Teaching creative writing
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The Times and The Sunday Times

  • 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…

  • Is coursework a fair way of assessing pupils?

    A version of this article appeared in the Times, Tuesday 8th May. When a pupil of mine, Gerry, presented me with his English Language A level coursework, I couldn’t believe my eyes.  It was A* with knobs on! “Blimey, Gerry, how did you do that?” I asked, “Your last piece scarcely scraped a D grade.”…

  • 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…

  • A teacher’s view of the protests

    Children should be in school, however they feel about the tuition fee rises I think it’s highly irresponsible of teachers to condone, tacitly or explicitly, pupils walking out of school. It indicates that they don’t see the primary importance of education in the classroom; if they don’t believe in that, why are they teaching? It’s…

  • Training teachers at college is better than on the job

    University training sounds like a luxury, but is actually cheaper and more effective Not many people outside academia will protest about the axing of teacher training in universities — but they should. The new Education White Paper, which is due to be published this week, will stipulate that new teachers should be trained “on the…

  • Don’t panic about your child’s schooling!

    Help! I’m in a complete panic about schools! I feel that every decision I make about my children’s school is wrong. What should I do? Firstly, be aware that you’re not alone. Being a school teacher for the last twenty years in various state schools, I’ve noticed that a lot of parents panic about their…

  • How to cope with secondary school trauma

    It may be a year away, but parents need to act now to get their child into a chosen school There was an atmosphere of panic among the parents in the sticky assembly hall with all of us secretly worrying: would we find the right school for our children? Being the parents of Year 5…

  • UK teachers on the edge: but who really cares?

    The case of Peter Harvey, cleared of attempted murder, has refocused attention on the stresses faced by school staff nationwide   I suspect many teachers, like me, are feeling relieved that Peter Harvey, the teacher who battered a difficult pupil about the head with a dumbbell, has been found not guilty of attempted murder. The…

  • Rupture by Simon Lelic

    This tale of a London comprehensive is absorbing, convincing and truly frightening Simon Lelic’s debut novel, about a teacher who turns out to be a psychopath, is genuinely frightening. Lelic manages to evoke in crisp, accessible prose what it’s like to work in a modern school where bullying is rife. Perhaps most terrifying of all…

  • How to get a foot in the door at Oxbridge

    With the deadline of October 15 looming, it’s a crucial time for students applying to Oxford and Cambridge universities. They’ve got two days to fine-tune applications and little more than a month to prepare for the infamous Oxbridge interviews. For some parents, this time of year is the culmination of years of blood, sweat and…

  • Why I moved my son from a prep school to a state primary

    As a private schools tsar extols their virtue, one teacher tells how he transferred his son from a public prep school to a state primary It seemed so perfect at first. Every parent at our son’s nursery was desperate to get their child into the exclusive prep school. On the open day the school was…

  • Sacking top teachers will be a bloodbath

    Ed Balls’s latest plans will be disastrous for schools such as mine It would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious — the Government’s latest wheeze is to sack thousands of teachers. Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, announced yesterday that to cut spending 3,000 teachers could be kicked out of their jobs in the coming…

  • Spelling out the cost of literacy lunacy

    Teachers feel vindicated by the dumping of failed policies Ed Balls’s ditching of the numeracy and literacy strategies is a jaw-dropping admission of failure. Until the strategies were dumped late last week, they were the flagship education policy of the Government.Indeed, the Department for Children, Schools and Families appeared to be so confident in the…

  • Give me more powers and I’ll stop my pupils fighting

    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…

  • Mentors for schoolchildren

    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…

  • Lost Boys — A Book Review

    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…

  • The Livesey children’s museum really does matter

    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…

  • How you can win your school appeal

    The Government’s announcement this week that parents who have not got their child into their first-choice school should appeal promises to cause mayhem in educational establishments throughout the country. I should know, because I teach in a top-achieving comprehensive in outer London. In the past, parents angry that their child has failed to gain a…

  • Give children rewards and they’ll soon fleece you

    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…

  • My profession needs a better voice than these morons

    On Saturday the work-shy teachers at the NUT conference backed a boycott of SATs. On Sunday they moaned about too many tough guys going into teaching (if only!). On Monday they demanded an eye-popping 10 per cent pay rise and yesterday they were threatening to strike over the vagaries of sixth-form funding. What next? A…