Education A to Z

Education and Curriculum Terms: A Guide for Students and Teachers

Please note: This page explains a word or a process in education. It is general information about the system, the law and the guidance in England — not advice about your child, your school or your exam. If a decision is going against you, get advice from one of the free services we link to before you agree to anything or miss a deadline. If you are revising, check your own exam board's specification: boards word things differently and yours is the one that marks you.

Revising? We write GCSE revision songs — a playlist covering most subjects and the English set texts. Listen to the revision playlist.

500 terms, showing 111–120 (page 12 of 50).

D

Direct and inverse proportion graphs

What proportional relationships look like when plotted.

Direct payments and personal assistants

Employing someone to support your child, and what that makes you.

Direct payments in education

Taking part of an EHCP's funding as money you arrange yourself.

Disability Access Fund

An annual payment to early years settings for three and four year olds on Disability Living Allowance.

DNA and inheritance

How characteristics are passed on, and the vocabulary of a genetic cross.

Dramatic conventions

Soliloquy, aside, stage directions and the fourth wall.

Drug development

How a new medicine is tested before anyone can have it.

Dyscalculia in the classroom

Persistent difficulty with number, out of line with everything else, and what school should do about it.

Dyslexia assessment

A specialist assessment of literacy difficulty. Useful, and not a precondition for support.

E

Early help

Support offered before problems become serious. Voluntary, and usually the least intrusive route to getting help.

Something missing?

If there is a word or a process you have been nodding along to, tell us and we will write it up. This library exists because of the questions people were too polite, or too tired, to ask.

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