Behavioural insights and lessons still to be learned

The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) puts forward the perception that it is strong on research and learning.  Questionable., because it has little to say about the lessons that have already been learned about poverty and education or the need for educating politicians about research.

BIT says: "Yesterday Justine Greening, the Secretary of State for Education, announced that the government was to fund 11 Research Schools, bringing the total to 22 nationally...

"We have a long history with the Blue School and with Somerset more generally, having collaborated with them on our projects supporting the Somerset Challenge, a cross county group dedicated to school improvement, which is also part of the Blue School’s bid."

"Over the next three years, the Blue School, supported by the Somerset Challenge, BIT, and Professor Simon Burgess from the University of Bristol, will focus on several strands of work."

"These will include creating online material to support teachers in the use of evidence based interventions in the classroom, as well as workshops and conferences with a similar focus; training for teachers on how to tell good evidence from bad, and what sources to trust; and how to tailor the findings of research to their own context and needs."

http://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/education-and-skills/why-englands-11-new-research-schools-are-an-exciting-step-forward-for-education/


Creating online material?   BIT is politically based and not value-free.

Will opportunities be taken for private enterprises to build businesses out of something like STEP be there in the interventions, workshops and conferences that ordinary taxpayers fund?

I do think so.

Who knows?  As it is, a few more lessons need to be learned by flustered Justine Greening who "left important Government documents unattended in the street as she dodged questions about teachers’ 1% pay rise."

"The Education Secretary fled back into her house, leaving her Ministerial Red Box outside – containing official papers..."

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/flustered-education-secretary-justine-greening-10778378

Tut. Tut.

A definite D for that.

And possible expulsion ?