Civitas Blog

The idea of poetry being taught in our primary schools may come as a surprise to some. How would poetry fit into Ofsted’s tick boxes, after all, how would it be tested in the Sats? Actually very well - the way that the government has stipulated it be taught.

Last weekend saw the EU-Africa summit held in Lisbon amid much controversy. Africa’s leaders came to Europe for a brief political safari, but one of the EU’s very own ‘Big Five’ game animals was to elude them. As promised Brown did not attend, apparently to avoid a “media circus” which would have distracted from attempts to negotiate trading relations, to the benefit of all EU and African nations. “Media Circus” avoided. Well, almost...

Yesterday at the Old Bailey, three young men, Sodrul Islam, Delwar Hussain and Mamoon Hussain, were convicted of the attempted murder of a thirty-one year old fourth man, John Payne. The attempted murder took place in April 2006 on the Clichy estate in Stepney in London’s Tower Hamlets.

continued on the Centre for Social Cohesion blog.

Yesterday Ed Balls, the secretary of state for children, schools and families, unveiled the government’s plan to make Britain "the best place in the world for our children to grow up in" - writes Claire Daley and Nick Cowen.The so-called “Children’s plan” aims to tackle crucial education and social issues facing children today in the light of recent critical reports by Unicef, which have sparked concern over the state of British childhood.

The government has faced criticism for generating policy which “lacks vision”, so the question is, could the new proposals really revolutionise the British childhood (as Balls has pledged), or it is simply a new excuse to flood teachers’ desks with directives and undefined reviews?

In March this year, 48% of patients recalled being offered a choice of hospital for their first outpatient appointment. Since then, in every survey the DH has conducted, this figure has fallen. In the latest survey – conducted in July – it stands at just 43%. This really is quite a feat - though not a very impressive one.

This week the government announced its “Ten Year Plan”. The positive about the plan was that the government recognises that there are severe problems in the education system, particularly in the primary sector. The negative however, is that too many of their solutions critically miss the point. For example, testing. Balls indicated that he took on board some of the criticism of testing in schools; however he made clear that he perceives the issue to be testing young children. The real issue is the politicisation of testing.

The EU has announced a European “reflection group” that will be active from next year to “review the EU’s long term future”. The nine member group is to be led by Felipe González (Spanish Prime Minister 1982-1996), with the former President of Latvia and President of the Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia, acting as joint Deputy Chairmen.

It seems the “wise men”, as they have been labelled, have already lost their way and are causing divisions and controversy before even getting to present their gifts.

Was it Ted Cantle? John Denham? Charles Clarke? Hazel Blears?

Wrong, if you thought that it was any of these.

According to John Stuart Mill, and I have not come across anything to contradict his claim, it was Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

continued on the Centre for Social Cohesion blog.

Our recently published children’s reading and writing course, The Butterfly Book by Irina Tyk, has become a hit in the run up to Christmas. In the wake of one Daily Mail report, the office telephones have been positively buzzing with calls from parents (and grandparents) eager to offer the gift of literacy to young members of their family. We have reported before on the efficacy of books like the Butterfly Book. Simplicity is at the heart of this successful method. It is called ‘synthetic phonics’ although that is just a new name for a traditional method that has long been used to teach children to read. All it involves is teaching the correspondence between the 44 sounds of the English language and the 26 letters of the alphabet. One course is enough to teach the vast majority of the underlying principles of our language, giving children a toolkit of skills that allow them to unlock literature for themselves.

Brown’s belated signing of the Lisbon Treaty has been documented well enough and there’s not much I could add to the chorus of criticism that surrounds his doing so without granting what everyone wants for Christmas - a referendum. This despite earlier that very same day having declared to the House of Commons that ‘you cannot make decisions and assume that people will simply follow them. Most decisions can only be successful if people are part of the process!’ What was of more interest was the following end-of-year summit in Brussels and another opportunity for those at the heart of the EU to indulge themselves in some hollow posturing…

This week we were told that the diploma for sixth-formers, the Advanced Diploma, to be introduced next year, will be worth 3.5 A-levels in the league tables. The Higher Diploma, taken at Key Stage 4, is to be worth seven A*-C GCSEs – an equivalence which the Times Education Supplement (TES) gently points out that is ‘…on the high side’. The same could be said of the Advanced one.