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In this section I archive features and articles that have been published elsewhere. I contribute regularly to the national press, including The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, and The Daily Mail.

  • Are the school summer holidays just too long?

    Observer columnist Barbara Ellen and teacher Francis Gilbert debate whether children and parents would benefit from a shorter summer break Barbara Ellen: Francis, I would always have argued that school holidays are too long. For parents, that is. A case of: “My child, I would fight a lion for you, but if you ask me to…

  • The government is wrong to devalue vocational qualifications

    Vocational courses help students develop key skills employers are crying out for. League tables should reflect this The government’s decision to drastically downgrade the value of vocational qualificationsis deeply troubling for teachers like me, and must be sending many schools and colleges into a tailspin of despair. At the moment over half a million teenagers are…

  • Sometimes strict teachers can be the worst at actually helping children learn…

    The news today that assaults on teachers have risen to a five-year-high and that nearly 1,000 children are excluded from school every day got me thinking about behaviour in our schools. I find headlines like this depressing because they actually tell us very little about what is really going on in schools. I suspect, though I…

  • Only Connect — Teach First award winners reveal their secrets…

    I attended the Teach First Awards this Thursday and interviewed some of the award winners afterwards. The ceremony was your average award winning affair: lots of praise for sponsors and quite a bit of back-slapping. I like the Teach First programme because it has at its heart the idea of promoting good teaching — which is…

  • Let’s support the summer reading challenge and get every child reading!

    The Summer Reading Challenge is a really cool project which aims to get schools, libraries and parents working together so our children might actually do some reading they like this summer! For an English teacher like me, this is the Holy Grail: if one of my pupils actually enjoys reading, then everything else follows; happiness…

  • Exam boards are failing our pupils

    The faceless bureaucracy of exam boards has led to error-strewn papers. Exams should have a single, accountable author My pupils are all looking very stressed these days. Not only are they sitting their mocks, but they’ve also been sitting “modular” exams and have had to endure the nightmare of tackling exam papers sprinkled with errors.…

  • The councillor in charge of my LA’s schools will tell parents not to send their children to my local comp if it becomes an Academy…

    Last night, I attended a meeting convened by the National Union of Teachers about my local secondary school, Bethnal Green Technology College, becoming an Academy. The school has already had a public meeting about this – as I noted in a previous post. Alex Kenny, a prominent NUT activist in east London, Alasdair Smith of…

  • Should climate change be dropped from the national curriculum?

    was shocked to read today that climate change may be dropped from the national curriculum. As a teacher in various state schools for 20 years, I’ve seen how much the education on this issue has really improved in the past decade and how everyone has benefited from it being a prescribed part of the curriculum.…

  • Gove’s free schools policy is already in trouble

    From the outset, the coalition’s support of free schools was heralded as its defining education policy. Groups of parents, teachers or community members would be given the power and resources to set up their own schools, particularly in areas of high social deprivation. These groups would sweep aside the concerns of the bureaucratic local authorities…

  • A presentation on the problems with Free Schools

    The problems with free schools on Prezi

  • The unions’ cause is just, but I’m ambivalent about striking – and I shudder at the legacy of the ’80s disputes

    Recently we have had localised strikes over pay, badly behaved pupils, redundancies and cuts to school services, but the biggest ones in a generation are on the way over pensions. While the majority of us were not surprised that the most left-wing of the unions, the NUT, voted to strike over pensions last week, you…

  • The classroom should be a place of learning – but not for teachers

    Michael Gove’s plans to move teacher training out of universities will provoke protest at teachers’ conferences No article on matters educational is complete without a disquisition on standards. So here’s one, right at the top. The coalition’s plans to replace teacher-training at university with on-the-job learning will mean that standards – standards in teaching, that…

  • How to analyse a poem: a Gilbert vodcast on “The Sick Rose”

    Motivated by the £10K offered to my school for winning The Dream Teacher competition, I’ve decided to start videoing little sections of my “teacherly” explanations and uploading them to YouTube. My videos are not of great quality, but I think my enthusiasm comes through! Like thousands of teachers up and down the country, I do this…

  • Yoga for all pupils, and other alternative schools

    Schools with a difference are enjoying a renaissance — but what sort of education do they offer? Yoga, meditation, gardening and learning through play — not your traditional school fare. But “alternative” education has never been a hotter topic for many parents in Britain. Tired of a diet of uniforms and exams that many schools…

  • My joy that my son is going to the local, much-improved comprehensive

    My wife and I learnt today, on National Offer Day, that our son, in Year 6, is going to the local comprehensive in Tower Hamlets, our first choice school. We are both delighted that he’s going to the school for several reasons. Firstly, the school really is “on the up”. My son will certainly get…

  • The omens don’t look good for Gove’s Troops To Teachers programme

    Guess how many military personnel have applied to become teachers as part of the Teach First Leadership Development Programme this year? Five. And guess how many have been hired? Zero. The Teach First figures for last year are similarly dismal with eleven military personnel applying, and two being hired. To put these figures in context,…

  • Birbalsingh has changed her tune since she was Head of Languages

    IMPORTANT NOTE: “Katharine Birbalsingh has asked us not to name any of her previous schools in our blogs and comments  as the ‘Ordinary School’ featured in  ‘To Miss with Love’ is fictional.” Since reading her fictional diatribe against state education, To Miss With Love, and writing a review of it for The Observer,  I’ve been starting to investigate…

  • State schools: are they failing our children?

    The state school depicted in Katharine Birbalsingh’s novel doesn’t resemble any school I’ve encountered recently – as a teacher, parent or researcher. Towards the end of the book, despite the school being riddled with poor behaviour and teaching, it’s judged to be “good, with outstanding features” by Ofsted. The comprehensive where I now teach was…

  • My analysis shows that the link between child poverty and poor results is still very strong

    My analysis of the 2009-2010 GCSE results shows that poverty is still very strongly connected with low academic attainment. In fact, from the results I’ve analysed, poverty seems still to be the deciding factor in how children do at school. This research endorses a raft of research which shows the connection between poverty and low…

  • Should the state be funding schools which were founded by a racist mystic?

    The news that there are 25 Steiner schools seeking to be funded as “free schools” and that there is already one which has state funds should be deeply troubling for most right-minded people. Steiner schools have the reputation in this country for being rather progressive, liberal schools with some quirky ideas, but basically perfect for…