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
Education Philosophy, Events, Exams, HE, In The News, Labour, Policy, Politics, Schools, Teaching
Tuesday, March 27th, 2012
For those who think Gove or any other politician is the answer to our educational problems (whatever they may be), perhaps excerpts from the text of the speech by Prime Minister James Callaghan, at a foundation stone-laying ceremony at Ruskin College, Oxford, on October. 18 1976 will make you think again. The speech proved to [...]
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, MetLife, Ofsted, PISA, Standards, Working Conditions
Thursday, March 15th, 2012
While in the UK OFSTASI’s Wilshaw spouts further drivel about declining literacy standards, across the pond in the US a very illuminating survey of teachers has attracted a lot of recent attention, not least because it shows just how dissatisfied teachers currently are. The MetLife Survey of the American Teacher: Teachers, Parents and the Economy [...]
Posted by Editors
Andreas Schleicher, Events, In The News, OECD, Politics, Teacher Bashing
Wednesday, March 14th, 2012
For those of you who don’t know, the ISTP – 2012 International Summit of the Teaching Profession is being held today and tomorrow in NYC, USA. Our initial reaction to these events is always that they are a good opportunity to see the world, have a few dinners at taxpayer expense and pontificate on matters [...]
Posted by Editors
In The News, League Tables, Politics, Standards, Teacher Bashing
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
The BBC reports today that Labour education spokesman Stephen Twigg has called for the creation of an independent office to raise standards in education in England. On so many grounds this is a mistake. We have written at length about standards in the past but it is clear that Time Warp Twigg, new to the [...]
Posted by TLC Education
Education Business, In The News, Schools, Teaching
Tuesday, July 26th, 2011
Five East Anglia schools form tutoring partnerships with TLC Education Group TLC Education Group, the specialist maths and English tutoring provider, today announces five partnerships with schools across East Anglia. The Samuel Ward Academy and Wymondham High School in Suffolk, Coleridge Community College and Parkside Community College in Cambridge, and the Open Academy in Norwich, [...]
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, 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
CfBT, In The News, Media Watch, Research, Teacher Bashing
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011
The BBC article on the latest research by the CfBT Education Trust would make you think that UK teachers are hopeless at maths. “England’s trainee teachers do worse in mathematical tests than their peers in some major economic competitors, a study suggests. Teacher trainees in schools in Japan, China and Russia, easily outperformed those from [...]
