Posts Tagged pupils
Needs attention
Posted by Anastasia de Waal in Education on 08/05/2009
Two depressing findings came out about schools this week. The first is that the number of children on free school meals has risen since last year. The second is that one in five children are now on the special educational needs (SEN) register.
Not exactly a cultural revolution
Posted by Nick Cowen in Education on 13/02/2008
School children are to be mandated 5 hours of ‘culture’ a week by the latest government initiative. This hour-per-school-day prescription seems to be the government’s answer to every education issue, as it defines more and more of every state school schedule through Whitehall guidance. This follows on from the five hours of mandated sport a week designed, in part, to tackle obesity. Bureaucrats should be careful not to overdo this wheeze. After all, secondary schools still have to cope with teaching maths and English to pupils who didn’t manage to pick up those basic skills during their …err… compulsory numeracy and literacy hours at primary school!
Combien d’étudiants qui ont appris le français jusqu’à GCSE savent écrire cette phrase?
Posted by Nick Cowen in Education on 23/08/2007
In the wake of the annual controversy sparked by inflated A-level results, real evidence has emerged that GCSEs are similarly suffering a crisis of quality – writes Thomas Woods. Writing in today’s Telegraph newspaper, a languages examiner has revealed the existence of a co-ordinated system of ‘teaching to the test’. In the French Oral section pupils are at liberty to memorise a string of answers which they are assured will be required in the exam. The writing section (which is now 100 per cent coursework) involves students reeling off identical essays using ‘writing frames’ already set out for them by the teachers. Token attempts at variation are provided with the individuals’ choice of holiday and weekend activity.
Question 1: complete this cheque to pay the interest on your credit card
Posted by Nick Cowen in Education on 12/07/2007
It will take some time to unpick the latest additions and subtractions of the National Curriculum. But the main theme this round seems to be lowering children’s horizons. More compulsory elements of the History Curriculum have been axed, reduced down to essentials like the Glorious Revolution in order to tie into the requirement for pupils to understand the relationship between the Monarchy and Parliament. These reductions have been smuggled in under the guise of greater ‘flexibility’. If this were true, it would be admirable: allow teachers and schools to use their professional expertise to design a course that they think works for each class.
But there won’t be much opportunity for this while the school has to teach pupils how to open a bank account or how to calculate the size of their ‘carbon footprint’. If you want a vision of our children’s future, imagine trips to the Roman ruins at Cirencester cancelled so that the whole class can be shown the wonders of the local bank. Or instead of a trip to a local university to see the latest super-computer or MRI scanner in action, the local dump to spot how much rubbish their parents are failing to recycle!
See our report, The Corruption of the Curriculum (previewable on Amazon) to understand how we got here.