Posted by Editors In The News, Research, Secondary Education, Tories Thursday, March 17th, 2011
Yet more creative reading of official statistics by a UK government minister. More than 79,000 children missed out on a place at their first-choice secondary school for this September, apparently. However, Nick Gibb Minister for Schools seems to think that this means, ” there simply aren’t enough good schools.” No it doesn’t, Nick. The figures [...]
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, League Tables, Research, Standards, Teacher Bashing Sunday, March 13th, 2011
Yesterday’s announcement of yet more tinkering with the magical world of teaching standards was accompanied by words of support from this season’s Yes Men and Women and some Rumsfeldesque comments by the Gove-nor himself. “Headteachers and teachers have told me in no uncertain terms that the current teachers’ standards are ineffective, meaningless and muddy, fluffy [...]
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 [...]
Posted by Editors Education Business, Education Reform, In The News, Research, Secondary Education Sunday, December 5th, 2010
In Monty Pyhton’s Life of Brian a hapless Brian is caught graffitiing ‘Romans Go Home’ and subjected to an impromptu lesson in the finer points of Latin grammar by a burly centurion played by John Cleese: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbI-fDzUJXI[/youtube] Apart from being very funny, ‘Romans go Home’ very nicely illustrates what Latin meant to the grammar-educated Monty [...]
Posted by Editors In The News, Media Watch, Ofsted, Politics, Research Wednesday, November 24th, 2010
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What’s not to love about OFSTED’s Christine Gilbert. The White Paper on Education is upon us and no better way to keep the inspectors in business than to tell everyone how bad everything is. What a load of nonsense. The only thing that’s really wrong with the UK’s education system – as we have said [...]
Posted by Editors Education Business, In The News, Research, Teach First Tuesday, November 16th, 2010
Beeb education journos are again showing a true lack of ability when it comes to appraising ‘research’. Perhaps it isn’t their job to check the quality of research but they wouldn’t write about a medical research paper based on bad research so why is education research any different. This time the Beeb tell us that [...]
Posted by Editors In The News, Media Watch, Ofsted, Primary Education, Research Sunday, November 14th, 2010
“Ofsted inspectors say literacy standards ‘fall short’”, the Beeb reports. This simply isn’t true. What has really fallen short are literacy test scores not literacy standards. OfSTED are confusing scores with literacy levels. A child that does badly on a test isn’t necessarily lacking in literacy. They are just unable to score high enough on [...]
Posted by Editors In The News, Media Watch, Politics, Research Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010
According to various news organisation, school league tables do actually make a positive difference to ‘performance’. The research has been produced by the very uneducational Centre for Market and Public Organisation (CMPO). They conducted a longitudinal study of Welsh kids to see if, after the Welsh assembly abolished tables back in 2001, things got better [...]
Posted by Editors Education Reform, In The News, Ofsted, Research Thursday, May 13th, 2010
It has come to our attention that the outdated and counterproductive managerialism found in schools shows no sign of crawling back under the rock that it came from. This dogmatic and wholly unedifying way to treat fellow human beings is at the heart of the peculiarly sickening manner in which ‘efficiencies’ are made in education. [...]
