If you happened to have bought the Sun newspaper last Sunday, you will doubtless have read Nick Gibb’s piece (pp14 – 15) ‘The teachers aren’t letting down kids… it’s [the] methods of teachers’. In the article, Gibb claims that one in ten boys leave ‘primary school with the reading age of a seven-year-old or worse’.… Continue reading Brazil nuts about education!
As June approaches and more heads across the country realise that, in a little over two months, their Year 1 pupils will be sitting the government’s new phonics screening check, the level of panic is beginning to rise. Yesterday’s TES (‘Heads read the riot act over new phonics test’) was reporting that some heads are… Continue reading Heads’ nervousness increases as phonics check looms
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
When I went to see Nick Gibb eighteen months ago at the House of Commons, he indicated that, if the Conservatives won the next election, he and Michael Gove would do two things. The first would be to invite providers of phonics programmes to submit themselves to a revised [The last government introduced the idea.]… Continue reading The G-Men come good
Has Ofsted recovered its nerve? Apparently so. In its recent report ‘The special educational needs and disability review: a statement is not enough’, Ofsted reveals that, while the number of pupils with a statement of special educational needs ‘decreased slightly’ (from 3% to 2.7%), ‘the proportion identified as needing less intensive additional support at School… Continue reading SEN, or just poor teaching?
At school, my old Latin master, Georgie Lamb, once told us how Cato, in the face of the rising power of Carthage, used to include in every speech he made in the senate, the words, ‘Carthago delenda est!’ – Carthage must be destroyed. Allegedly, he (Cato) finally got his point across by holding up a… Continue reading New figures on illiteracy, or It’s the latest SATs results.