Series · Teachers Media
Ted Wragg Meets
Ted Wragg, one of the most influential figures in UK education in the late twentieth century, ran a series of interviews with prominent education thinkers, policy-makers and practitioners. The Ted Wragg Meets series is a substantial piece of professional oral history — a snapshot of who mattered in English education at a particular moment, and what they thought.
About this series
Ted Wragg (1938–2005) was Professor of Education at Exeter University and one of the most prolific writers and broadcasters on English education of his generation. His weekly TES column ran for decades and was widely read; he combined serious academic credibility with a plain-speaking, sometimes irreverent public voice that gave teachers a professional advocate in the national press.
The Ted Wragg Meets series brought him into conversation with a range of significant figures — including senior politicians (education secretaries), influential teachers, headteachers, and researchers. The interviews are worth revisiting both as historical documents (they capture debates that framed the following two decades of policy) and as models of how to interview intelligently on education — Wragg was famously good at asking simple questions that led people to reveal what they actually thought.
For current teachers and leaders, the series offers useful perspective. Many of the arguments that seem new — about accountability, teacher voice, the role of research, the shape of the curriculum — have been going on for a very long time. Wragg's interviews put the current versions of these debates in their historical context.
Discussion prompts
- Which figures in current UK education would you want to hear in extended conversation with a sharp, well-informed interviewer? Who's missing from the public discussion?
- How much of what Wragg was writing about in the 1990s and early 2000s is still live? What has changed, and what hasn't?
- What does the fact that a single voice like Wragg's could reach so much of the profession say about how education debate has (and hasn't) evolved since?
Try this in your school
- Watch one Ted Wragg Meets interview and note down what you learn about the political and pedagogical context of the time.
- Compare an interview from twenty years ago with a current podcast or interview on the same topic. What's changed in framing?
- Read one of Wragg's TES columns from the archive alongside a current opinion piece on education. Notice differences in style, argument, and assumed reader.