A survey, commissioned by the ‘Communication Champion’ Jean Gross, has just revealed that, apparently, nearly one in six children has difficulty learning to talk. How the word ‘difficulty’ is defined is not made clear, though in any population, one would expect there to be a quantifiable number of children who make relatively slower progress in… Continue reading Girl and boy talk
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
On the Reading Reform Foundation website, Geraldine Carter has posted a link to a piece, ‘The Reader Gets Angry: Scenes from a PGCE‘, by Gabriella Gruder-Poni on her experiences as a PGCE student.The experiences Gabriella recounts are nothing short of a disgrace and, if her testimony is true, the imbeciles dispensing the advice she was… Continue reading ‘The Reader Gets Angry’
In the year’s last issue of the Sunday Times, Minette Marrin has some timely advice for us. Did I say, ‘for us’? I meant ‘on our behalf’. It addresses a number of important issues – get out of Afghanistan and Iraq – and a variety of people: to Peter Mandelson – ‘Stop talking’; to Harriet… Continue reading Above all, do no harm. And, if you are a primary teacher, teach the children to read!
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!
What did yesterday’s SATs news tell us that we didn’t already know? The results show a decline in performance, with more than 1400 primary schools falling below the government’s so-called ‘floor target’ for attainment in maths and English. What’s the government’s response? According to the BBC’s education correspondent, Gary Eason, it wants ‘local authorities to… Continue reading Further decline in SATs scores evidence that this government has run out of ideas.
I’ve been wondering for ages how to blog something by Diane Ravitch, research professor in New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. Well, there is something I’ve always quite liked, something she wrote on evidence-based research just over ten years ago. Surrounded by a medical team in an intensive care unit,… Continue reading ‘What if Research Really Mattered?’
In the middle of October, Terry Leahy, boss of TESCo, declared standards in education to be ‘woefully low’. Now, as reported in today’s Telegraph, Sir Stuart Rose, the M&S chief, has added his name to the long list of critics of the suitability of the system to provide business with workers who have the right… Continue reading Can’t read, can’t write – not fit for work!
The government’s latest edict is beginning to make it sound like a Private Eye parody of itself. Its latest decree is to ‘guarantee’ children a legal right to a good education. According to last week’s Telegraph, John Dunford, of the Association of School and College Leaders, ‘warned that the proposed laws risked creating one of… Continue reading Government guarantees – the new “cones hot-line”!
Yesterday morning I received this letter from a head teacher of a school where all the teaching staff, including the head, have been trained in Sounds-Write: Dear John,Please find enclosed a copy of a piece of unaided writing recently carried out by a child at our school. It is a testament to the power of… Continue reading Creative writing at five years of age!