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Research Summaries as a starting point for your thinking.

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An accessible summary of the international evidence on teaching 5-16 year-olds.

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Skip to Part 2 and read whilst thinking about how these strategies might form the basis for a research project.

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“I have been able to build my theories on what I have done in practice, as are seen in the Enterprise documents; it’s my ordering, it reflects therefore my philosophy of teaching…” (interview, 7 February 1990).

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Resources will be added to this Padlet to support the Guided Learning Tasks on Friday

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Resources will be added to this Padlet to support the Guided Learning Tasks on Friday

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Evidence Based Education

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Previous submissions

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Last night on Newsnight Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools and head of Ofsted, condemned the fact that one in five pupils are leaving primary school without reaching the "national average" in English. His comment led to accusations on Twitter that he had been "statistically incoherent", including this one from @Bickerrecord:

Ofsted boss #newsnight "1 in 5 children leave primary school without reaching national average". Ofsted boss needs a basic statistics lesson

@sundersays, director of British Future, tweeted me asking:

can u find out why he uses "1 in 5 don't reach average" (innumerate/silly) rather than, say, don't reach "basic standard"

This is what Sir Michael actually said on Newsnight:

Our standards should be higher. What that in effect means is something like one in five children in primary schools at the age of 11 are leaving primary school without the national average. What that really means is that they can't access the curriculum in secondary school, they find it difficult to pass examinations, they find it difficult to proceed to the next stage of their education and training, and of course they find it difficult to get jobs.

It is of course unsurprising that some children weren't average: some children will inevitably be below average, because an average is just a measure of the most typical outcome for children. It is statistically incoherent to condemn a system for some children failing to reach the national average. To repeat, some children will always fail to reach the average.

The chief inspector's comments are based on this Ofsted report, which makes it clear that what he is actually referring to is the "national expectation" or target. It says:

Standards in English at the end of Key Stage 2 have also not risen since the last report. While four-fifths of pupils at Key Stage 2 reached national expectations over the last three years, one in five primary pupils did not achieve the expected standard in English.

On the phone just now, the Ofsted press office admitted that Wilshaw's reference to the average was simply a "slip of the tongue" and the language in the report is correct.

But it's quite a telling one. There has always been a blurring between averages and targets. The current target for primaries is that 85% of children should make two levels of progress between years two and six in English. Last year 82% got a level four in English and 29% got a level five.

I've asked Warwick Mansell, author of Education by Numbers, a critique of the Sats system, why there has been such a tight relationship between the average and the expected level. He said:

What happened is that in 1988 when they were thinking about introducing the Sats there was a graph in the report that created the level system which found that the middle of level four is the median. It's a mathematical expectation - that's what we expect a child to get. Politicians adopted that as a target and that moved to a minimum expectation. It's not impossible to think that something that was originally set as an average, should become a minimum. If 80% are hitting it, then the average performance is higher than the threshold of the level. By moving the target above average it's saying we can't accept what used to be average as good now because of the improvements in the results.

This is the report that Warwick refers to, the Task Group on Assessment and Testing, (pdf) chaired by Prof Paul Black. This is the table that predicted average results:

Sir Michael is recommending that the bar needs to be raised from demanding that ever larger numbers of children achieve the average or expected level 4 to raising that standard entirely. Within each level there are three categories A, B and C. He's arguing that schools should be expected to get children towards the top level A, rather than C, because there is a lot of evidence that that level four As correlate with good GCSEs, and level four Cs don't. Reality check looked at this previously here. Today Sir Michael said:

Last year 45% of those pupils who just reached level 4C at the age of 11 did not achieve a grade C in their GCSE English exams. So one of the first questions we need to ask is whether the national end-of-primary-school target of level 4 is sufficiently high to provide an adequate foundation for success at secondary school.

What do you think? Is it fair to raise the bar? Get in touch below the line, Tweet me at @pollycurtis or email polly.curtis@guardian.co.uk.

Simon Rogers from our datablog team has put together this chart showing how the number of children reaching the expected levels in English has improved since they began.

Our education editor Jeevan Vasagar has just pointed me towards this exchange in the Commons education select committee, this time exposing the education secretary Michael Gove's problems with understanding averages.

Chair: Secretary of State, we are moving to a novel, new section: quick fire questions and answers, inspired by the Twitter feed #askgove-5,000-plus wanting to interact with you. So we are going to go round each of us in fairly strict timing. If you could give us quick answers, that would be great.

Michael Gove: I will try my best.

Chair: One is: if "good" requires pupil performance to exceed the national average, and if all schools must be good, how is this mathematically possible?

Michael Gove: By getting better all the time.

Chair: So it is possible, is it?

Michael Gove: It is possible to get better all the time.

Chair: Were you better at literacy than numeracy, Secretary of State?

Michael Gove: I cannot remember.

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How the Ofsted chief got his maths wrong on Sats

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Sir Michael Wilshaw last night condemned the failure of some children to achieve the national average in English Sats aged 11. Today his office admits that was a "slip of the tongue" - the average is a mathematical calculation rather than a "target". But what does his error tell us about the Sats system?

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Group 2

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Plenary Recording Assessment Task Outline