Charlie McCarthy looks at how British children compare to children abroad in the education system; improvement in English and Maths is taken as a green light by the government for their policies. But the OECD study is being challenged and reporting for PISA ought to be more transparent.
Sapphire Boast looks at the way the English education system is white-washed with male, white authors. Her love for literature has prompted her to challenge the English literature canon and push for more inclusive reading lists.
Charlie McCarthy considers the alternative to A-Levels. A more practical, applied and vocational course called ‘T-Levels’ are growing increasingly popular. But how much do people know about them and are they valued as highly as A-Levels?
The Festival of Debate 2021, is starting in a few weeks. Its purpose? To increase political discourse, encourage local voices to speak up, and come up with solutions to the most pressing issues in society right now. All events are free and welcome to anyone interested.
Jack Blythe draws to light the phenomena of ‘the blob’, or in Gove’s head, ‘Marxist teachers’. It has been revealed that bloggers have had significant influence over the Department for Education. Populism within policy is a dangerous path.
With the UK officially removed from the EU’s Erasmus Plus scheme, Prof. Juliet Lodge asks whether these benefits are gone for good. With Erasmus Plus lost, can the UK truly remain the educational powerhouse that it once was, and will our soft power be forever diminished?
Dr Hywel Ceri Jones, one of the founders of the Erasmus scheme, shows why Erasmus’ replacement, Turing, is not up to scratch. With less generous provisions and less support for the less well-off, Turing is not as good as Erasmus.
Pam Jarvis brings to light the impact of the pandemic on young people’s mental health and their education. She suggests that the ‘Reggio Emilia’ is one that we could learn from.
Are schools delivering the skills and the social mobility we need for a successful post-pandemic, post-Brexit economy?
Andy Brown breaks down the problems with the Chancellor, looking at its impact on care, education, waste management, and the government’s use of back room deals, cheap tricks, and pork barrel politics.
Emily Horner explains the purpose of the new wellbeing support service for teachers in Bradford. They are facing mounting pressures from the pandemic and the service aims to provide advice and reassurance to those who need it.
Charlie McCarthy looks at the reality of opening schools, with personal testimony from a teenager affected and professional evidence from the scientific community, to show just how how difficult both home schooling and reopening schools are.
Charlie McCarthy explains Boris Johnson’s anticipated ‘big bang’ method of allowing children to return to school. He lays out the concerns from scientists and some school staff that he is rushing the process, perhaps risking an increase of the R number.
Education specialist Sheila Smith denounces the mistake of unnecessarily leaving the Erasmus+ scheme after Brexit. “From the little we know so far, Turing focuses only on higher education. It shows a poor understanding of the years of quality, rigour and development behind Erasmus+.”
Emily Horner draws attention to the study in Bradford schools, which found a strong link between children’s performance during their early years’ education and a later diagnosis with autism. Delayed autism diagnosis can lead to later problems in life.
The all-party group on coronavirus heard evidence from experts and families in relation to the impact of covid and covid policies on children. In particular, at what level children are likely to infect other people and whether schools are a major vector for infection spreading between communities.
Amy Day looks into how the education secretary’s failings are leading to a confused educational environment for real children. “On the one hand, children are expected to dismantle the English language down into its most basic and technical components. On the other hand, they’re treated as being entirely ignorant of even everyday processes.”
Oliver Lawrie looks at how our lack of knowledge of other languages will impede us in the post-Brexit world. “Fewer than 3,000 students sat A-level German in 2018. That’s about 5 percent of the number of people who would attend one average football match in the UK.”
University of Leeds student Annabelle Levins looks at how students have been let down by both the government and their universities during the pandemic.
Education specialist Dr Pam Jarvis looks at how a strict view of education is letting down children during the pandemic. With civil servants enforcing traditional methods of teaching in this period, Pam reflects that we need a broader view of how to teach.
Former MEP Michael Hindley discusses how we can stay close to Europe: “the way back to the EU will be facilitated by maintaining and even furthering such initiatives. Labour needs to explore which EU projects are still open to the UK’s participation.”
The education secretary Gavin Williamson has surpassed even Chris Grayling for consistently failing in his latest Cabinet position. His detrimental influence on a whole generation looks set to be complete. Yet he seems untouchable. Why?
Juliet Lodge looks at what the UK education sector will lose from abandoning the Erasmus scheme and replacing it with the Turing programme. “Alan Turing, after whom the government’s scheme has been named, would probably not have approved of this act of what Nicola Sturgeon calls educational vandalism.”
Dr Pam Jarvis summarises the anger within our schools over the government’s chaotic response to the pandemic. Many schools are now shut for Christmas, having just been told they’ll be responsible for delivering testing to schoolchildren in the new year. And this follows months of poor and inconsistent advice.
Dame Rachel De Souza has been a controversial character in the education world, since hitting the national press in an argument over whether she had received advance notice of OFSTED inspections. She has also been in the public eye over the behaviour policies, staff management policies and ‘strategic’ exclusions (particularly with respect to special needs) that operated within the schools that she oversaw as chief executive at Inspiration Trust, and for her close links with the Conservative Party.
Bowling Park School in Bradford has a storyteller in residence. It seems that the school is ahead of the curve as the science, education and business worlds are talking about the benefits and potential of storytelling, many more are putting it into practice.
So, according to the popular media, England’s children have forgotten to eat with a knife and fork and have regressed into nappies during lockdown. These were apparently the most important findings made in a series of reports by the government schools inspection body OFSTED, according to a range of news outlets. But beyond the clickbait, […]
The good news is FOUR TRUMP-FREE YEARS. The American people have rejected Trump and all he stands for by a majority of four million in a record turnout. That is a huge defeat for the far right.
In a week that has been packed with outrage against the Johnson government, it might have been easy to miss the fact that not only have they voted against providing food for deprived children during the half term holiday, despite claiming heavily on subsistence expenses for themselves, they also backtracked on a promise to provide […]
‘Billy’ was something of a school treasure, but when I was in his history class in the fifties, he was well past his best. He had gone straight from his school’s sixth form in Bradford to serve on the Western Front and was badly gassed: an experience that left him with a permanent, persistent cough. […]