Those of you with long memories will remember the touching speeches of Michael Gove when he was education secretary, where he used his position to advance the work of teachers in the classroom.
Continue reading “Michael Gove’s Favourite Teachers: Where are they now?”
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.
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…”
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.”
There seems to have been a lot said recently on the merits of a ‘no excuses’ behaviour policy – some of it quite self congratulory. But I have some questions about the impact that the overall ethos of bragging about being “strict” has on other schools.
Last night I wrote a tweet. Something had been bothering me for days. Behind the headline figure of “30% of new entrants to teaching leave within five years” was an odd statistic. Continue reading “The Hidden Workload Scandal”
I held a child back last week for detention. He’d been shouting out and generally being annoying and so I kept him back. I know that the point of a detention is supposed to be a punishment, but for me, it’s a chance to get to know this person a little better.
