All articles on this site

  • British Teenagers Today

    Back in the mists of time, in the late 1980s, when I first started teaching life was relatively uncomplicated for the British teenager. They had far less distractions and pressures than today. They might watch too much TV, play the odd badly animated computer game, might hang around with their friends on streetcorners yearning for […]

  • Why our schools have plunged in world league tables despite billions being spent

    Rising school standards were meant to be at the heart of the New Labour project. "Education, education, education" was the famous mantra of Tony Blair, who promised that his Government would transform the quality of British schools.  When he succeeded Blair in the summer, Gordon Brown promised exactly the same driving commitment.  "Education is my […]

  • Interview about Yob Nation

    When I was attacked by a gang on a bus, it made me want to know the causes of gratuitous, pointless, petty violence… and whether it was a growing problem.

  • Exams work

    My pupil Mark is proof that exams work. With a shock of red hair and acne to match, he was a loud, brash fourteen-year-old. In his Key Stage 3 English tests, which all Year 9 pupils take in May, he scored a miserable level 4. But when I taught him the next year, he got […]

  • Drugs in Schools

    I have only come across a few children high on drugs in school time in all my sixteen years as a teacher in various London comprehensives. However, while drug taking in school is rare, I know many pupils take drugs away from the prying eyes of adults: often they’ve bought the drugs from a school […]

  • The key to cultural understanding

    Recently, the best way I’ve taught cultural understanding is through a quick ‘grammar’ starter exercise. As soon as my pupils enter the classroom, I shout out: “Give me an adjective that describes your mood!” Treating for the purpose of this exercise a few pages of their English books like posters that they hold up for […]

  • Letter in the Evening Standard

    I am profoundly concerned that teacher Angela Mason has been found guilty of professional misconduct for taking a secret camera into London classrooms and filming the appalling behaviour of the pupils (5 July). If any film was in the public interest, this was it. The film took care not to identify individual pupils but did […]

  • Give me more powers and I’ll stop my pupils fighting

    Tony, a little boy in an oversized uniform, was trembling at the back of the playground. As I approached I could see why. He had fresh bruises on his face and little knife cuts on the back of his hand. At the far corner of the playground, I saw John, a large boy of 13 […]

  • Revealed … the great schools test for parents. How to choose the right school?

    IT’S one of the most important things that you, the parents, will ever do. Unfortunately, you are not the only ones involved in the choice that could have such a monumental impact on your child’s life. Often it’s the local education authority or school itself that makes the final decision, and for many families the […]

  • Bottom Of The Class

    As an experienced teacher in the state sector and as a parent, I know just how harmful large classes can be. The OECD’s report, which has pointed out that Britain has some of the largest primary school class sizes in the developed world, only confirmed what I have known for years: successive governments – both […]

  • There’s no rhyme or reason to this ban

    Having been head of English at my school for some years now, I find it deeply disturbing that the exam board, AQA, should withdraw Carol Ann Duffy’s amazing poem about knife crime from their anthology. If any poem should be studied as an antidote to our current woes, it is this one. Her poem, Education […]

  • The Truth About Results’ Day

    Many teachers are evasive on results’ day. There was a time when I freely volunteered to hand out results to pupils, assisting with the examination secretary’s job of supplying this vital information as quickly and efficiently as possible. However, bitter experience has made me wary: I found myself in the firing line, facing sobbing students […]

  • Closing students’ minds

    The news that A-level grades have risen yet again comes as no surprise to teachers like me. We’ve become much better at teaching to the tests, and pupils are much more proficient at passing them. But does this mean that our students are genuinely becoming cleverer? Worryingly, I think not. My experience suggests that precisely […]

  • The SATS disaster

    Labour Ministers are fond of telling us that education is one of the Government’s success stories. They boast of soaring investment in schools, ever rising standards, record-breaking exam results and huge improvements in literacy and numeracy. We are informed that, thanks to eleven years of Labour rule, Britain now has “a world-class” education system, equipping […]

  • Education Act anniversary: I was a robot, not a teacher

    For teachers like me, who have taught for nearly two decades in the state sector, the latest fiasco over Sats is as predictable as bad weather on an August Bank Holiday. The same could be said for the action of Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, the man who won’t apologise for the fiasco: he joins […]

  • Lost Boys — A Book Review

    At the heart of James Miller’s first novel is the shocking theme of missing children: images of abandoned, abused, ghostly children soak the book’s pages, invading the characters’ dreams, their waking visions, filling up its streets, corridors, schools and barricaded homes. This imagery has a global width and depth. Throughout the novel, Miller disturbingly juxtaposes […]

  • Mentors for schoolchildren

    Of all my pupils, Carly Springham, 17, isn’t the sort that you’d think would need mentoring. She doesn’t fit the stereotype of the truculent kid who’s languishing at the bottom of the class, chucking bits of paper at the teacher and yelling at anyone who annoys her. She’s a quiet, hard-working student who’s got good […]

  • The lesson we can learn about schools

    These include allowing teachers physically to restrain pupils who are out of control and scrapping a parents’ right of appeal when their children are excluded for misbehaviour. While I can see why they are worried about current standards of discipline, my own experience on the education front-line leads me to believe the proposals are misguided. […]

  • Give children rewards and they’ll soon fleece you

    The news that a mother rewards her 13-year-old daughter with cigarettes when she behaves has confirmed what I’ve been thinking for a while – rewards are, at best, ineffectual and, at worst, positively damaging. A jobless single mother, Tracy Holt, 43, of Gosport, Hampshire, is so despairing of her daughter, Sam, that she now gives […]

  • Schools are for learning, not imprisonment

    A father’s refusal to allow his son to be punished in a school’s "isolation room" has focused the public’s mind on this form of punishment. According to the father, Andrew Widdowson, Ridgewood school in Doncaster has a darkened, poorly lit room where naughty children are sent which is "like Guantanamo Bay". His son was ordered […]

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