Posts Tagged children
Academies for 2000 pupils: the DfES’s own school choice
Posted by Nick Cowen in Education on 09/05/2007
The Sunday Times reports that the new Thomas Deacon Academy has not found room for building a playground amongst its (mostly taxpayer) £46.4 million funding. Justifying this move is the claim that all the pupils of this school will be so enthused by the curriculum that they will not require playtime in which to let off steam (a situation that one teacher blogger considers to be without precedent). The project manager of the academy even makes the further claim that removing all unsupervised time from the school day will prevent bullying. True in the same way that stomach stapling can be pretty effective at tackling obesity.
Looking at the school on Peterborough’s official website, the situation doesn’t appear quite as horrendous as the Times article implies. There is indeed no playground but a combination of grass and artificial pitches are there for structured sports activities (more than many schools can offer) and in the not unlikely event of this no-playtime policy falling flat on its face, these areas could probably be used to kick a football around.
We’re Nearly All Infants Now
Posted by Nick Cowen in Civil Liberty, Education on 18/04/2007
The new Educational Conscription blog is chronicling the burgeoning opposition to government proposals to extend compulsory education up to the age of 18. The big shift in policy is not the increased availability of further education to young people, a long held and frequently frustrated government aspiration. Instead, it is the use of coercion, with the threat of sanction, to ensure young people comply with these objectives. Fearing that the value of their educational initiatives won’t be evident, the government wants to give young people an offer they can’t refuse. Hence, the correct approach is to examine this as a civil liberties issue – not as just another initiative in the myriads of education reforms.
How egalitarian social policy has failed working class children
Posted by James Gubb in Social Security on 16/04/2007
Britain’s children are the unhappiest in the developed world says UNICEF in its recent report, An Overview of Child Well-being in Rich Countries. Britain came bottom not only in Subjective Well-being but also in Family and Peer Relationships and in Behaviours and Risks. United Nations research findings should generally be treated with some scepticism. Nevertheless I think we all know that there is at least a kernel of truth in this report, writes Graham Cunningham.