A new report in the Sunday Express this morning claims that more and more teachers are struggling with basic spelling and numeracy. The article reports that ‘Michael Gove, the Shadow Schools Secretary, pledged that a future Conservative government would raise teaching standards’.The real question needing to be addressed is: how do we improve standards in… Continue reading More evidence of the fall in standards in maths and literacy.
On trainings I run for practitioners teaching literacy I am increasingly being asked about maths teaching. I recommend two materials’ sites. The first, for young children, is the Schofield and Sims website and their Mental Maths series. My youngest daughter benefited hugely from doing three or four of these exercises every week throughout the primary… Continue reading What to do about maths
I had to smile when reading Martin Ivens’s column in the Sunday Times (05.07.09) the other day. He reported a government minister as saying that “Ed Balls is the only man in politics who believes that local education authorities can get their schools right.”
Here’s a piece well worth reading by Laurie H. Rodgers (author of “Betrayed”) about the ‘reform mathematics curricula’ in the USA. For ‘maths’ you could substitute ‘reading and spelling’, and for ‘administrators’ read ‘head teachers, local education authority advisors and government education department mandarins’.Thanks to Yvonne Meyer for posting this on the RRF and alerting… Continue reading Laurie H. Rogers on ‘Betrayed – Why Public Education is Failing’.
As a taster to this, you might like to listen to Barry Sheerman, Chair of the government’s Select Committee on education and Nick Gibb, Shadow Schools Minister for the Tories, picking over the carcass of the past twenty years and talking about what to expect.
Anonymous has just written a reply to the posting on MAs for NQTs, saying: John said, “Policy Exchange advocates allowing schools to innovate and share tried and established good practice. Let’s hope that the abandonment of the Strategies allows that to happen.”Unfortunately John, what will happen is that schools will share their practice. But they… Continue reading Replacing the Strategies? Who will lead on expertise and ‘good practice’?
The Observer last Sunday has it about right – in part at least. The implication is that while politicians bicker over ‘policy’, important aspects of the education system desperately need fixing. The truth is that on the major issues of teaching children to read, write and do basic maths, this government’s record is very poor… Continue reading While politcians bicker, schoolchildren suffer
It is reported in the Independent this morning that, in an effort to raise standards in the classroom, the government is now going to offer a free Master’s degree to 5,000 newly qualified teachers. One of the principal targets of this initiative is the four hundred schools still failing to get more than 30% of… Continue reading Master’s degrees for newly qualifieds?
I have just been sent data for a Y5 class at Tyldesley Primary school in Wigan, whose pupils all received Sounds-Write tuition from the beginning of Reception. All twenty-five pupils scored above their chronological ages, the weakest by two months, the next weakest by eight months – in itself a remarkable achievement. At the top… Continue reading Great results from Tyldesley Primary School in Wigan.
The BBC has just announced this morning that the national Strategies are to be scrapped from 2011! Hurrah!