Figures released by Professor Sir Michael Marmot, Director of University College London, Institute of Health Equity, on Wednesday in the Telegraph revealed that four out of ten children are failing to reach the basic skills level expected of a five-year-old. As reported, Sir Michael pointed out that ‘Britain lags behind other countries including Poland, Hungary, Denmark… Continue reading Poor children lagging behind ‘on a grand scale’!
Chapter I: Radical Optimist The creator of the ‘Direct Instruction’ is Sig Engelmann and it’s not for nothing that Chapter I of Barbash’s book is titled ‘Radical Optimist’. In it, he describes Englemann as believing ‘that the mind of every child, even the least impressive, is an incredible thinking machine gifted with extraordinary powers’ (p.9).… Continue reading Clear teaching, Part II
A short while ago, Yvonne Meyer posted on the Reading Reform Foundation to a downloadable book on direct teaching, called Clear Teaching, With Direct instruction, Siegfried Englemann discovered a better way of teaching by Shephard Barbash. The posting has generated some discussion, which you can read here. Nevertheless, I thought I’d add my thoughts on theliteracyblog… Continue reading Clear teaching, Part I
I’ve long been thinking that radical and fundamental change in education will only happen in the UK when our economy is so seriously threatened by the likes of China, India, Singapore, South Korea, and the like, that the ‘powers that be’ would be forced to take corrective action. Indeed, five years ago Digby Jones, then head of… Continue reading Will Michael Wilshaw? He sure will!
This week’s TES is reporting that the chief inspector of Estyn (the Welsh equivalent of Ofsted) Ann Keane has just published a report claiming that 40% of pupils starting secondary school in Wales do so with a reading age of six months below their chronological age. What I would like to know is how she… Continue reading Welsh education – ‘producerism’s last hurrah’!
An article titled ‘Sounds like this phonics scheme has started badly’ in the TES today by Helen Ward provides some decidedly revealing insights into what is going wrong in getting schools to take up match funding for phonics.As the piece points out, match funding isn’t ‘free’ money. For every pound provided by the government, the… Continue reading More on the take-up of match funding
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