What’s the future going to be in terms of preparing oneself for a worthwhile job? Is it the law, economics, politics? Not according to Hal Varian, Google’s chief statistician. For Hal, the sexy job to be doing in the next ten years is going to be statistics!In an interview with Tim Harford on Radio 4’s… Continue reading Vital statistics? The ‘sexy job’ of the future, says Google’s chief statistician.
I wrote about cause and effect on a previous post. Here are some further thoughts. Every teaching approach to literacy used in schools that doesn’t work still probably ends up with about the same 50% of the pupil population being able to read. The practitioners who are trying to teach by these approaches can ALL… Continue reading More thoughts on cause and effect
Two postings ago I wrote that English literacy teaching practices seem to be based on belief systems rather than high quality evidence-based research. This assertion deserves further clarification. One overarching belief that needs tackling is that the achievement of basic literacy skills happens as a result of what is taught in schools. Curiously, out of… Continue reading Cause and effect
According to the OECD (1997), more than 100 years of universal education in the UK has resulted in less than half of the UK adult population becoming literate: less than 50% of children grow up to become accurate and fluent readers. What’s more, only half of those who do learn to read can spell accurately… Continue reading Teaching reading and spelling: time to change course