Belonging is Ofsted’s latest preoccupation.

In the 2025 framework it sits inside inclusion, now judged in its own right.

Schools feel pressure to demonstrate how they notice and support pupils who

meet friction in the system.

Much policy treats belonging as an emotional climate.

Warmth, smiles and pleasant corridors become the accepted tokens of

attachment.

This flattens a serious idea and overlooks the material pupils use to understand

school life.

Knowledge as the foundation of belonging

Belonging grows from access to shared knowledge: the stories, concepts and

cultural structures that let a community recognise itself.

Language sits inside this larger inheritance. It is the most visible branch of a

deeper stock of ideas.

Without shared knowledge, pupils cannot interpret rules, routines or

expectations.

If belonging becomes a feeling, we lose sight of the material that gives the feeling something to attach to.

Language as the medium of participation

Every encounter at school arrives through words: rules, identity, aspiration,

conflict.

Pupils join the community by gaining control of its linguistic repertoire.

To belong is to understand the meaning

world the school inhabits.

The older conversation

The Civitas

report argues for a renewed commitment to classical liberal education in

the UK:

The aspiration is to help children develop conscience, moral judgement,

aesthetic sensibility, and a sense of belonging to a heritage. These qualities

anchor personal freedom in responsibility and shared humanity

Belonging.docx Classical societies bound citizens through a moral vocabulary and a shared

account of the virtues.

Christianity offered a narrative of creation, fall and redemption that gave

communities long memory. In each case, belonging meant learning the knowledge and language of the tradition.

The Civitas vision of education connects directly to our broader argument:

belonging is not just emotional comfort or inclusion. It is entrance into a shared

world of ideas, language, values and history.

Without that shared knowledge and cultural inheritance, belonging risks

degenerating into a patchwork of mood, sentiment or identity fragments.

Reviving classical liberal education offers a way to rebuild the intellectual and

moral basis of belonging: not as compliance, but as membership in a living

tradition one that gives children more than qualifications: a language, a moral

vocabulary, a sense of home in a community of meaning.

The modern tension. The key question sits quietly behind the framework: belonging to what?

Many schools treat belonging as free floating, detached from any story or stock

of ideas.. This reflects the multicultural mosaic, which prizes openness but offers little

shared meaning.

The result can be a community held together by atmosphere rather than

conviction.

Without shared knowledge, belonging collapses into mood.

Mood does not hold communities together. Common stories, common concepts

and a common language do. When pupils lack the background knowledge to follow curriculum discussions, they drift to the margins. They may feel welcome, but they cannot participate

fully in classroom life.

Initiatives that focus on wellbeing surveys or displays of diversity, but do not

teach the knowledge that unifies pupils, history, literature, civic ideas

produce fragile cohesion. Children sit together but do not share a common

frame for thinking.

Public debate becomes incoherent without shared reference points. When

citizens no longer recog

nise the same historical events, moral concepts or civic

principles, discussion dissolves into competing feelings.

Communities with no common story struggle to integrate newcomers. Without

shared civic knowledge, the constitution, national history, the duties of citizenship

“inclusion” becomes a matter of sentiment rather than

participation..

Societies that retreat from teaching their own traditions often see rising

polarisation. Without a common inheritance, people fall back on subcultures,

identities or moods that cannot be reconciled.

Schools face a clear choice. They can induct pupils into a tradition with coherent

knowledge, a shared story and a demanding moral vocabulary, or they can settle

for a mosaic of disconnected narratives

that offers little common ground.

Language sits at the centre of this decision. A shared linguistic repertoire gives

pupils access to the concepts, stories and virtues that shape the community

they join. Without this, belonging has no anchor and no directi

on.

If Ofsted wants belonging to mean more than mood, it must address the deeper

question: not whether pupils feel at home, but whether they are being given the

knowledge and language that make a home possible.

What do we want students to belong to?

In this episode we look at a cluster of articles, tweets and policy announcements, each tugging in a slightly different direction. On their own they’re fragments. Taken together they paint a

picture of how schools try to make sense of contradictory signals about disadvantage,

curriculum, SEND, misinformation and reform.

We look at the top 75 schools based on progress 8 - what is their secret?

We ask, can you teach kids to spot misinformation?

We discuss what relevance neuroscience might have for schools

And whether English teachers actually like Shakespeare? (Should they?)

https://www.weareinbeta.community/posts/schools-with-strong-contextual-attainment-for-disadvantaged-students-in-2025

https://substack.nomoremarking.com/p/can-we-teach-students-to-spot-misinformation

https://x.com/BarbaraBleiman/status/1988165932867612744?s=20

https://daviddidau.substack.com/p/the-promise-and-danger-of-neuroscience

Curriculum Wars, Again

The 2025 Curriculum & Assessment Review

–

progress or regression?

This week, we wade into the newly published

Curriculum and Assessment Review

—

the biggest rethink of England’s education system since 2014. Chaired by Becky

Francis,

the report promises a “world

-

class curriculum for all.” But behind the polite

phrasing lies a familiar battlefield: knowledge versus skills, rigour versus relevance,

freedom versus control.

Has the pendulum swung again? Or are we just circling the same deb

ates under

new branding?

What Is English For, Anyway?

The review calls for a clearer sense of purpose

—

including a firmer distinction

between

English

and

literacy

.



Could this finally kill off the endless reproduction of GCSE question types at

Key Stage 3?



Or will “clarity” just mean more bureaucratic fog?



Remember when KS3 had its own curriculum and the Year 9 SATs actually

tested something worthwhile?

Drama Returns to the Stage

The report reintroduces

drama

—

not as an afterthought, but as a formal part of

English, alongside reading and writing.



Nostalgia or necessity?



Can English teachers still teach drama with confidence? Or has that expertise

gone the way of the OHP and the acetate pen?



When it’s done wel

l, drama deepens understanding and builds voice; when

it’s bad, it’s awkward theatre therapy.

The Oracy Framework: Finding Our Voices, Losing Our Minds?

A new

National Oracy Framework

is coming to “complement” reading and writing.



The idea: oracy underpins

learning, wellbeing, and citizenship.



The worry: it becomes another smorgasbord of “amuse

-

bouches” that

distracts from the main course of English.



If it’s about real talk

—

debate, interpretation, Socratic dialogue

—

brilliant.



If it’s another round of la

minated sentence stems and group talk rubrics, not

so much.

Grammar in Use, Not Grammar in Theory

At last, someone’s said it: move theoretical grammar out of primary and focus on

grammar

in use

at Key Stage 3.



Re

-

sequencing grammar so it’s taught when

students can actually use it.



A revised GPS test focusing on application, not terminology.



Imagine a “literacy passport”

—

a driving theory test for writing

—

taken when

students are ready.

Diagnostics and the Year 8 Test

A national diagnostic test in Engl

ish at Year 8: to identify reading weaknesses before

it’s too late.



Were SATs a good thing?



Because every child who can’t read at secondary is a failure of the system,

not the child.



Measure it and it will come.

GCSE English: The Return of Purpose (Maybe)

The review proposes a total rethink of English Language and Literature at Key Stage

4.



More focus on the

nature and expression of language

.



Greater range of text types

—

possibly multi

-

modal or media

-

based.



But will this mean deep analysis or “describe yo

ur favourite app” nonsense?

Broadening the Canon

Keep Shakespeare. Keep the 19th

-

century novel. Keep poetry. But add more

“diverse and representative” texts.



Sounds fine, unless “diverse” just means “short and modern.”



Without a central list, we risk

tokenism

—

or a slide back to the 1980s: Angel

Delight, pastel colours, and low expectations.

“The best that’s been thought and said

—

by everyone.”

EBacc: The Empire Strikes Out

The review doesn’t quite kill the EBacc, but it quietly prepares the

obituary.



A “rebalancing” of accountability measures signals its long fade.



The arts and technical subjects might finally be allowed to breathe again.



But will schools trust that the accountability system really means it?



Is this the end of “five pillars o

f rigour,” or just a rebrand before the next

election?

The Broader Frame: Inclusion, AI, and Moral Purpose

Beyond English, the review leans heavily into digital literacy, sustainability, and

moral education

Are we educating people or optimising products?



Civic education from Year 1: universal virtue or creeping ideology?



AI readiness: the new “future

-

proofing” theology.

Implementation and Irony

The report promises “professional autonomy within entitlement.”



A phrase so elegantly meaningless it could only h

ave been written by a

committee.



Is it genuine trust, or centralisation in polite language?



And who will train teachers to deliver all this nuance?

“It’s a middle path no one will walk.”

“Or as we call it in schools

—

another thing to fake.”

The review’

s English reforms are a time machine: part 1990s drama classroom, part

2010s accountability regime, part 2030s AI marketing deck.

But the question remains the same:

What do we really want English to

do

: teach communication, preserve culture, or

save souls?

From SATs nostalgia to Shakespeare’s survival, it’s all here

—

the eternal drama of

English education.

The cast has changed, the set is modernised, but the script? Still a tragicomedy of

good intentions.

Schools Week Link: https://schoolsweek.co.uk/interview-becky-francis-on-the-big-ideas-in-her-curriculum-review/

Breakfasts or Brains?

Before we go into the notes, you can sponsor David and donate to cancer research here: https://fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/davids-giving-page-28674978

Bridget Phillipson’s Labour Conference speech had all the feels: a moving supermarket anecdote about a “lost boy” saved by an inspirational FE teacher, a soaring rhetoric of freedom and opportunity, and a checklist of breakfast clubs, nurseries and teacher pay rises.

But beneath the sentiment lies a silence. Phillipson talked about tomorrow’s “scientists and artists,” but never once mentioned the Francis Review — the live debate on what children should actually learn.

So, is Labour feeding children while starving them intellectually? Do stories like Alan’s illuminate education policy, or sentimentalise it? And what would it take for a curriculum to truly create the “people of tomorrow”?

Bridget Phillipson opened her conference speech with a story. Alan, an FE teacher from Sunderland, bumps into a former student in a supermarket. Years earlier, Alan had given this “lost boy” a chance on a building project funded by the last Labour government. Now the boy has his own business, a wife, a home, and a future. He tells Alan: without you, none of this would have happened.

It’s a moving anecdote. But does it tell us what we need to know about education policy?

Critical questions about the Alan story

• Why is the success story framed through one boy, one intervention, one charismatic teacher?

• Is this just survivorship bias? what about the other boys Alan didn’t bump into at the supermarket?

• Does it prove that government schemes change lives, or that luck and personal relationships matter more than systems?

• If Alan is the hero, what role does curriculum play in this narrative? What about the thousands of children who will never meet an Alan?

Freedom and the “people of tomorrow”

Phillipson pitched education as liberation: freedom to choose your path, freedom from poverty, ignorance and fear, freedom to be more than just a worker. She insisted education is about the people of tomorrow the scientists and artists, carers and campaigners, museum-goers and football fans.

But then came the pivot: a long list of what Labour has already delivered — breakfast clubs, nurseries, Family Hubs, teacher pay, more apprenticeships. Good things, but not the stuff that turns children into scientists and artists. It all sounded rather less Tomorrow’s World and more The Tomorrow People - promising superpowers, but delivering little more than cereal and childcare.

The missing piece: Curriculum

What she didn’t mention - not once - was the Francis Review, the live question of what children should learn and how knowledge should be sequenced. This is the real engine of opportunity. Without it, promises about “the people of tomorrow” sound like aspiration without architecture.

What she could have said:

“The Francis Review is not some dry consultation. It is the question of our time: what knowledge do our children need if they are to become the scientists and artists, the carers and campaigners of tomorrow? The inheritance of our culture, the sciences that push the boundaries of what is possible, the arts that make life worth living — these are not luxuries, they are entitlements.”

Instead, the Review risks drifting into bureaucratic fudge: shuffling qualifications, mouthing slogans about “skills for the future,” and quietly hollowing out the knowledge-rich curriculum children need. Breakfast fills bellies. Curriculum feeds minds.

Starmer’s backdrop

Starmer added his own twist: ditching the 50% university target and aiming instead for two-thirds of young people to secure either a university place or a “gold-plated apprenticeship.” But what makes an apprenticeship “gold-plated” without the intellectual preparation a rigorous curriculum provides?

Key takeaway

Phillipson’s speech was long on sentiment, short on substance. Until Labour can say what children will actually learn, and why, “the people of tomorrow” remain a rhetorical flourish, not a reality.

Questions

1. Do personal stories like Alan’s illuminate education policy, or obscure the bigger picture?

2. Is education about creating “workers of tomorrow” or “people of tomorrow”? Can it be both?

3. What should the Francis Review actually deliver if Labour is serious about cultivating artists and scientists, not just workers?

4. Is “freedom” meaningful in education without a clear philosophy of curriculum?

Katherine Birbalsingh on Phillipson: https://x.com/Miss_Snuffy/status/1974936660954767679

Amanda Spielman on Assessment reform: https://schoolsweek.co.uk/no-real-subject-inspection-left-spielman-slams-ofsted-reforms/

Should Kids Love Learning?

• Should kids love learning? Is love even important? What actually matters?

• Is this about engagement, motivation, wellbeing, stupidogenesis or something else?

The Education Divide

• Peter Hyman: the education divide that’s fuelling broader societal fractures.

• Questions:

o Is love of learning only available to the privileged?

o Is “curiosity” a luxury or a universal right?

• Social class, cultural capital, vocational vs academic, compliant vs questioning.

• Are we educating students to be clever conformists or thoughtful dissenters?

• If learning is about fitting in with the system, how do we preserve space for voices that challenge the system?

• Is dissent too often mistaken for disruption in schools?

Has the Love of Learning Been Lost?

• Education Politics Substack: system squeezes joy out of discovery.

• Do children love learning, or just discovery when it feels voluntary?

• Has accountability (Ofsted, exams) killed off curiosity?

• Should “love” be central, or is that a distraction from rigour?

• Intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. Deci & Ryan: autonomy, competence, relatedness. Is “love of learning” really a by-product of system design, not an individual trait?

• How can schools create micro-environments of autonomy, competence, and relatedness even in a high-stakes culture?

The APPG Report

• All-Party Group on Love of Learning report.

• Key themes: curriculum narrowing, testing, wellbeing, disengagement.

• Can you legislate for “love”? Or is that sentimentalism?

• Is “love of learning” measurable? Or just rhetoric?

• What happens politically if schools churn out disengaged citizens?

• Hirsch (joy through mastery) vs progressives (joy through exploration). Do we aim to give children joy now (exploration) or joy later (mastery)? Or is it possible to design curricula that combine both — structured knowledge with space for wonder? Is “joy through mastery” a more honest aim than trying to make every lesson “fun”?

• Geary’s distinction: biologically primary vs secondary knowledge — kids may not “love” algebra, should we expect them to? maybe the goal shouldn’t be to make secondary knowledge feel fun, but to help students experience the delayed satisfaction that comes with having mastered it.

• Is “love” even the right word, or should we be talking about respect, perseverance, or meaning?

Should Kids Love Learning?

• Aristotle’s distinction between what’s pleasant and what’s good.

• Biesta: education as interruption of desire.

o If a child learns but never “loves,” is that failure?

o Do we confuse “loving learning” with “liking school”?

o Should schools prioritise joy now, or dividends later?

• Bjork on desirable difficulties — sometimes dislike in the moment = deeper love later. Bjork: “What enhances performance in the short term can often fail to support long-term learning.”

International Perspectives

• PISA/TIMSS on student attitudes.

• Finland (“joy in learning”) vs East Asia (high performance, high stress).

• Do we want kids to like school, or profit from it later?

• Is there a trade-off between love and mastery?

Towards Solutions

• What could change?

o Rebalance assessment: more formative, less punitive.

o Guarantee a broad entitlement: arts, play, philosophy.

o Restore teacher autonomy.

• Do we want citizens who can love, argue, and think — or workers who can comply?

Some links:

https://educationpolitics.substack.com/p/has-the-love-of-learning-been-lost?r=1rvl5x&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

https://peterhyman21.substack.com/p/the-education-divide-thats-fuelling?r=1rvl5x&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

https://educationappg.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/APPG-LoL-Report.pdf

https://amzn.eu/d/fgWY2xB

Becky Francis chair of the Curriculum Review stated at Research Ed National Conference that ‘The review will not dumb down content, or infuse with issues or campaigns.’ Yet the review ‘will (her italics) ensure that every young person can see themselves in the curriculum, and that it challenges discrimination and extends horizons’

Is this contradictory? Arguably dumbing down content is achieved if you try to organise a curriculum in which every young person can see themselves. Not infusing a curriculum with issues or campaigns yet ensuring it challenges discrimination might also hint at a contradiction.

At the time of recording we don’t know how she will try to achieve these aims but let’s examine what the argument might be.

Seeing yourself in the curriculum is usually an identitarian call to arms in that curriculum material chosen and content covered should resist all being about dead white men. It should include more BAME representation, Women, ‘Otherwise abled’, LGBTQ, Working Class, ‘Young People’ etc. in a more positive and inclusive way.

What possibly could be an argument against? Cultural transmission: The distortions to the curriculum needed to ensure this representation mean that the ‘great books’, ‘our island story’, great works of art, music etc, works of science, historical moments of importance, are no longer the grand narrative of curriculum design so that certain ‘great works’ are ignored in order to make space for ‘DEI’ works that either do not live up to the level of the works they replace and/or disrupt the curriculum narrative so that the importance of what was happening in, say, the Crimean War is replaced by an undue focus on Mary Seacole.

Who could be against challenging discrimination? Well, I take it that discrimination is not seen as a bad thing because we want students to be discriminating in many ways. To favour certain things over other things. To develop a moral code, a sense of right and wrong, for example. But how far do we take this?

Schools are places where we have to guard against bullying against racism, inappropriate behaviour, anti-semitism etc. but do we get into grey areas when we start either choosing texts in order to make these policies clear? Is this dumbing down? Or interpreting texts to eke out the messages - for example setting an essay about What can Romeo and Juliet teach us about anti-racism?

What is our attitude towards Andrew Tate, Tommy Robinson, Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Netanyahu, Putin, Jeremy Corbyn, Sultana and that bloke from the Greens? etc. Or are all acceptable?

Where do we draw the lines? Should We Draw Lines?

Can we teach students how to disagree agreeably?

What is the state of our nation (UK) and how does this impact our schools and colleges?

Is our national/international situation so fraught and anxiety inducing that young people are over-anxious? Is this made worse by socail media and the us vs them that seems to be dominating a lot of the online space?

Are schools suitably ‘dialogic’ are we able to develop schools where dialectic and discussion is the centrepiece - teaching them how to take their place in ‘The Great Conversation of Humankind’?

Is there hope? How can schools help young people to see the humanity in each other, even those with whom you vehemently disagree?

What is the point of school? Is it changing? Should we focus on academic education or vocational? Are either right for the age of AI? Does creativity and play have a part to play or are we just in the business of filling up memories with Shakespeare and Algebra?

All this and more in this episode! Listen on your favourite platform or watch here.

Don't forget to like and subscribe!

Is AI dumbing us down? Are schools in danger of making kids 'stupider'?

Should we make schools gymnasia of the mind?

Will an education for leisure replace an education for work?

All this and more in this episode!

Some links to material discussed:

Do our brains need knowledge in the age of AI? https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.11015

Scott Alexander's Misleading Victory: https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/scott-alexanders-misleading-victory?r=18455&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

Your Brain on Chat GPT: https://daviddidau.substack.com/p/the-cost-of-borrowed-thought

TikTok and AI are Junk Food: https://archive.is/20250512191652/https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/tiktok-and-ai-are-junk-food-start-dieting-m7pbtcpdv#selection-1385.0-1519.694

Are We Living in a Stupidogenic Society? https://substack.nomoremarking.com/p/are-we-living-in-a-stupidogenic-society

Flynn Effect and its Reversal: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6042097/

Reevaluating the Flynn Effect: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289625000121

Will AI Make You Stupid? - https://archive.is/20250826084540/https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2025/07/16/will-ai-make-you-stupid#selection-1105.0-1367.47

Conscientiousness is crashing, neuroticism is soaring, young people are far less agreeable and far more introverted - what have we done to our kids?

David and Martin discuss this and more - is our on-screen and social media culture to blame? What can schools do, if anything? Does 'project based learning' have a role?

Article by John Burn Murdoch can be accessed here: https://www.ft.com/content/5cd77ef0-b546-4105-8946-36db3f84dc43

His thread on Twitter/X can be accessed here: https://x.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1953811277463122162