I wrote a practical guide, for teachers and parents, to the teaching of spelling including how not to teach it (and why) howtoteachreading.org.uk/the…

The belief in transferable skills is perhaps the most common chimera among teachers of reading. Imagine a handful of universal tools we could teach students and in so doing enable them to understand every text they read. Who wouldn’t seek out “the key to all inferences,” for example, knowing that once mastered this skill would allow our students to unlock what was unspoken in every story? Who among us would not dream such a beautiful dream? The problem is that for all the beauty of the dream, the evidence is squarely against it. substack.com/home/post/p-202…

Both @rpondiscio and @natwexler have written many books and thousands of words online spelling out exactly what they think, so implying they have some malevolent secret agenda they “won’t publicly say” is not serious critique, it’s conspiratorial nonsense. Worse, it’s intellectually cowardly. It’s much harder to confront the fact that smart, decent people can look at the same world and arrive at very different conclusions than it is to declare them corrupt and walk away. The former demands argument, humility, and revision; the latter demands only performative outrage.

“Fluency requires coordination of…decoding, eye movements & quick recall of pronunciations. Research strongly suggests that this coordination can be developed through repeated oral reading. Getting children to repeatedly read a short text aloud, while they aim to read it with greater fluency each time leads to improved fluency over time. This fluency practice is strengthened when children…are provided with a modelled reading of the same text to guide their attempts. Fluency practice can also be strengthened by ensuring that the text used is above the level of difficulty than what children would otherwise attempt to read.” From @Suchmo83 Art & Science of Teaching Primary Reading

“The key book for me is @DTWillingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School?” - @NickGibbUK talking about the books which influenced his thinking. A big shoutout for @daisychristo too at @researchED_US Houston

Rachel Reeves's deputy admits it - Labour are funding more benefits on the backs of students. The interest rate on student loans is a scam. But Labour would rather rip off hardworking graduates to pay for more welfare than fix it. That tells you everything about their priorities. Conservatives have clear plan: stop the student loan scam by cutting real interest rates on Plan 2 loans, saving graduates thousands. Find out more ⬇️ stopthestudentloanscam.com

We owe those who serve the UK the kit to do the job and the loyalty to stand by them when it's done. We are failing on both. I’ve spent my whole time in government making that case. Number 10 will not listen, so I am resigning as Minister for the Armed Forces. Letter to the PM below.🫡🫡🫡⬇️⬇️

My letter to the Prime Minister

This is spectacularly silly. Disadvantaged students do not need untested AI tutors. They need excellent behaviour, high expectations, explicit instruction, and systematic retrieval. Not this.

Very pleased to get a very positive review of my new book against assisted death in the Telegraph today. Do Not Go Gentle by Kathleen Stock: 4-star review telegraph.co.uk/books/non-fi…

I'm a cardiologist. A 42-year-old mother of two came to my office complaining of jaw pain and crushing fatigue. She ran half-marathons. Her EKG was normal. Another doctor had sent her home with anxiety medication. When I got her into the cath lab, I found severe microvascular disease — plaque choking the tiniest vessels of her heart, the ones standard angiograms routinely miss. Her heart had been starving in silence while everyone told her she was stressed. She is alive today. Too many women like her are not. Heart disease kills more women than every cancer combined. And medicine is still diagnosing it through a male lens. 84% of cardiologists report having patients in the past year whose heart disease was misdiagnosed by another physician. Women with a STEMI heart attack have a 59% greater chance of being misdiagnosed compared to men. Women with an NSTEMI — 41% greater chance. The reason is structural. For decades, we screened, tested, and treated women using a template built for men. Men's heart attacks announce themselves — the crushing chest pain, the clutched fist, the Hollywood collapse. Women's hearts whisper. Crushing fatigue that feels like wearing a lead vest. Jaw pain written off as TMJ. Nausea blamed on a stomach bug. An ache between the shoulder blades blamed on a long week. Shortness of breath blamed on being out of shape. For years, medicine called these "atypical" symptoms. They are not atypical. They are female-typical. Half of humanity is not a variant. And the biology runs deeper than symptoms. Women have smaller hearts and narrower coronary arteries. Plaque doesn't only clog the big highway vessels — it hides in the microvasculature, the tiny branches feeding the heart muscle itself. A woman can have a heart attack with a completely "clean" standard angiogram. SCAD — spontaneous coronary artery dissection — occurs 90% of the time in women. Often young, fit women with zero traditional risk factors. It's the leading cause of heart attack in women under 50, accounting for roughly one quarter of all cases in that age group. Most doctors have never diagnosed one. And some of the most dangerous cardiac risk factors are hidden in women's medical histories where no one thinks to look: Preeclampsia or gestational hypertension doubles to quadruples lifetime heart disease and stroke risk. Pregnancy is the body's first cardiac stress test — and these complications are early warning sirens, not closed chapters. Autoimmune disease — lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis — far more common in women, turbocharges inflammation and plaque formation at any age. Cardiovascular disease in women aged 20-44 is projected to surge nearly 50% by 2050. The youngest patients in my practice keep getting younger. What every woman should ask her doctor — and what every doctor should be asking: "Given my pregnancy history, autoimmune status, and family history — what is my full cardiovascular risk?" If they don't ask about preeclampsia or gestational diabetes, volunteer it. "Should I have an Lp(a) test and a coronary calcium score?" Standard cholesterol panels miss too much. Lp(a) is genetic, one-time, and most women have never been tested. "My tests came back normal but my symptoms haven't stopped — what's next?" Normal stress tests and angiograms can miss microvascular disease, spasm, and SCAD. Persistent symptoms warrant coronary CT angiography or cardiac MRI. And if something feels wrong — say these exact words to your doctor: "I am concerned this could be my heart." That single sentence changes the workup. Do not soften it. Do not apologize for it. 80% of heart disease is preventable. But the playbook has to be built for female biology. Two decades ago, I wrote one of the first books warning that heart disease was the number one killer of women and that medicine was diagnosing it through a male lens. It was recognized by First Lady Laura Bush at the White House during the early years of the national conversation about women's heart health. I'm haunted by how much of that book I could republish today unchanged. The science has advanced. The awareness has grown. But the gap between what we know and what happens in the exam room is still costing women their lives. Share this with every woman you love — and every doctor who treats them. READ MORE: open.substack.com/pub/afshin…

One of the most important books in education history may also be one of the most overlooked. Stanislas Dehaene's 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘞𝘦 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯 shifts the focus from how educators can promote learning to something far more fundamental: the biological requirements for learning itself. Dehaene would know. He's the most cited neuroscientist of learning in the world, the first-ever lifetime professor of Experimental Cognitive Psychology at France's most prestigious research institution, and the Director of NeuroSpin, France's advanced brain-imaging research centre. (He's also the President of the Scientific Council of the French Ministry of Education.) So how could a major work by such a major figure be overlooked? Well, it 𝘩𝘢𝘴𝘯'𝘵 been overlooked outside of education. Last year Dehaene won the Lewis Thomas Prize for scientific writing with 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘞𝘦 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯 featured prominently in the citation. And 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘞𝘦 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯 is currently available in 31 editions and translations worldwide. So why aren't more people talking about it inside the evidence-based education community? I don't know. But I'm going to be shouting about it from the rooftops.

Very sad news about @ged10 A very great loss indeed.

Show me the "avid readers" among 5th graders who are still struggling to get words off the page. By 5th grade, avoidance and embarrassment are the order of the day for these students.

81-year-old widow, who is undergoing cancer treatment, has been convicted after forgetting to insure her late husband's car bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd0p…

Today I met one of Australia's most famous residents - John Sweller, the father of cognitive load theory. He's been studying cognitive load theory for 50 years and it's only become well-known in the last five years. It was great to meet him in person! (I personally do not think this is parka weather at all, but he wasn't the only one wearing a parka in Sydney.)

People get confused when they observe little itty bitty things being taught incrementally so kids get them 80–100% correct the first time. Maybe we've been conditioned to think something is “off” when all kids are successful. Maybe it's impatience to get to the “big stuff."

This is a must-read piece by @greg_ashman on "conceptual understanding"—the goal everyone claims but can't really define or measure. My definition: it's the thing students supposedly gain when taught using certain methods (e.g., inquiry, multiple strategies, productive struggle) that are otherwise ineffective. That's why arguments about it go nowhere. The term is defined to be the outcome of a preferred teaching method so you're not debating evidence, you're debating something that's essentially defined to be the thing that everyone should want.

Last week I spent an inspiring few days in Belfast listening to some incredible school leaders, local teachers, world leading experts and working with @Education_NI to support the excellent work that @paulgivan and his team are doing on curriculum reform and then I come back to London and see this disaster. The contrast could not be more stark.

After 18 months of “standing up to Putin” the Labour govt quietly issued a licence allowing imports of Russian oil refined in third countries. Yesterday Labour MPs voted AGAINST UK oil and gas licences. We are now importing from Russia instead of drilling in the North Sea. Insane.