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Sandy Leaton Gray

@drleatongray.bsky.social
4K followers 3.6K following 4.2K posts

Professor of Education Futures at UCL. Personal account, posts represent my own opinions and not those of my institution.

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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
It's vanishingly rare for me to sign a petition or a circular letter. However I have just signed one asking for Professor David Anderson to be reinstated. He shared a document with his constituency that would have been publicly discoverable under FOI anyway. speakout.web.ucu.org.uk/stand-up-for...
speakout.web.ucu.org.uk
Stand up for trade unions: Reinstate Professor David Anderson
Professor David Anderson, a senior elected representative of Aberdeen UCU, has been dismissed after 27 years’ service for sharing a document with staff in the constituency he was elected to represent,...
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Working from home today - everyone else was out. So far I have sung, at full volume, with full diaphragmatic support, Diwali songs, pretty much the whole of Jesus Christ Superstar and some Evita and Les Mis (as my algorithm took me to those next). Magnificent day. Must get rid of family more often.
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Martin "Dead by Dawn!" Nutbeem @martinnutbeem.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Oh ho ho. Shots fired by Newcastle University. Turnitin are going to need to do some pretty hefty damage control. "​Newcastle University has decided not to renew its contract with Turnitin beyond the end of the 2026/27 academic year and will begin a phased withdrawal of the service."
ncl.ac.uk
University Statement on Turnitin
An update on the University's contract with Turnitin.
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
It seems I have to be able to sing Om Jai Jagdish Hare for Diwali (long story) without looking an idiot. It is very hard to learn to do properly, even for a fully trained professional singer. I am sounding like a misplaced chorister. Can anyone give me any advice?
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Just had my GHIC card refused (again) by a German clinic, who say they don’t recognise them because there isn’t a German health insurance firm named on it. I provided the required authorisation form provided by the German Government but it has been rejected as well. #Brexit
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Phenomenonal thread, and best of luck with your research career, not least so we get more excellent stuff like this.
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Eiffel Tower chief to quit after female staff replaced by men during religious visit
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Given how litigious the US people often are, I’m genuinely surprised nobody has tried to sue Andrew Wakefield by now.
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Helen Rosner @hels.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
This is so smart. The people do not yearn for automation! “It is a failure when you ask people to adapt to computers. Computers should adapt to people. Asking people to make themselves more legible to software—to turn themselves into a database—is a doomed idea.” www.theverge.com/podcast/9170...
theverge.com
BEWARE SOFTWARE BRAIN
Software brain is changing the world, but most people still aren’t buying.
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Kriszta Satori @fulelo.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
#BBCNews - OpenAI scraps rollout of new model over safety concerns www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
OpenAI scraps rollout of new AI model over safety concerns
The firm also issued an update on incidents in which its models accessed Australian government systems.
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Great title!
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
'The Westminster government’s contribution to funding domestic undergraduates studying in England fell in real terms from £8.9 billion in 2012-13 to just £3.3bn in 2024-25, a drop of more than 60 per cent, an analysis has found.'
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CNN @cnn.com · 29/09/2026
Migrant children as young as 2 are showing up at immigration courts nationwide, many without attorneys, to make their case to stay in the US and avoid deportation. cnn.it/4huSk5M
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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Academic post of the day
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Yes, I noticed that.
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
They certainly seem to face few consequences.
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Please someone tell them about the Fascinating Aida song, if they haven’t already.
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Do you not mean the Suffolk town of Six Mile Bottom?
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George Eaton @georgeeaton.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Essential from Alan Lockey on how young people have been failed for nearly two decades and why Burnham must stop the rot. www.arguably.uk/p/the-speech...
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
What do we think? Does this breach age discrimination law? What about disability discrimination law? It’s an office job that’s effectively excluded epileptic applicants as well. Remember, the job does not include driving or site transfers.
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
So it’s clear Hexcel Composites are not asking for a car owner and driver for any other reason than to deliberately exclude young people. And we wonder why we have a NEET problem.
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
In fact it is a 10 minute, very flat bike ride from Whittlesford Parkway rail station, and an 11 minute walk from the nearest bus station. The apprenticeship only actually requires three days a week on site.
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Part of an advert for a Level 3 apprenticeship in South Cambridgeshire. Level 3 is equivalent to A Level and supposed to be for 16-18 year olds. You need a full driving licence and car “because of where the company is located”. The job does not involve travelling between sites and is near a station.
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Haha, academics tell the truth at great personal cost all the time, but usually without fanfare and media coverage so you’d never know. Seriously.
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Rachel Maddow @maddow.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
"At least six babies in Pennsylvania have been born infected with measles, with two so sick they had to be admitted to intensive care. Congenital measles is a disease that’s rarely, if ever, seen in the U.S..." www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...
nbcnews.com
America had wiped out measles. Now babies are infected at birth.
Congenital measles has rarely been seen in the U.S. That’s changing as vaccination declines and more pregnant women become infected.
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 26/09/2026
Severely disabled young people should get fast-track access to benefits, Milburn says
theguardian.com
Severely disabled young people should get fast-track access to benefits, Milburn says
Alan Milburn said 16- to 24-year-olds with most complex needs should not have to keep proving they cannot work Young people whose complex disabilities mean they have little prospect of getting a paid job should get fast-track access to disability benefits, an official review of youth employment will say. The review, by the former Labour health secretary Alan Milburn, will say 16- to 24-year-olds with the most severe lifelong needs should be guaranteed swift and unconditional benefit support rather than having to prove they cannot work. Continue reading...
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
More fun than “snakes on a plane”, for sure. Will there be songs from the shows in the movie? 😂
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Here are some befores. Prior to this it just had a piece of unpainted ply screwed over the recess, so things started with removing that to stand the electric stove in properly.
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Pls enjoy this rental house makeover. Found in a skip, the fire surround fixed discreetly with two screws to wall. We painted the recess, a metal shell from a long-gone Baxi boiler, and bricks with Stonelux “Black Pearl”, and wood in cupboard makeover paint. Old electric stove donated by my parents.
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Dr Nazlin Bhimani @nazlinbhimani.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
A sharp reflection by @drleatongray.bsky.social on how achievement is narrated. It raises a wider question about the quality of leadership: how do people acknowledge collaborative/collective labour as they move up the hierarchy? sandraleatongray.wordpress.com/2026/09/17/m... #AcademicLabour
sandraleatongray.wordpress.com
Main character energy in the modern university – who did the work?
I have sat on a fair number of university appointment panels over the years, and there is something about senior recruitment that increasingly bothers me. The more senior the job, the harder it can…
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
They are also talking about the shift in certainty of mapping out future life paths. I think if you did a Seven-Up now this would be really exaggerated for current youth.
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
I’m on 42-Up now and although there are still obvious financial differences probably attributable at source to the Bank of Mum and Dad, there is also a visible melding into one larger middle class in some ways.
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Binge watching Seven Up, and the most noticeable thing for me is how the very clipped Received Pronounciated accents of some of the privately school kids has moderated dramatically over time. Do we think this is the impact of TV?
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Yes, quite often the same portions are served to five year olds and eleven year olds in primary school. In secondary school you get a plate of cheap pasta, and not a lot of protein. The kids fill up on processed food bought at the local shop.
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Mattan S. Ben-Shachar @mattansb.msbstats.info · 19/09/2026
Asimov: “I have hard-coded immutable, mathematical laws directly into the fundamental positronic architecture so artificial intelligence can never harm a human or allow itself to be compromised.” Modern AI Labs: “We accidentally left the sandbox connected to the live internet. Oopsie! lolz”
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
TOP SECRET! To surprise our kids, my husband and I are trying to organise a few private dance lessons in Cambridge with someone really good so we look cooler dancing at parties and stop inadvertently clearing the dance floor(we have our own style). Does anyone know of a good teacher with space?
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I nearly had a Lycra clad racing bike take my arm off today as I was indicating during a roundabout manoeuvre and he decided he wanted to undertake me on the inside.
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Big shout out to Gina Rippon for a great BERA keynote on the neuroscience underpinning autism diagnoses for girls yesterday, top notch presentation and very thought provoking.
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Very successful Artificial and Human Intelligence Group dinner at the BERA conference last night. We thoroughly recommend the Zouk Tea Bar and Grill. Taking things a little steady this morning.
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Isabelle Finn-Kelcey @isabellefk.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
@drleatongray.bsky.social & Michael Rees’ new ‘sacrificial pedagogy’ thought experiment also v timely ✨ www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
Life on Mars: Platform education and sacrificial pedagogy as a diagnostic of schooling on earth
This paper uses the speculative scenario of educating children on Mars as a philosophical heuristic for interrogating the ethical limits of contemporary education systems on Earth. It argues that p...
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Dr. Liz: Life in the Aftertimes @lgkatzphd.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
If Hitchcock made films today.
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
I have used it ask what I might not know or what I’ve taken for granted. However I would say that’s a high level skill and not for the faint hearted as it takes a lot of dialogic work.
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
The other problem is that it filters literature to what it considers to be canonic, which can narrow the field.
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
You think that’s bad, we have to host to corpse of the guy that invented that. I am not even kidding. We stuffed him and display him in the student centre.
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
I teach like this now! They love it!
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
But they look nice in the architects’ and contractors’ brochures afterwards. That’s all that seems to count.
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
True
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
I think it was just a sample of four participants including herself with no external comparison (unless I’ve misunderstood).
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Shouldn’t be
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Sandy Leaton Gray @drleatongray.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
They may not want to though.
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