on student confidence

At St Andrew’s CoE School in Croydon, we are passionate about building strength, resilience and confidence in every student, in order to give them the best chance of success and fulfilment in life.