News

The government has bowed to pressure and – unusually – to evidence, and has dropped this year’s controversial baseline tests on the grounds that problems of comparability between the three approved versions of baseline assessment would have made them ‘inappropriate and unfair to schools’ as a basis for measuring pupil progress. However, DfE says that it remains committed to baseline assessment of some sort. 

CPRT supported the Better Without Baseline campaign in February and last month followed up with a closely-argued blog about the problems of baseline assessment from Nancy Stewart of TACTYC, a leading early years organisation.

It remains to be seen whether DfE will now review other policies that are ‘inappropriate and unfair to schools’. Perhaps, if it does so, it could extend to children its examination of what is appropriate and fair.

Robin Alexander

Friday 18 November 2016 (0930-1615)
Hamilton House, Mabledon Place, London WC1

Join the Cambridge Primary Review Trust (CPRT) at this one day conference to celebrate the tenth anniversary the launch of the Cambridge Primary Review and help shape a vision for primary education for the next decade. The conference will include keynote speakers, discussion groups and a panel session. It will be followed by a reception at which awards will be made for outstanding teaching, school leadership and research relating to CPRT aims and priorities (details of this scheme will be posted later).

Confirmed speakers:

• Robin Alexander, Chair of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust.
• Melissa Benn, writer and campaigner.
• Neil Carmichael, Chair of the House of Commons Education Committee.
• Andrew Pollard, professor of education and leading educational researcher.
• Sarah Rutty, primary head and leader of CPRT’s West Yorkshire Network.

Participants will include teachers, school leaders, teacher educators, trainee teachers, researchers, policy makers and all who are interested in the future of primary education and share our commitment to rich educational practice grounded in evidence and principle.

We are now inviting proposals for contributions to the discussion sessions, deadline 12 May 2016.

• For information about how to submit a discussion group proposal click here.
• Download the discussion group guidelines here.
• To submit a proposal click here.
• If you wish to submit symposium of linked presentations, please contact the Administrator here.

Today CPRT publishes Primary Education for Global Learning and Sustainability, by Douglas Bourn, Frances Hunt, Nicole Blum and Helen Lawson, of UCL Institute of Education. This is the fifth in CPRT’s new series of research reviews building on those produced between 2007 and 2010 by the Cambridge Primary Review. The present report, commissioned in response to CPRT Priority 4, Sustainability, considers the agenda opened up by the UN Sustainable Development Goals launched in 2015 and the OECD review of global competencies planned for 2018, all of which have implications for primary schools.

Download the full report here.

Download the four-page briefing/executive summary here.

The Directors of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust are supporting Better Without Baseline, an alliance of organisations opposed to the introduction of the government’s Baseline Assessment. They have decided to lend their support after careful consideration of the evidence on the validity and impact of baseline assessment as currently conceived, especially the independent report commissioned from UCL’s Institute of Education by NUT and ATL.

Read Robin Alexander’s submission, on behalf of CPRT, to the House of Commons Education Committee inquiry The Purpose and Quality of Education in England.

On September 22^nd the London Region Network benefitted from the advice and experience of children, teachers and head teachers as well as a director of the Trust. The focus was on classroom conversations that deepen Learning and improve the effectiveness of teaching.

Read more about the event here.

The British Educational Research Association (BERA) has launched a major new Public Impact Award in partnership with Sage. Its first recipient, announced at the September 2015 BERA Annual Conference, is Robin Alexander. The award is for his initiation and ten-year leadership of the Cambridge Primary Review and the Cambridge Primary Review Trust.

Read full BERA citation

Read SAGE press release

Colleagues of Professor Anna Craft, of Exeter University, the Open University and the Cambridge Primary Review Trust, who died in August 2014, have set up a website in her memory at http://annacraftcreativity.uk/ . The organisers are inviting recollections and other contributions.

Primary Colours: Westminster postcards from the Cambridge Primary Review Trust.
Published June 2015 by the Cambridge Primary Review Trust.
106 pages. ISBN 978-0-9931032-3-0.

A collection of short and readable articles about current issues in primary education. Intended to inform, educate, entertain and even occasionally castigate.

Contributors: Robin Alexander, Natalie Bradbury, Teresa Cremin, Marianne Cutler, Iain Erskine, Jo Evans, Julia Flutter, Gregory Frame, Warwick Mansell, Stephanie Northen, David Reedy and Sarah Rutty.

View online version with hyperlinks here.

Print out version with hyperlinks replaced by footnotes here.

To order bound copies, please contact administrator@cprtrust.org.uk and send a cheque for £10 payable to Cambridge Primary Review Trust to cover the book including postage and packaging. The office address is

Cambridge Primary Review Trust, Derwent College M/103, University of York, York, YO10 5DD.

We have limited stocks so order now.