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  • Complications — The intrusion of Serjeant Troy

    Complications – The Intrusion of Serjeant Troy   Revision of Chapters 1 – 24 Who did what? STARTER ACTIVITY   Caused a stir in the Casterbridge Corn Exchange and set the farmers’ pulses racing. Lost his sheep, became a tramp and then got a job as a shepherd. Missed a wedding because of going to…

  • Don’t judge teachers by their degrees

    I’ve seen too many graduates with first-class degrees die in the classroom. David Cameron’s ‘elitist’ policies would be destructive So what makes a good teacher? Suddenly, answering this question properly seems to be of crucial importance. Today, with much fanfare, David Cameron, trumpeted plans to stop graduates with poor degrees from so-called “poor” universities from…

  • Should the school day be extended to 10 hours?

    I asked my pupils this and EVERYONE of them said that it shouldn’t! Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they? However, there are plans afoot for some schools to imitate certain American schools, Charter Schools, and run a school day from 7.50am-5pm. The idea is that the children from the poorest neighbourhoods don’t have good…

  • Should parents shun the state sector and go private?

    Having been there and done it, I feel now that parents are usually best off sending their child to the local school as a government adviser recently suggested. Having helicoptered my child into a private school and seen him subjected to rote-learning and the barbaric, pointless competition of the private sector, I decided to pull…

  • Are truants overwhelmingly from poor backgrounds?

    Recent research completed by the Tories suggests what we’ve known for a long time that kids from socially deprived backgrounds are much more likely to bunk off school than their middle class peers. I appeared on BBC Breakfast talking about the issue. I categorised children who bunk off into three categories: the arrogant, the alienated…

  • One of the most important books of the Noughties

    It’s getting to that point when we’re all looking back at the decade and thinking about what are the really important books. My vote goes to Sathnam Sanghera’s The Boy With A Top Knot, a brilliant memoir about Sathnam’s quest to find the truth about his father’s madness. Satnam grew up in Wolverhampton in the…

  • Abu Dhabi — The only city thriving in this recession

    Abu Dhabi is not suffering like Dubai because this Emirate has cash reserves of billions, built up over the years by storing the profits from its oil. Now it’s beginning to spend it, building Dubai-style malls and hotels. I’m here visiting a friend who is the Business Editor of the National, a new newspaper set…

  • Truants, bullies and the recession

     We must help families torn apart by truancy, not criminalise them – but the services that help troubled children are under threat The news that truancy rates are soaring won’t surprise many teachers like me. Figures from the Department for Children, Schools and Families show that children skipped more than 8m days of school last…

  • Why have we gone so wrong with the way we educate our children?

    The Cambridge Review of Primary Education is speaking sense to me. We have constructed a curriculum that fundamentally alienates our children with its emphasis upon attainment and its lack of thought on how we intrinsically motivate our children. Document 1 Document 2

  • Working The System: How to Get the Very Best State Education for your Child

    Written by an experienced teacher who has established a reputation as a voice of candour and clarity in the world of modern educational doublespeak, this highly readable guide will help you navigate the complexities of the system and get the very best education for your child.

  • Child Neglect — Is the problem getting worse?

    A new report suggests that child neglect is a growing problem. A new report from Action for Children suggests that we’ve got a worsening situation on our hands. Health professionals, nursery teachers, midwives, doctors, primary teachers and social workers are reporting a rise in child neglect. But what precisely are the indications that a child is…

  • How to get a foot in the door at Oxbridge

    With the deadline of October 15 looming, it’s a crucial time for students applying to Oxford and Cambridge universities. They’ve got two days to fine-tune applications and little more than a month to prepare for the infamous Oxbridge interviews. For some parents, this time of year is the culmination of years of blood, sweat and…

  • Teaching school texts by txt

    Teachers should relax about pupils’ mobile phones – they can boost standards and liven up the lesson if used imaginatively   It appears lots of teachers like me are up in arms about pupils using mobile phones in the classroom. Teaching unions are terrified that if schools don’t ban them absolutely, chaos will ensue: the…

  • Michael Gove’s ruinous plans for education

    Today’s speech showed a party committed to micro-managing schools, using policies that have no empirical backing Michael Gove delivered a speech at the Conservative party conference which played to the prejudices of his audience. His oration was peppered again and again with talk of how the Labour party has failed the country in creating schools…

  • Why I moved my son from a prep school to a state primary

    As a private schools tsar extols their virtue, one teacher tells how he transferred his son from a public prep school to a state primary It seemed so perfect at first. Every parent at our son’s nursery was desperate to get their child into the exclusive prep school. On the open day the school was…

  • Sacking top teachers will be a bloodbath

    Ed Balls’s latest plans will be disastrous for schools such as mine It would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious — the Government’s latest wheeze is to sack thousands of teachers. Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, announced yesterday that to cut spending 3,000 teachers could be kicked out of their jobs in the coming…

  • Why ARE so many of my fellow teachers breaking the ultimate taboo?

    Heaven knows what it must be like to be among those parents with children at Headlands School in Bridlington, East Yorkshire. And who could blame them if they feel utterly betrayed by an education system that would seem to have failed lamentably in its duty of protection and care? In just three years, three male…

  • Labour ripped the heart out of education

    Scratch beneath the surface of successful GSCE figures and you’ll find a morass of ‘robot teaching’ that fails our children So the first generation of students to be entirely educated under New Labour has just got its GCSE results. On the surface, the government’s achievements look fabulous: boys have caught up with girls in maths;…

  • Should parents take their children out of school during school time?

    I argued on BBC Breakfast that they should not. I cited the example of ‘Katie’ (not the pupils’ real name) who had missed weeks of school because her parents were taking her out regularly of school during term time, going on cheap holidays. They lied to the school and said that she was ill. There…

  • Should parents pay for solicitors to help them get the school of their choice?

    Emphatically not! You’re far better off reading a school’s admission criteria very carefully and reading books like my Working The System. A BBC investigation has revealed that parents are paying lawyers thousands of pounds to get into the school of their choice. I appeared on BBC Radio Wales and BBC Radio 5 Live and explained that…

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