All articles on this site

  • Pride and Prejudice — A Study Guide

    This is an up-to-date study guide to Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice, aimed at 15-19 year olds and the general reader. The guide is modern in its approach and provides all the necessary information to get a top grade in an exam and/or coursework.

  • The Turn of the Screw — A Study Guide

    Lively and engaging, this study guide is written by an experienced teacher who understands what needs to be covered. An excellent resource for GCSE and A Level students, or anyone studying the book at school or university.

  • Star-crossed: Romeo and Juliet for Teenagers

    A modern version of Romeo and Juliet which updates Shakespeare’s classic play in a very entertaining fashion. This play-script is not suitable for children under the age of fifteen.

  • How to Get a Great English Degree

    Are you studying English at university either as your main degree or as a subsidiary subject? Are you finding it challenging? Then this lively, short guide could be what you’ve been looking for!

  • Songs of Innocence and Experience: A Study Guide

    This is the ultimate study guide to William Blake’s classic poetry collection “Songs of Innocence and Experience”. Written by an experienced teacher and author, it not only contains all of the relevant verse, but also includes substantive comprehension questions and thorough analysis of every poem.

  • Michael Gove offers social justice in reverse. That’s why I back the strikes

    Gove’s conference speech was misleading – his education policies give more power to the privileged and fuel social segregation The main claim made by Michael Gove at the Conservative party conference was that his education policies are focused on “social justice”. It was a lacklustre speech that sounded more like a list of acknowledgements. For a large […]

  • Are teachers doing the best for the best pupils?

    The biggest thing holding back bright pupils is the limiting structure of GCSEs, says a comprehensive teacher Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools, depressed me no end when I heard him on the radio yesterday morning. I was getting ready to teach my mixed ability classes in the large comprehensive where I work […]

  • Teachers as writers — TES Pro article

     

  • How to use study guides in the classroom — TES Pro article

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  • My blogs, YouTube, Soundcloud and Twitter channels…

    Together with a number of other eminent journalists and educationalists, I co-founded and help run the popular educational blog, Local Schools Network. I also blog for Mumsnet on Tales Behind The Classroom Door. My YouTube channel is Wonderfrancis. My Soundcloud Channel is Electric Schubert. I am @wonderfrancis on Twitter. Other blogs: A Streetcar Named Desire for […]

  • How to choose a school: by teachers for parents

    Tis the season when schools are trying to woo potential parents at open days. How can you tell what a school is really like behind the facade? Here is our guide by those who know: the teachers. This article first appeared in The Guardian. I know from bitter experience that appearances can be deceptive. I […]

  • Free schools are a disaster

    Michael Gove’s flagship policy is a huge waste of money, socially divisive and won’t raise educational standards The free schools policy is the most ideological of all the coalition’s policies. Trumpeted in the Conservative manifesto, it was one of Michael Gove’s first projects as education secretary. His vision was that thousands of schools set up […]

  • Good links for Wilfred Owen’s poetry

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/wilfred_owen_gallery.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/shropshire/content/articles/2005/03/16/wilfred_owen.shtml

  • Academy plan to use untrained teachers is an outrage

    Why is Michael Gove instituting this policy when he has praised countries like Finland where teachers are intensively trained? The news today that the education secretary is to remove the requirement for academies to employ qualified teachers sent a shudder down my spine. For a teacher like me, who has taught for more than 20 […]

  • The lessons we can learn from 100-year-olds

    Are we living in the age of the “oldie”? Recently, many “old people” seem to be thriving. This is particularly striking in the entertainment world. At 76, film-maker and comedian Woody Allen is enjoying his biggest commercial success, 74-year-old Ridley Scott has just directed one of the summer’s most expensive blockbusters, Prometheus, and, in the […]

  • Greedy exam boards favour rich private schools and disadvantage state schools with little money

    Channel 4 ran an interesting item last night, which I appeared in, about the ways in which the different exam boards have increasingly been grabbing taxpayer’s cash, thereby favouring schools with big pockets and seriously disadvantaging cash-starved state schools. Exam fees went up 8.5% last year, and over the last decade have gone up 113%, with […]

  • Proof that GCSE are more rigorous than O Levels?

    I spent an interesting morning at Television Centre today, appearing on Broadcasting House, the Sunday morning magazine show hosted by the affable Paddy O’Connell. Taking a light-hearted look at the current O Level and GCSE debate, he sat an English O Level question and a GCSE one; they were both ‘writing’ or composition questions. As a […]

  • Gove plots to scrap GCSEs and bring back the old ‘elitist’ O Level

    The breaking news tonight, splashed all over the Daily Mail’s website, is that Michael Gove is aiming to scrap the GCSE qualification over the next few years and bring back the old O Level. The Mail claims: GCSEs will ‘disappear’ from schools within the next few years The National Curriculum in secondary schools will be abolished […]

  • Proof that Gove by-passed his own Expert Panel to push through idiotic curriculum changes

    The British Educational Association has just published the major correspondence about their President’s (Mary James) involvement with the National Curriculum Review. The documentation details in depth exactly what Mary James and her colleague, primary school expert, Andrew Pollard, objected to in the National Curriculum Review. We already had some information about this from Andrew Pollard’s blog on The Institute of […]

  • Why there’s never been equality in English schools — Melissa Benn’s speech at the Goldsmiths conference

    I filmed Melissa speaking at the Goldsmiths College Teaching and Learning Conference, Future Tense, last week and have just posted the video on YouTube. Posting it now is particularly timely because it lays to rest the myth that private and grammar schools increase social mobility when, as Melissa points out, they do the opposite. Her […]

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