Thinking Allowed: On Schooling

One of the UK education's most influential players tells it how it is. Mick Waters has consistently been a down-to-earth voice in the increasingly complex world of education for many years. He has regularly endeared himself to school communities in the UK and overseas by talking the sort of sense they needed to hear - practical, challenging, inspiring, insightful, engaging. His unique perspective, closeness to the classroom and ability to see innovation in terms of its impact on learners mean his views are always worth listening to. In this long-awaited book, Mick tells it how it is. The things he believes in. The things he wants to see differently. Wry reflections, humorous insights, astute asides and simple ideas to change the system - and the future - for young people everywhere. This is the book you have been waiting for!

About the Author :
Mick Waters is best known as former Director of the Curriculum at the QCA (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority) where he gained an heroic reputation amongst teachers whilst both consulting, advising and explaining the new curriculum; making it relevant and meaningful for professionals working directly with children and young people. A former Headteacher, Mick is passionate about the role of education in improving life chances for pupils and is still very much involved with teaching and learning. He is the President of the Curriculum Foundation and a charismatic speaker who pushes the boundaries to improve learning and make schools better. One of the UK's leading educational mentors brings you the book you have been waiting for!

Review :

Reviewed by Dr Bernard Trafford, Headmaster, Newcastle upon Tyne Royal Grammar School.
Mick Waters has done it again. Sometimes you read something so blindingly obvious that you wonder, "Why didn't I think of that?" But, whereas most of us manage to glimpse parts of the problem and fragments of possible solutions, he pulls all those elements together succinctly and coherently. He presents educators and policy-makers alike with a challenge that is huge and daunting, to be sure, but which in his masterly analysis is eminently capable of being addressed, if only we have the will to do so.
That analysis is dispassionate, but there's no mistaking Mick's passion for education and for its purpose that we owe to our children but in which we so often fail them. Notwithstanding his clear love for teaching and for teachers, he doesn't flinch from criticising the uninspiring and formulaic: nor does his flinch from laying the blame firmly at the doors of qualification-obsessed policy-makers and the data-dominated inspection system for creating and perpetuating the focus on what is narrow, tedious and purely utilitarian.
Mick is a positive thinker - hence the book's title. So, although he paints a bleak picture of the current state of affairs, he offers solutions: they are challenging but realistic, if only policy-makers would find the courage. If we don't pick up the gauntlet Mick throws down, we risk (as he writes graphically) continuing to "beat the drum of progress and march to the drum of tedious accountability."

Reviewed by Andrew Chubb Principal, Archbishop Sentamu Academy.
In this highly readable book, Mick gives a brilliant review of the Good, the Bad, and the Plain Old Ugly of the current educational landscape. He is right to conclude that we need "an Education Spring - a rising of intolerance about the way schooling is being manipulated in a piecemeal and uncoordinated way to serve too many purposes with unclear measures." His call for the es