Teaching creative writing
teaching english

Chris Woodhead, useless teachers and Radio 5 Live

Shelagh Fogarty interviewed me on Radio 5 Breakfast about the lack of subject specialists teaching in schools today. According to a new report supervised by Chris Woodhead for the think-tank politeia (http://www.politeia.co.uk/) over half of primary school teachers do not have more than 2 A Levels, and 40% of teachers don’t teach their specialism. I wanted to point out that this isn’t always a problem — some of the best teachers are only a couple of steps ahead of their pupils — but it is in certain subjects for GCSE and A Level. Good Science and Maths graduates being the hardest to find to teach. It was all quite chummy, I was called a Radio 5 regular by the presenter, Woodhead called me Francis, and Nicky Campbell quipped as I left, ‘See you next week!”

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