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
Why are education journalists such dupes? Once again, this time in the pages of the Independent and on the BBC website, education journalists have swallowed the nonsense propagated by ‘literacy experts’ who are calling on the government to abandon the planned tests of reading for six-year-olds. The opposition to the tests is in truth an attack on the… Continue reading Please Miss, what’s a Grinch?
Having at one time worked for the British Council and the (as it was then) Bell Educational Trust, I know from first-hand experience that it is entirely possible to teach young children to speak, read and write foreign languages. Michael Gove’s suggestion that language teaching should start at five is by no means radical. In… Continue reading Teaching languages by five