Posted by Editors
Education Business, In The News, Labour, OECD, PISA, Teach First, Teaching
Monday, May 14th, 2012
The BBC report that the UK Shadow (in the broadest sense of the term) Secretary for Education, Stephen Twigg, believes “England’s schools should learn from Japan”. He obviously hasn’t been reading the Economist recently. “THE yells of children pierce the night, belting out the elements—“Lithium! Magnesium!”—as an instructor displays abbreviations from the periodic table. Next, [...]
Posted by Editors
In The News, Philanthropy, Teach First
Monday, April 16th, 2012
With all the talk of charity donations in the UK being hit hard by Tory attempts to clamp down on tax avoidance, we’ve been wondering how we could help education charities like TeachFirst to weather the coming storm. One potential way that sprang to mind was by curbing the handsome amounts TeachFirst executives are currently [...]
Posted by Editors
Academies, ASCL, Education Business, Events, Free Schools, In The News, League Tables, Managerialism, Ofsted, Standards, Teach First, Teacher Bashing, Testing, Tories, Working Conditions
Tuesday, March 27th, 2012
Michael Gove, UK Ed Sec, spoke at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) conference on the the 24 March 2012 so we thought we’d run through the justifications he could come up with for alienating both teachers and headteachers with his needless reforms. There was a defence of free schools and academies. There [...]
Posted by Editors
In The News, Teach First, Teaching, Tories
Sunday, July 3rd, 2011
When you consider how desperate times apparently are in the UK, it would help that those with a democratic mandate were talking to each other. Last week, Ian Duncan Smith urged the recruitment of British workers, a few weeks before that Michael “The Governor” Gove decided to relax the rules regulating the employment of overseas-trained [...]
Posted by Editors
In The News, Ofsted, Teach First, Teach for America
Sunday, June 19th, 2011
The recent publication of OFSTED data on those schools causing concern in April 2011 has given us another chance to assess Teach First’s claim that they are addressing educational disadvantage. In England and Wales there are 322 Schools in Special Measures and 252 Teach First participating schools, of which only 5 (2%) are on OFSTED’s [...]
Posted by Editors
In The News, Management Consultants, Teach First, Teach for America, UFT, Working Conditions
Monday, May 30th, 2011
A very revealing story regarding the employment practices of Teach For America has emerged Stateside that has worrying implications for Teach First and other Teach For All organisation recruits. In a New York Daily News article‘Amid threat of layoffs, city is recruiting 500 new teachers for next fall‘ we are told that ‘even as the [...]
Posted by Editors
Free Schools, In The News, Teach First, UFT
Saturday, May 28th, 2011
A May 18th lawsuit organised by teaching union UFT and the NAACP against school charterisation in NYC has been likened to the battle against racial segregation in schools witnessed at Little Rock, Arkansas in the 1950s and seen also as symptomatic of a worrying new phase in middle class flight. In language all too familiar [...]
Posted by Editors
In The News, Teach First
Saturday, May 28th, 2011
Sad to see that undertrained and inexperienced Teach First ambassadors are being sought for advanced teaching posts in the UK. “Location: South East jobs Salary: £26000 to £40000 per annum Date posted: 27/05/2011 18:22 Job type: Permanent Company: Michael Page Education Contact: Dominique Bennett Ref: Totaljobs/MPTJ13152007 Job ID: 50708634 A Teach First Teacher/ AST Teacher [...]
Posted by Editors
Education Business, In The News, Management Consultants, Managerialism, Teach First
Thursday, May 26th, 2011
With UK Education Secretary Gove’s approval rating among teachers on a par with that of Col. Gaddafi among Libyan rebels, it is eyebrow-raising to say the least that he aims to push through reforms that would see teachers from Oz, NZ and other select countries being allowed to teach in the UK without undergoing retraining [...]
Posted by Editors
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CfBT, In The News, Philanthropy, Private Schools, Teach First
Monday, May 23rd, 2011
We cheered when reading that the UK’s Charity Tribunal is about to pass judgement on the status of the 1200 or so independent fee-paying schools that still believe they warrant some kind of discount for teaching the rich. Of course the schools PR organisation – the ISC – and their supporters are trying their best [...]
