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The Daily Telegraph

  • A killer in the classroom

    Is it possible that violent and unruly children pose a bigger problem than schools dare admit?   Having taught for more than 20 years in various comprehensives, I can honestly say that there has been no more shocking news about the profession in the past couple of decades than the death of Anne Maguire, a…

  • 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…

  • Special needs is a fad that harms children

    Pupils are being subjected to all manner of crank treatments in the name of helping them Twenty years ago, when I started teaching in a tough, inner-city comprehensive, only three of my pupils were labelled as having “special educational needs”. All three were extreme cases: one girl liked to throw chairs at her teachers, another…

  • The worst classroom bullies? Politicians

     A toxic brew of meddling and failure to teach the basics has set teachers against pupils Luke had his victim, another 13-year-old pupil, in an armlock and was smashing his fists against his face. Things weren’t going according to my lesson plan. I rushed over to the fighting boys and yanked them apart, yelling at…

  • Licenced teachers won’t be better teachers

    Ed Balls’s teaching “MoT” will merely bring more pointless paperwork to the profession After two decades in teaching, I’ve realised that the really hapless members of my profession can be divided up into three distinct categories: the weirdos, the breakdowns, and the brown-nosers.The weirdos are the easiest to spot. We’ve all been taught by at…

  • 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.…

  • 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…

  • How a good headteacher can save a school

    A few years back, I taught at a school that terrified me. Just walking down the corridor was hazardous. Frequently, children would rush up behind me and hit me on the back of the head, shouting out, "Gilly, Gilly, how are ya doing, mate?" When I complained to my head of year, he said I…

  • Turned Away At The School Gates

    The parent sobbed openly at the reception of the secondary school where I teach: "But it’s not fair! You have to let her in!" Our secretary had to ask our caretakers to escort her off the premises. But she wasn’t surprised. Every year, she gets hundreds of calls from panic-stricken parents wanting to know why…

  • Dishing out fines won’t stop the chaos in class

    As a battle-hardened teacher, I can’t help but be a little cynical about the latest government initiative to quell indiscipline in our schools. A three-year study into classroom behaviour has called for teachers to be able to slap £50 penalties on the parents of pupils who persistently misbehave. After spending 20 years working in various…

  • How a good headteacher can save a school

    Without leadership and discipline, chaos rules. But this is exactly what the Government is allowing to happen, argues Francis Gilbert A few years back, I taught at a school that terrified me. Just walking down the corridor was hazardous. Frequently, children would rush up behind me and hit me on the back of the head,…

  • Turned Away at the School Gates

    This week thousands of children were denied places in their first choice secondary school. Here, a teacher argues that our education system is as crisis-ridden as our banks. The parent sobbed openly at the reception of the secondary school where I teach: “But it’s not fair! You have to let her in!” Our secretary had…

  • A Blairite learns a lesson

    The premise of this book is intriguing for anyone who is remotely interested in politics or education. The privately educated Peter Hyman was an advisor to Tony Blair from 1994 until 2003; for the last two years of his tenure he rose to being Head of Strategic Communications at Number 10, and was one of…

  • Dishing out fines won’t stop the chaos in class

    There are riots, drugs and even death threats… and all our leaders offer are sticking-plasters As a battle-hardened teacher, I can’t help but be a little cynical about the latest government initiative to quell indiscipline in our schools. A three-year study into classroom behaviour has called for teachers to be able to slap £50 penalties…

  • Teaching as triumph

    It is impossible to read Frank McCourt’s new memoir, Teacher Man, about his life as a teacher in New York, without the incessant rain of Ireland drizzling into one’s thoughts. McCourt’s first book, Angela’s Ashes, published when he was 66, won the Pulitzer Prize, has sold millions of copies throughout the world, was turned into…

  • The league tables are a game – don’t take them too seriously

    My old school is now one of the ‘most improved’ in the country. Yet I’m not sure it’s so different from a decade ago. I will never forget the day when I learned that the secondary school in which I was teaching had come bottom of the School Performance Tables. That was more than 10…

  • Education failures are a national tragedy

    Finally, the trousers are coming off the Government’s education policies. The news that teenager Paul Erhahon, who was murdered by a gang of youths last Friday in a quiet London suburb, had suffered an earlier knife attack at school has, together with other teenage stabbings and murders, offered a glimpse of the sordid underbelly of…

  • … as any teacher can tell you

    Phil Smith was the man who sorted out the yobs… and I desperately needed him. I was in my first year of teaching, and I had just encountered my most unruly class. Halfway through my lesson, the pupils began to shout obscenities at the top of their voices, they then proceeded to push all the…

  • The senior teacher made it clear: it must be my fault if the children behaved badly

    I gulped, finally I was going to tell the truth. "The thing is, I just don’t think I am coping with some of the classes," I said with my head bowed. Simon Filer, the senior manager to whom I was confessing this in an empty classroom, blinked and then tapped his pen against the desk.…

  • Kelly gives Labour its best day this term

    Far from being the worst day in Labour’s second term – the New Statesman’s Richard Reeves described it as "the biggest domestic policy failure" of this parliament – the Education Secretary’s rejection of the Tomlinson Report makes it their best. The educational establishment’s howl of fury at Ruth Kelly’s education White Paper, published on Thursday,…