Noise
Children are noisy. This is something people often don’t appreciate if they don’t work in schools, as can be seen by the recurring experiments with “open plan classrooms” that seem to happen every few years. Before I became a teacher,…
Children are noisy. This is something people often don’t appreciate if they don’t work in schools, as can be seen by the recurring experiments with “open plan classrooms” that seem to happen every few years. Before I became a teacher,…
I first joined the NUT (National Union Of Teachers) back in 2001 as a PGCE student. It is now part of the NEU (National Education Union). This year, I finally resigned my membership. I think being in a trade union…
Earlier this week there was a school shaming focused on the rules one school was introducing for managing behaviour in corridors during transitions. A large number of people, many of whom have never worked in a secondary school, used an…
Just a quick post here, but something on Twitter reminded me of another problem I’d talked about when the College of Teaching was proposed. Back when discussions were underway about the Chartered College Of Teaching, one thing I argued for…
This is a follow up to this post, and is the second of three posts about attempts to silence educational traditionalists online. In the last year or two, I have seen an apparent rise in the use of legal threats…
Teacher Tapp is an app that surveys teachers every day. While those who answer are self-selecting so it is probably not completely reflective of all teachers, it’s probably going to be biased towards the more informed teacher, rather than the…
Yesterday I blogged about the background to the issue of teacher autonomy and the dilemma facing traditionalists who, when progressives were in control, argued for autonomy, but now see it used to justify bad practice. Although I still tend to…
When I first started blogging, and for several years afterwards, teachers were being forced to teach in a way that, if you were familiar with the history of educational thought, could only be described as “progressive”. Skills were more important…
Three weeks ago a couple of people (who I would call “trolls”, but who would no doubt see themselves as perfectly justified in all the abuse they’ve posted over the years) started sharing my blogposts from 8 or 9 years…
Yesterday I wrote about what I think makes some subjects “academic” and other subjects, while still worthwhile, not academic. The discussion on Twitter immediately afterwards was particularly helpful in helping me reconsider some points and defend others (although by now…
Back in July 2015 I wrote this post and this post about arguments that were being used more and more by progressives, as their traditional arguments of “it’s what the government/OFSTED tell us to do” and “it’s what the research…
Last week there were stories in the press about a school that enforced its uniform policy (yes, that really was considered newsworthy). Much of the response resembled “school shaming” which I wrote about in this series of posts in the…
The College of Teaching popped up again today on social media. I have blogged about this very many times. There has been a prolonged attempt by the education establishment to create a new professional body for teachers, following Michael Gove’s…
Apologies for getting a bit behind with these. In May, Schools Week published my review of the best blogs of the week. Purple praise: a spoon full of sugar helps the marking go down By @Xris32 We all know that praise in…
I have been writing a series of posts about schools being publicly ‘shamed’ in the press and on social media. The Daily Mail is still shaming schools Don’t Twitter shame a school and call it a debate What’s it like for a…
I have been writing a series of posts about schools being publicly ‘shamed’ in the press and on social media. The Daily Mail is still shaming schools Don’t Twitter shame a school and call it a debate What’s it like for a…
I’ve written a couple of posts recently about how schools can be “shamed” in the press (usually the Daily Mail) and on social media. Here, I’m going to show what that is like. I’m not going to name the school…
Yesterday I wrote about the Daily Mail’s shaming of schools. The stories generally consist of a parent’s complaint about a school, in which the parent describes what the school did, with insufficient attempts to confirm whether it is accurate or…
Back in January, 2015 I wrote a blogpost about the Daily Mail’s hypocrisy in shaming schools for enforcing their rules. While noticing that they often run stories complaining about a lack of discipline in schools, I observed: …they also frequently…
Continued from yesterday As discussed in the previous two posts, there is every reason to doubt the existence of a general “mental health crisis” in children in the UK. However, here I want to ask whether if we were to…