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 [...]
Posted by Editors In The News, Teach First, Teach for America, Teach for Australia, Unions Wednesday, April 27th, 2011
More predictable news from the US involving the redundancy of employed teachers to make way for new Teach for America recruits. In what is seen as a very deliberate attempt to undermine the teaching unions, the Kansas City School District have told over half of 200 teachers without tenure that their contracts won’t be renewed. [...]
Posted by Editors Academies, CfBT, Free Schools, In The News, Special Schools, Teach First, Tories Wednesday, April 27th, 2011
We have already written at some length about the new philanthropic organisations that appear to be doing the UK Tories’ dirty work and also the rather creative interpretation of UK charity commission guidelines that permit organisations like Teach First to operate as charities. CfBT Education Trust is another on-message charity. They claim to “provide education [...]
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 [...]
Posted by Editors Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, In The News, Managerialism, Research Wednesday, March 16th, 2011
Illuminating article and video interview with Joanne Barkan of Dissent magazine about about the lack of democratic accountability, business ideology and questionable science that characterises philanthropic interference in US and increasingly, UK education.
Posted by Editors In The News, McKinsey & Co., Michael Barber, Teach First, Tories Wednesday, March 16th, 2011
The news that three senior McKinsey & Co consultants are in the dock for the US’s most serious insider trading scandal in generations makes us wonder if this consultancy firm is really the right one to lead UK education policy. Prosecutors allege that a billionaire hedge fund founder, Raj Rajaratnam, was given tips about McKinsey [...]
Posted by Editors In The News, McKinsey & Co., Primary Education, Teach First Wednesday, March 9th, 2011
Good to see that the ‘charity’ known as Teach First is hard at work. Now that they’ve got their claws into primary school kids they’re obviously not going to waste any opportunity to spread their message of bringing joy and light into the lives of the poor. The occasion as part of Teach First PR [...]
Posted by Editors Academies, ARK, In The News, McKinsey & Co., Michael Barber, Ofsted, Tories Monday, February 28th, 2011
Private Eye report that Sally Morgan, new Ofsted honcho, and adviser to school privatisation champions, ARK, will work only 2 days but be paid £45K pa. Aside from the fact that no-one is worth that much for a couple of days work, it also means that the head of the schools inspection body gets to [...]
Posted by Editors Free Schools, In The News, McKinsey & Co., Michael Barber, NUT, Research, Teach First, Tories, Working Conditions Saturday, February 26th, 2011
This was going to be a post about the Tory White Paper. We took a look at it but what really caught our eye was how many times Sir Michael Barber got a mention. In fact, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Barber was Education Secretary given the amount of space devoted to his work [...]
