Why does what Gabriella (see previous posting) says ring true? For two reasons. First, my own niece, an Italian from a town close to Bologna and who attends a liceo (an Italian high school)there, came to live in this country for two terms – her mother thought it would polish up her spoken English. She… Continue reading The Reader Gets Angry II
In case you missed the BBC2 Newsnight programme last night (Friday 11th December), the guests were Anthony Horowitz, Michael Bywater, David Schneider and Bidisha (Mukherjee). Newly released films under discussion were Where the Wild Things Are and The Fantastic Mr Fox, and the adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s novel Nation at the National. There were reviews… Continue reading Newsnight review on BBC2: lets hear it for the kidults!
John has given up on the weather and gone in search of some sunshine.
Thanks to Microsoft for the pic.
Here’s one that will shock everyone… I think. It is reported in the Guardian today that primary teachers in England are ‘among the worst qualified in Europe’. Politeia, a right-wing think tank, claims that all primary teachers should have passed A-level maths and English, as a minimum, before being unleashed on eight- to eleven- year-olds.At… Continue reading Standards required to teach.
The BBC has just announced this morning that the national Strategies are to be scrapped from 2011! Hurrah!
More news from npr in the USA. One of the latest pieces the station has run is with the new Secretary for Education, Arne Duncan. You’ve heard of ‘Education, Education, Education’ but Arne has $100 billion to spend across the education spectrum! It’s the ‘civil rights issue of our generation’, he says, and the Obama… Continue reading 100 Billion dollars to spend on education!
What has been the result of the introduction of the National Strategies, ask the authors of the Policy Exchange report Tom Richmond and Sam Freedman? Despite claims that major improvements have taken place, they claim that ‘… in retrospect it is clear that much of this success was a cruel illusion.’ This is because many… Continue reading The Cruel Illusion