The Guardian
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Truants, bullies and the recession
We must help families torn apart by truancy, not criminalise them – but the services that help troubled children are under threat The news that truancy rates are soaring won’t surprise many teachers like me. Figures from the Department for Children, Schools and Families show that children skipped more than 8m days of school last […]
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Teaching school texts by txt
Teachers should relax about pupils’ mobile phones – they can boost standards and liven up the lesson if used imaginatively It appears lots of teachers like me are up in arms about pupils using mobile phones in the classroom. Teaching unions are terrified that if schools don’t ban them absolutely, chaos will ensue: the […]
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Michael Gove’s ruinous plans for education
Today’s speech showed a party committed to micro-managing schools, using policies that have no empirical backing Michael Gove delivered a speech at the Conservative party conference which played to the prejudices of his audience. His oration was peppered again and again with talk of how the Labour party has failed the country in creating schools […]
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Labour ripped the heart out of education
Scratch beneath the surface of successful GSCE figures and you’ll find a morass of ‘robot teaching’ that fails our children So the first generation of students to be entirely educated under New Labour has just got its GCSE results. On the surface, the government’s achievements look fabulous: boys have caught up with girls in maths; […]
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Teachers’ pets win prizes
Are there far too many teachers’ pets in England? Do too many teachers from England unfairly favour certain students over others? A survey supervised by researchers at the University of Birmingham, in which 14,000 14- and 15-year-olds from England, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Japan, Italy and France were questioned, suggests that English teachers are the […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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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Open Season
I am walking down the corridors of Sir John Cass secondary school in Tower Hamlets and it feels very weird. I am not dodging missiles, hearing abuse or witnessing scraps between children. This seems a totally different school from the one I taught at during the early 1990s; there isn’t a fight in sight, not […]
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Controlling the classroom
In my second year of teaching at a tough inner city comprehensive in the early 1990s, I occasionally used to grab my insolent pupils by the arm and fling them out of the classroom – if they were small enough. Once or twice, I gave the really troublesome boys a light clip over the back […]
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Will the teaching council ever learn?
The new draft of a code of conduct and practice for teachers really made me laugh. It’s a big and wordy document from the General Teaching Council for England (GTC) and full of the off-putting, sanctimonious language that makes teachers such as me want to go and strangle the nearest bureaucrat to hand. There are […]
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Getting closure
At least my school isn’t one of the wussy ones – it’s got a blizzard-proof excuse. The comprehensive where I teach is essentially stuck in a field in Essex and is currently encased in banks of snow, encircled by treacherous roads piled high with ice and sludge and only Ranulph Fiennes would seriously consider commuting […]
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Why We Should Give Teachers A Pay Rise
I bet there were a few teacher-hating members of the public chucking their breakfast at their television sets this morning when they saw the moaning members of the National Union of Teachers asking for a 10% pay rise at their conference this week. Even as a teacher myself, I have a degree of sympathy with […]
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Will the teaching council ever learn?
The new code of conduct for teachers is a masterwork in stating the blindingly obvious and deeply patronising The new draft of a code of conduct and practice for teachers really made me laugh. It’s a big and wordy document from the General Teaching Council for England (GTC) and full of the off-putting, sanctimonious language […]
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Why We Should Give Teachers a Pay Rise
Teachers are demanding a 10% pay rise. To educate the country out of this recession, we should give it to them I bet there were a few teacher-hating members of the public chucking their breakfast at their television sets this morning when they saw the moaning members of the National Union of Teachers asking for […]
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Getting closure
Despite clear roads and public transport running, schools are still closed because teachers can’t afford to live near where they work At least my school isn’t one of the wussy ones – it’s got a blizzard-proof excuse. The comprehensive where I teach is essentially stuck in a field in Essex and is currently encased in […]
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Yobs on the job
The stereotypical image of a yob is the hoodie on the streets hurling stones or abuse at passers-by. But some of the worst yobbery goes on in the workplace. And when I compare the testimony of people attacked by thugs on the street with those who were the victims of attacks in their offices, factories […]
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Stuart Jeffries on Francis Gilbert’s ‘Yob Nation’
When Sorbonne students look across the channel before demonstrating in the Latin Quarter, they realise how little France should aim to copy our economic miracle. And how much there is to fight for on the streets. Francis Gilbert’s new book, Yob Nation, is wonderful to read in this context. It argues that when Britons take […]
Don’t judge teachers by their degrees
I’ve seen too many graduates with first-class degrees die in the classroom. David Cameron’s ‘elitist’ policies would be destructive So what makes a good teacher? Suddenly, answering this question properly seems to be of crucial importance. Today, with much fanfare, David Cameron, trumpeted plans to stop graduates with poor degrees from so-called “poor” universities from […]