Strike
This man just doesn’t garner trust.
The head teacher’s gave him a vote of no confidence.
Headteachers pass vote of no confidence in education policies
Union delegates declare that Michael Gove's policies are not in the best interests of children, parents or schools
Guardian 18th May 2013
The Head of Magdalen College talks about
‘the long interfering arm and dead restraining hand’
and lack of ‘love’
Love has disappeared from state education, says private school leader
Tim Hands attacks obsession with school league tables and 'dead restraining hand' of government
Richard Adams Guardian 30/09/2013
Carol Ann Duffy and 200 others condemn education policy
Letter from authors and academics singles out increased focus on testing as damaging to children
Guardian 01/10/2013
Which wan’t the first time a group of a group of academics had the temerity to say he might be on the wrong track.
a letter published in the Independent, signed by 100 eminent academics and teachers, which is acutely critical of the proposed educational reforms. Referring to a recent CBI report (not known as a hotbed of Marxism), it notes the "need to end the culture of micro-management" in schools and (citing the Cambridge Primary Review) the propensity to value memorisation and recall over understanding and inquiry. The driver for Gove appears to be the PISA international tests where the UK is slipping in performance. Setting aside the debate about the true validity of this particular league table, the 100 academics make for me an unanswerable argument: "Schools in high-achieving Finland, Massachusetts and Alberta emphasise cognitive development, critical understanding and creativity, not rote learning."
Gove's Daily Mail column confirms he doesn't understand how learning works
Standards and rigour are not at odds with an education that values creative thinking, writes Tricia Kelleher
Guardian - Tricia Kelleher 09/04/2013
and now
Not prepared to discuss anything with the NUT or NASUWT.
and
so
Teachers strike born of anger and frustration, says NASUWT - video
How is it one man can cause so much anger?
Why is he allowed to do it?
Certainly from a Primary point of view it has felt we have been in limbo for the last five years.
Some thoughtful people at the Cambridge Primary Review had designed an interesting curriculum fit for the twenty first century.
But the previous incumbents couldn’t quite accept the need for that degree of change.
Conservatives being of ‘right mind’ are even less likely to see the need for a radical change.
All we are left with is Rigour. In the form of 100% pass rate at level 4 ( although the current government is going to make every school decide what a level 4 is and give no indication how schools can achieve it.) 40% level 5 ( ditto) and probably 30% level 6. Although this remains to be seen because at the same time they are taking lots of yr7 objectives and dropping them into yr6 and thus pushing everything else down into earlier years, although they call it up.
(Don’t you just love decomposition in Yr3.)
This is only for English and Maths, which one suspects could well be the Primary Curriculum very soon.
+
Of course the statutory 2hrs of PE and of course Computing.
And
Intervention, Intervention, Intervention
for this who are not managing all this.
Thus we have a curriculum of Reading, Riting and Rithmatic in Primary Schools for the 21st Century .
Heh Ho!
Still we keepp battling on and hope that eventually we will have an education secretary
who has a brighter vision for Pirmary Education.
Which leads to the people who wrote the Cambridge Primary Review again.
Eight priorities to improve primary education
In a recent speech, Cambridge Primary Review Trust chair,
Robin Alexander set out eight priorities for primary education. Do you share this vision?
Guardian - Robin Alexander 04/10/ 2013