"The time parents spend with their children has a powerful effect on their educational achievement, according to a large study with a novel approach. Researchers analysed data on children in Israel who lost a parent through death or divorce. They found that when it came to one measure of a child's academic success, the educational attainment of the surviving or custodial parent had more impact than the educational level of the parent who died or left the home."

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"Metacognition is widely accepted as "thinking about thinking", often inspired by the work in the 1970s of John Flavell, and its impact in educational circles cannot be denied. Indeed, John Hattie concluded that Metacognitive strategies have a positive impact score of D=0,69 - just outside the top ten of the most effective pedagogical strategies available to teachers - when sustained in the classroom. Additionally, the Educational Endowment Foundation advocate that Metacognition provides a 'high impact for low value', being easy to implement. Furthermore, Singapore's education system implemented Metacognition into their mathematics curriculum in the early 2000s, and their results speak for themselves."

"re you a bright spark with a brilliant educational technology idea that could change the way we teach and learn in schools and drive up educational outcomes? If so Cool Initiatives wants to hear from you! Cool Initiatives, premier early stage investor in education and edtech, has just launched The Cool Initiatives Education Challenge 2019 . It's giving away a total of £17,500 - no financial strings attached - to students, teachers or early stage start ups that offer an innovative edtech solution to change the face of education as we know it today."

"Despite the prevalence of depression in the population, the devastating impact it can have, and the rise in public awareness in recent years, schools (and society at large) still find depression a taboo. Something which is often ignored and misunderstood. Where support is available wonderful things can happen mitigating some many of the pressures when the black dog comes barking. While a societal shift is needed, there are many, often small things that educators can do to help those who need help."

"After three months of nominating, the definitive list of educators to follow on Twitter is here, as chosen by you"

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"At times, students' viewpoints need to be treated with caution.  In Do Learners Really Know Best? urban legends about learners as 'digital natives' and 'self-educators' are exploded, whilst Kirschner et al. argue, that students do not always prefer the most effective form of instruction.  Despite this, what struck me when reading the Sutton Trust's What Makes Great Teaching was the correlation to student's voice I had done with Year 10 students on their views of effective teaching."

"If there is one thing I have come to realise in headship it is that you can't do it all by yourself. Surrounding yourself with the very best people is a start - but getting the very best from the very best requires an atmosphere and culture of trust to develop. As the new calendar year dawned and the Spring Term commenced I gathered the staff together from both of my schools to introduce my Innovation Recognition Scheme which I intended to roll out across the federation."

"Performance targets, increased workload, curriculum changes and other bureaucratic changes are eroding teachers' professional identity and harming their mental health, a new study in Educational Review finds. The study's authors interviewed 39 teachers across England and Wales who had experienced long term absence from work due to mental health problems, and six head, deputy and assistant head teachers who had dealt with mental health problems among staff."

"No film set of a 1950's primary school classroom would be complete without the serried ranks of neatly dressed children chanting times tables aloud at their wooden desks. Since those days, learning through repetition has fallen in and out of vogue. That's why it's so interesting to witness the recent resurgence in support for rote learning, backed by high-profile figures from the world of politics and education alike."

"In 1970 Paulo Freire published Pedagogy of the Oppressed in response to the antiquated notion of education as filling empty vessels, where an oracular educator lectures ignorant learners, arguing instead for a change in the power balance in the classroom so instead of authoritarian teachers choosing the path of learning, a collaboration of teacher-students and student-teachers would form to make learning bespoke through critical dialogue and critical assessment of the knowledge is being, and in the process, change the world around them."

"Mentally healthy schools are schools that pay ongoing and dedicated attention to the emotional wellbeing of both students and staff and put in place policies and interventions to ensure that students and staff feel cared for, listened to, understand, nurtured and valued for what each of them, individually bring to the school community."

"The team at Night Zookeeper is delighted to be giving primary school children across the UK a unique opportunity to use a new (and free!) website to create characters for a soon-to-launch animated TV series in a world first."

"With a greater focus on accessibility and inclusivity, Microsoft has announced ten major updates to their services available in 2019, that can have a positive impact on using their tools for teaching and learning. In a blog post, Mike Tholsfen highlighted how the Immersive Reader technology, along with Line Focus in Microsoft Word, and an even more impressive feature of being able to change page colours in Word desktop."

"In a few years from now, students in schools all over the world will receive part of their education in virtual learning environments. Wearing VR-goggles the students will be able to enter 3-dimensional, simulated places and situations that they would normally not have access to because it would be too expensive, too dangerous or physically impossible. Teaching via VR-technology is spreading widely and international studies predict that this will revolutionise the way we learn."

"New Change4Life teaching resources will support teachers to use English and Maths lessons to help children cut back on sugar. This comes as Public Health England (PHE) reveals the average 10 year old has already consumed at least 18 years' worth of sugar.[1] While children's sugar intakes have declined slightly in recent years, they are still consuming around eight extra sugar cubes each day[2], equivalent to around 2,800 excess sugar cubes per year."