I was raised in Burnley. Apart from my teachers, I didn’t know anyone who had ever been to University. I didn’t even go to Manchester until I was 17 and that was just for a shopping trip. Apart from family holidays and day trips in fact, I’d never stepped outside my small town. Books were my way into another world.
I knock quietly on the Master teacher’s staffroom door but there’s no answer. They don’t like to be disturbed at lunch time, but my lesson starts in ten minutes and there is a page missing on my script. I don’t know how to fill it.
It’s that time of year. Sad little faces in newspapers holding up flat, back shoes. Angry parents railing against new heads. Edu twitter bursting into cyclone levels of argumentative energy in which sides rail against each other using the spear of shame as a weapon. Stop shaming schools! Cries one side. Stop shaming children! Cries the other.
The fourth Northern Rocks marked the end of an era. From the first, when Emma Hardy and I, from a single tweet, gathered a group of 500 in a room and pinched ourselves, to this, our last done together, it’s been a blast.
Nothing lets the government off the hook for social disadvantage and poverty quite like the teaching profession blaming each other for the academic underachievement of disadvantaged pupils.
Continue reading “He’s behind you! The real enemy of promise…”
I was worried when I was asked to speak at WomenEd last Saturday. I have never really been a leader (middle management in schools is just that – management, usually with no money and little influence – so that didn’t count).
Dear Government,
Here are ten cures for the teacher shortage.
A couple of weeks ago I spent 3 hours with the infinitely patient Lucy Rimmington from Ofqual, trying to get under the skin of Progress 8, the new GCSEs and what it all means for teachers, children and parents. Continue reading “A broken system. Progress 8, GCSEs and SATs.”
I’ve done a couple of training days recently on Growth Mindsets and have been asked if I’d jot down the key things we’ve covered.
Probably the blandest title I’ve ever written for a blog that – but it kind of fits the mood. There’s been some hoo-hah recently about knowledge organisers. Are they good? Bad? Boring ways of forcing facts down little gosling throats or essential diets for healthy learning? Continue reading “Knowledge Organisers are, Err…Ok”
