‘Ruth Jones had captured my mother perfectly – the fact that she was so dainty and glamorous, despite being large. It left the softly spoken musician in tears. Last month Robin, 57, sat alone in a cinema and watched a preview of the BBC’s new one off drama about his parents’ marriage. Robin’s father, actor John Le Mesurier, and his mother, buxom Carry On star Hattie Jacques, had been married happily for 13 years before a handsome young stranger destroyed the idyll. What followed spelt the public end of one of Britain’s most endearing celebrity marriages.

‘I remember both of them telling us they loved us, and my father handing us both penknives as a consolation.’ An instructor teaching rock-climbing will have continuous visual feedback on the success of his teaching efforts (pupils climbing high or falling down) and be able to adjust his teaching accordingly.Not so happy family: John Le Mesurier and Hattie Jacques with sons Robin (right) and Kim outside their home in Margate The visible learning story is illustrated using the example of outdoor training. Prior to presenting the barometers and effect size rankings, Hattie develops his visible learning story, which is summarised in the following quote: “Visible teaching and learning occurs when learning is the explicit goal, when it is appropriately challenging, when the teacher and student both seek to ascertain whether and to what degree the challenging goal is attained, when there is deliberate practice aimed at attaining mastery of the goal, when there is feedback given and sought, and when there are active, passionate and engaging people participating in the act of learning” (p. Hattie neatly presents the effect sizes in a graphical barometer and convincingly argues that only effect sizes higher than 0.4 are in the so-called zone of desired effects (in other words, are worth the effort). To this end he applies the tools of meta-analysis to a huge body of empirical research and calculates effect sizes (denoted d) for 138 influences in the following domains: student, home, school, teacher, curricula and teaching approaches. He then proposes to move beyond “everything goes”, towards the development of a barometer of “what works best”. Hattie starts from the observation that in education “everything seems to work”, as educational interventions of almost any kind seem to have a positive effect on student achievement.

John hattie