The reverberations from the PISA bombshell continue with the New York Times picking up the story. The relentless improvement of education results in countries like China, Singapore and South Korea are undoubtedly exercising the minds of our politicians.The NYT article quotes Andreas Schleicher, director of the OECD’s testing programme, as describing Britain’s performance as ‘stagnant… Continue reading PISA has Gove leaning Eastwards
Despite the lame excuses of Michael Welsh yesterday on Radio 4 and Dr Bethan Marshall today in the Telegraph, there are plenty of examples of schools situated in poor areas having huge success in teaching all children -that’s boys as well as girls! – to read and spell. Michael Gove says that the Coalition is… Continue reading No excuses! All children can learn to read and spell
How enormously irritating it was this morning to listen to Mike Welsh of the National association of Head Teachers talking to John Humphrys on the Today programme about new government figures showing that one in ten boys leaving primary school at eleven have a reading age of seven or below.‘There’s nothing new here,’ declared Welsh.… Continue reading Wuns mor deer frends, …
Following the publication of performance tables by the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) today, the blogosphere in the USA is a-buzzing with debate about the decline in standards over there too.‘Your child left behind’ is one of the latest postings on Kitchen Table Math, a clearly ironic response to the US government’s ‘No… Continue reading “The countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow.” Barack Obama
I hesitate to put this posting on the blog because it feels like, well, here we are again! What do you know? Britain is still falling behind in the world rankings in literacy, maths and science.The latest performance tables, based on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), shows… Continue reading More news of falling standards from PISA
For advocates of phonics, it can be especially galling to see reputable newspapers and magazines giving space to the claims of the Whole Language lobby, whilst denying advocates of phonics a right to an adequate reply. The question is: what to do about it?In ‘The truth will out’, published in the New Scientist (15/05/2010), Michael… Continue reading ‘The truth will out’
If you’ve never taken a look at TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design: ideas worth spreading) maybe it’s time you did.Here’s Ken Robinson talking about how schools kill creativity.
The second myth on which Susan Godsland focuses is that ‘dyslexia is a specific learning difficulty that can be readily diagnosed by an educated professional’.As she quite rightly points out, until recently it was standard practice among educational psychologists to use the ‘IQ/achievement discrepancy diagnosis’. As the descriptor suggests, it was thought that if a… Continue reading Six myths about dyslexia II
The November/December issue of SEN Magazine has given well deserved space to Susan Godsland’s article ‘Six myths about dyslexia’.Susan is well placed to write on the subject, ‘being the parent of a once struggling reader’ and she writes about how deeply she was affected by the ‘frustration and anxiety which results from having a “dyslexic”… Continue reading Six myths about dyslexia
Here’s an interesting interview conducted by Adam Shaw on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning (18/11/2010) with Brian Butterworth, Emeritus professor of cognitive neuropsychology at the Institute of Neuroscience at the University College London. BB: “The UK is not very good at maths. We’re about average, looking at all OECD countries. So, we’re significantly worse… Continue reading Off topic – maths in the UK