Having read the reaction to the Commons Education Select Committee’s report I must agree that there is prejudice and discrimination built into the education system. It wrongly values academic ability above vocational ability. Our priority in education must be to provide an education that fits each child’s needs and their particular strengths and abilities. The ‘one size fits…
Australia and Scotland might be in different hemispheres but when it comes to education they are on the same plane. In 2010 both nations introduced new curriculums that were heavily influenced by progressive thinking. Oddly for school curriculums, ‘knowledge’ was downgraded as an ambition and was instead replaced by a more generic approach. There was…
In response to a Telegraph article on the announcement by the Department for Education on this year’s exams (you can read the PDF of the article here), is that you can only have one or the other. It seems there is going to be a ‘free for all’. Slimmed-down but compulsory exams offer a way…
One effect of the pandemic not yet wholly appreciated is the way it has exposed the weakness in assessing children’s progress at primary school level. A dramatic shake-up of the SATs system around four years ago has left educators and parents unaware of exactly how children in this age range are faring. Before the changes,…
When Tony Blair came to power in 1997, he famously said that his government’s priority would be ‘education, education, education.’ But what kind of education did he mean? The answer was simple: a university education. His target was to send half the nation’s students to university – and it’s been achieved. But what did Tony…