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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
This article explores how and why parents can win their school appeal, if they failed to get their child into the state school of their choice in England.
How do you save a curio such as the Livesey Museum for Children? It is not well known, it is not glamorous, but the UK’s first museum for children is magical – and it is now in peril. Last week, shamefully, Southwark Council executive decided to cut its funding and the final council vote today […]
Mohammed was only 13 years old and wasn’t especially tall or powerful, yet I was terrified of him. "I’ll fucking kill you. Do you get what I mean, geezer? I’ll fucking deck you!" he screamed at me as I asked him to leave my classroom. He had hit a boy over the head and spent […]
Sometimes I’ve wished I was a soldier in some of my rowdier classrooms. I could have swaggered with my rifle and my combat fatigues before the spotty teenagers who have told me where to get off and worse, and blasted them with some military discipline; asking them to do push-ups every time they sniggered, to […]
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 […]