Read the archives of the Articles of the Moment
15 April 2008
An American dream
Education Guardian
For anyone who wants a Britain in which every child can reach his or her full potential, the statistics on the social background of students admitted to our top universities are uniformly depressing. Oxford admits over 44% of its students from private schools and Cambridge 40%, even though those schools only educate 7% of the country's children. The figures for many of the other top universities are even worse.
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11 April 2008
Why don't little girls play the tuba?
The Times Online
From the football pitch to the classroom, schools have worked hard to stamp out sexism. Girls are encouraged to take up woodwork and boys to strut their stuff in the kitchen.
But there is one place where stereotypes are still calling the tune: the music room.
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10 April 2008
University degrees are a waste of time - the damning verdict of British students
The Independent
Undergraduates fear that the Government's drive to get half of young people into university will make degrees worthless and leave them struggling to get a good job after graduation, an official report revealed yesterday.
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2 April 2008
HELP WANTED
PETER DENCH FOR TIME
TIME
With the support of Kids Company, Londoner Danny Mullins wants to become a plumber and dreams of starting a family. His friend Chris Abnett, who is also being helped by the charity, has qualified as a painter and decorator, but has struggled to find work
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25 March 2008
Edexcel: Six tests for the new Diploma
By Jerry Jarvis
ePolitix
The new Diploma is the cornerstone of the Government's 14 - 19 reforms. As educationalists line up to comment on its development and consider what is at stake in its success, Jerry Jarvis sets out the view from Edexcel and six key tests that the Diploma will need to pass.
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12 March 2008
Who rules in the classroom?
By Mike Baker
BBC News
It is commonplace for teachers and parents to complain that politicians interfere too much in education, constantly making announcements and launching initiatives but often having no real effect.
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10 March 2008
At Charter School, Higher Teacher Pay
The New York Times
A New York City charter school set to open in 2009 in Washington Heights will test one of the most fundamental questions in education: Whether significantly higher pay for teachers is the key to improving schools.
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7 March 2008
Former minister says Government is 'thrashing around' on school reform
The Independent
The former Labour education secretary, Estelle Morris, last night mounted a scathing attack on the Government's school reforms, warning there was a risk that "we thrash around from one initiative to another" with ministers and senior education figures failing to ask key questions about whether reforms were actually working
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4 March 2008
Ex-minister attacks school reform
BBC News
Former education secretary Estelle Morris has questioned whether the government really knows what it is doing with its school reforms.
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19 February 2008
Education must look to the future
Public Servant Daily
The education system was designed for a bygone age, says Richard Gerver. It needs to revise what it holds at its core and redefine basic skills to include creativity, innovation, problem solving and teamwork
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29 January 2008
Yes to the McFlybeRail Certficate
The Times Online
Stop sneering at the new vocational training. We need decent workplace education
Libby Purves
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27 January 2008
'This will rip the heart out of our community'
The Observer
Teachers and parents join together in protest at plans to close village schools around the country
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25 January 2008
The primary curriculum review will solve nothing
The Education Guardian
With its lack of real independence, clear from the brief, Sir Jim Rose's review of the primary curriculum is likely to be nothing more than a short-term 'fix-it', says Colin Richards
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18 January 2008
Performance envy? Leave that to Punch
The TES
I know from my fellow TES columnists that we are supposed to be incisive, amusing and occasionally ironic. Well, stuff that: I'm in a strop says Geoff Barton
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16 January 2008
Dr Anthony Seldon: 'Enough of this educational apartheid'
The Independent 15 January 2008
On the eve of a landmark ruling on the role of public schools in British life, the headmaster of Wellington College delivers a devastating attack on our two-tier education system
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15 January 2008
The Best of Times, the Worst of Times
by
Bill Laar
There are, at present, two widely diverging perceptions of the state of primary education. There is a claim, on the one hand, for a current golden age of high achievement and development in terms of leadership, teaching and learning, self-regulation and professional competence and, on the other, a system judged to be in thrall to an externally imposed educational regimen, limited in vision, utilitarian in intent and constraining for teachers and pupils alike.
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14 January 2008
The Children's Plan
The National Education Trust warmly welcomes the major thrust of the Children’s Plan and the resources that government is pledging to realise its ambitions…>> more
8 January 2008
McKinsey&Company
Education reform is top of the agenda of almost every country in the world. Yet despite massive increases in spending... and ambitious attempts at reform, the performance of many school systems has barely improved in decades.
Click here to read this online pdf document.
18 December 2007
BBC Education
Navigating the Diploma conundrum: ANALYSIS By Mike Baker
They are "the biggest development in examinations anywhere in the world".
More than that, as the first major qualification and curriculum reform ever designed to be "led by employers", they are unique.
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13 December 2007
From The Economist print edition Dec 6th 2007
The race is not always to the richest
Money and effort aren't enough to impart the skills and knowledge needed in a cut-throat world
SPOOKED by the effects of globalisation on their low-skilled citizens, rich countries have been pouring money and political energy into education. In the United States, it has been proclaimed that no child will be left behind...
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4 December 2007
A warning against 'coasting' writes Janette Owen in the Education Guardian
A third of governors are failing and another four out of every 10 are coasting and just doing enough to tick the statutory boxes. Their ineptitude is being covered up by headteachers, who are having to act as chair of governors..
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4 December 2007
Waving a big stick at teenagers: ANALYSIS By Mike Baker
News just in: "A 17-year-old has become the first young person to be fined for failing to turn up to compulsory classes".
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19 November 2007
It's teachers who make good schools
Sian Griffiths and Sue Leonard profile four schools that epitomise the best of British education
If Sevenoaks were a football team it would be Manchester United. Both get staggeringly good results from world-class individuals who thrive on great aspirations and enthusiasm.
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16 November 2007
Walk the walk by Mark Kenny
The Education Leader Magazine
The moment haunts many a school leader's night terrors. The monotone voice of the inspector in grey suit penetrates the heart, your knuckles whiten on the chair. "The school is judged as inadequate and requires special measures."
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15 November 2007
Middle classes abandon state schools by Graeme Paton and Toby Helm
The Telegraph Nov 12th 2007
A growing proportion of middle-class parents are giving up on state education after 10 years of Labour rule by paying to educate their children in the independent sector, official figures have disclosed.
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15 November 2007
Must try harder
A
shake-up of schooling may miss those most in need of help
The Economist Nov 8th 2007
THE idea was first mooted in 1918, when an education act made provision for young people to stay in school until they turned 18. But young men, and teachers, were being sent off to fight, and the leaving age was raised from 12 to just 14. War again stymied bold moves in 1944, when the age was nudged up to 15. And in 1972 it was raised to just 16, teacher shortages and the baby boom this time the obstacles.
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30 October 2007
Making learning better: listening to pupil voice
www.teachingexpertise.com
Matthew Savage, assistant headteacher, George Mitchell Community School, and Dr Margaret Wood, senior lecturer, York St John University College, explore the role of student voice in evaluating and then improving the learning experience of students in the classroom.
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29 October 2007
School leads way in helping pupils find their voices
this is somerset.co.uk Oct 25th 2007
Students from all over the country have converged on Somervale School, Midsomer Norton, for a national conference.The National Education Trust (NET) conference - Turning Up The Volume On Student Voice - welcomed teachers and students from more than 20 schools for a day of workshops and sharing good practice.
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29 October 2007
What works in education: the lessons according to McKinsey
The Economist Oct 18th 2007
THE British government, says Sir Michael Barber, once an adviser to the former prime minister, Tony Blair, has changed pretty much every aspect of education policy in England and Wales, often more than once.
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26 October 2007
Geoff Barton: TES 19 October 2007
Lessons Ofsted should learn from reality TV
Autumn terms always begin in a spirit of optimism. Then something - bad weather, illness, a staffing crisis - kicks in, and things begin to unravel. That's one of the givens of the school year: as one linguistically challenged observer put it: "it's like deja vu all over again". Which leaves us here in the depths of autumn, clinging on grimly until half-term, when we can begin to regain our perspective.
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22 October 2007
David Willetts: The Sunday Times October 21, 2007
We must value education for itself, not just to get a job
Oscar Wilde’s definition of a cynic was someone who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. His epigram applies to the way we talk about education nowadays, focusing on what it can do for the economy.
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22 October 2007
Roger Waite and Jon Ungood-Thomas: The Sunday Times October 21, 2007
Millions wasted on worst schools
THE government has squandered hundreds of millions of pounds on initiatives at many of the country’s worst performing schools, according to a new report.
Teachers have been inundated with costly schemes, from leadership seminars and school federations to extra end-of-year tests for English and maths.
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15 October 2007
News release Friday 12 October 2007
Taking the Educational Temperature:
First Interim Report from The Primary Review
The independently-funded Primary Review, the biggest enquiry into English primary education for 40 years, has been collecting evidence since its launch one year ago and will publish its main report in late 2008. Meanwhile, interim reports like this will stimulate debate to feed back into the Review.
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Primary Review Briefings: Community Soundings
The Primary Review regional witness sessions
This briefing relates to the report on findings from the 87 witness sessions which comprised the Primary Review Community Soundings.
The Community Soundings were regionally-based one or two day events. Their aim was to discuss matters central to the Review's remit with those at the education system's point of delivery; to explore the relationship between school and community; to uncover key areas of consensus and divergence across both constituencies and venues; and to identify
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12 October 2007
End of a divided school system? Friday, 5 October 2007
ANALYSIS
By Mike Baker
Is there a major revolution stirring among England's independent schools?
Have they rediscovered their social conscience or are they just finding new ways to survive in cash-strapped times?
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19 September 2007
REAL DECISION MAKING? SCHOOL COUNCILS IN ACTION: DCFS Research brief
Geoff Whitty and Emma Wisby
Institute of Education, University of London
In the 2005 White Paper, Higher Standards, Better Schools for All, the government made a commitment to update guidance for schools on involving pupils in decision making, with particular reference to school
councils. This research, which included a review of the current literature, national surveys of pupils and
teachers and a series of school case studies, will inform the revised national guidance.
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30 August 2007
Anthea Lipsett Thursday July 26, 2007
EducationGuardian.co.uk
Teenagers should be forced to stay after school to take part in activities such as sports and drama clubs, the Institute for Public Policy Research said today.
The leftwing thinktank wants to see a legal extension to the school day so that every child is required to do at least an hour a week of after-school activities, rather than simply being offered the chance to do them.
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28 August 2007
The GCSE’s failure
Ministers’ trumpeting of ever higher overall exam results masks a scandalous record for English and maths says Chris Woodhead: Sunday August 26, 2007
Last year 45.8% of students achieved five A*-C grades including English and mathematics in the GCSE examination: 54.2% did not.
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24 August 2007
The results ritual
August exam results make for a very skewed picture, says Mike Baker: Tuesday August 21, 2007
We've made it through A-level results day; now stand by for some GCSE nonsense. As parents, students or teachers, how many times have these curious summer rituals interrupted your holidays? And why do we do it this way? It defies logic.
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18 July 2007
Be brave, Mr Brown, in the classroom
By Mary Riddell: Sunday July 15, 2007
When half of under-30s can't bleed a radiator it is time to turn practical with the curriculum and even, for some, scrap GCSEs
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18 July 2007
Counterblast: Academic-Vocational Apartheid
By Roy Blatchford
Historians often say that the one lesson of history is that we don't learn from
our history.
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18 July 2007
Are politicians bad for education?
By Mike Baker: 17 July 2007
Politicians won't admit that the public can be wrong, says Mike Baker
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18 July 2007
Fiddle around, win nothing. What does personalised learning actually mean?
By Philip Beadle: 17 July 2007
My Dad has a retort when overburdened, which I can recommend teachers employ at the moment exactly one second after a member of senior management asks a question beginning with the phrase, "Could you just ...?"
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15 July 2007
The old curriculum is dead; long live the new curriculum!
ANALYSIS
By Mike Baker
Yet, as the fanfare fades, how should we judge this new curriculum for England's secondary schools?
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2 July 2007
Speech by Lord Adonis: 25th June 2007
A generation ago we had a 20% education system. The top 20 per cent or so of teenagers gained good school leaving qualifications, with fewer than one in ten going on to higher education; the other 80 per cent left school with only a basic education and few qualifications, including a tail of more than one in ten embarking on adult life without even basic competence in literacy and numeracy.
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15 June 2007
Education and Skills Select Committee: Inquiry on Testing and Assessment
The GTC hopes that the Education and Skills Select Committee will, as a result of this inquiry, urge the Government to undertake a fundamental and urgent review of the testing and assessment regime in maintained schools.
England's pupils are among the most frequently tested in the world, but tests in themselves do not raise standards. Tests are used for too many purposes and this compromises their reliability and validity.
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6 June 2007
Joseph Rowntree Foundation: Schools, governors and disadvantage in England
School governors face major challenges in their work to ensure that the school is run effectively in a way that matches the local context. This study, by a team from the University of Manchester, investigates how English governors meet those challenges where they are most acute, in schools serving disadvantaged areas.
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1 June 2007 (November 26, 2006)
What It Takes to Make a Student by Paul Tough
On the morning of Oct. 5, President Bush and his education secretary, Margaret Spellings, paid a visit, along with camera crews from CNN and Fox News, to Friendship-Woodridge Elementary and Middle Campus, a charter public school in Washington. The president dropped in on two classrooms, where he asked the students, almost all of whom were African-American and poor, if they were planning to go to college.
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30 May 2007
On the Shoulders of Giants
Dr Nick Tate, one of NET's Leading Thinkers writes about St Bernard’s saying which has fascinated generations of thinkers.
The twelfth-century St Bernard of Chartres is quoted as saying that men and women of the present day are like dwarves sitting on the shoulders of giants. Our ability to see and understand the world depends on the achievements of those who have gone before us.
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22 May 2007
Improving Social Mobility: The Next Ten Years
National Education Trust welcomes Alan Johnson's stated intentions to 'close the achievement gap' in line with NET's core mission.
I want to focus my remarks today on the issue of social mobility. I am enormously proud to be a member of a Labour Government which has, in the last ten years, lifted 600,000 children out of poverty. With 2.5 million more people now in work; long term youth unemployment virtually eradicated, Britain today is a much more prosperous and fairer place than it was ten or twenty years ago.
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21 May 2007
Might Brown be Diplomas champion?
If ever there was an opportunity for the putative prime minister to make a mark on education, this is it. Mike Baker,one of NET's Trustees, gives his opinion in the Analysis section of the BBC web site.
When he decides to call a general election, Gordon Brown will need to have achieved two things: proved he is different from Tony Blair and put some clear blue water between himself and David Cameron.
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16 May 2007
Carry on reforming, just cool it a bit
As Tony Blair packs his satchel, many in education can't wait to see him go, writes Mike Baker one of NET's Trustees.
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16 May 2007
Valuing, through Values Education, as a basis of good educational practice by Dr Neil Hawkes
(Dr Neil Hawkes is one of NET's Leading Thinkers and can be contacted via the Trust.)
Values Education is a way of conceptualising education that places the search for meaning and purpose at the heart of the educational process. It recognises that the recognition, worth and integrity of all involved in the life and work of the school, are central to the creation of a values-based learning community that fosters positive relationships and quality in education.
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14 May 2007
The Double Helix of Values Education and Quality Teaching by Terry Lovat and Ron Toomey
In 2005, as part of its Values Education Partnerships Project with key stakeholder groups, the Department of Education, Science and Training commissioned the Australian Council of Deans of Education to undertake research about any relationships between values education and quality teaching. The research took the form of a set of internationally benchmarked case studies.
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30 April 2007
Downsizing - The Small School Movement by Iain Hall
(Sir Iain Hall is one of NET's Leading Thinkers and can be contacted via the Trust.)
In 1992, William Fowler said, "There is a natural predilection in American education toward enormity, and it does not serve schools well." More recently, Rotherham (1999) argued that "Smaller, more autonomous, flexible, and accountable schools should characterize education in the next century"
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04 April 2007
Thinking ahead - by Howard Gardner
In his new book, Howard Gardner argues that to survive the demands of tomorrow’s world we must develop five ways of thinking, or five ‘minds’.
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