The BBC has just broken the news that ‘just one in 15 (6.5%) pupils starting secondary school in England “behind” for their age goes on to get five good GCSEs including English and maths’. Moreover, only 34% of children classified as disadvantaged (children entitled to free school dinners or in care) reached the government benchmark.… Continue reading Lightman fails to dispel gloom
Since the government launched its scheme to encourage schools to train teaching staffs in how to teach phonics, only 1,000 primaries have booked such training. Graeme Paton, writing in the Telegraph, reported last week that in many areas of the country in which pupils are failing to reach the national average in reading, schools are… Continue reading Take-up of match funding
For anyone interested, I posted a couple of replies to questions on Mumsnet this morning. You can read them (and the rest of the thread) here and here. The other thing that’s on my mind is that I have recently offered two local primary school the opportunity to train one member of their Key Stage… Continue reading Mumsnet postings and an offer not honoured
I can’t help thinking that Sue Palmer, the literacy consultant and author of Toxic Childhood, doth protest too much, too often. This time she’s complaining about the government’s new EYFS writing targets. Just to be sure what we’re talking about, the target in reading is for children ‘to read and understand simple sentences. They use… Continue reading Sue Palmer – too much, too often
It’s the time of the year once again for the WOTY! What’s this, you wonder? WOTY is the Word of the Year, each year decided on by the AmericanDialect Society. At the annual conference in Portland, Oregon, Ben Zimmer* is chairing the New Words Committee, which decides on the WOTY. This year’s nominations (from Zimmer’s VisualThesaurus)… Continue reading Jabberwoty
Graeme Paton in yesterday’s Telegraph has headlined Nick Gibb’s latest attempts to raise standards in reading by reporting him as saying that ‘all children should read Harry Potter by 11’. At first blush, it sounds nauseatingly off-putting. Another prescriptive injunction delivered in a tweetable sound-bite by a government minister! Actually, as you read on, you… Continue reading Reading Harry Potter by 11
This morning on Radio 4 Melvyn Bragg began the first in the series ‘The Written World’. He starts by saying what I always begin every Sounds-Write training with: that writing is ‘the most important idea that anyone has ever had’. Bragg then goes on to talk about the development of writing systems. What he doesn’t do… Continue reading The Written World