Round and Round and Back Again

When I was a lot younger and more radical than I am now, a friend in the Labour Party explained to me why she was reluctant to get involved with the more hard-left groups thusly: “The trouble with revolutions is that you go in a great big circle and wind up back where you started”. This certainly seems true of ‘revolutions’ in education.

Rehabilitation of Offenders

An item in the Metro has prompted some thoughts on the position of ex-offenders in education and elsewhere. The item, which does not appear to be on-line, was to my mind a bit scare-mongering since it mentioned pedophiles, someone with a conviction of assaulting a child and another with a conviction for causing death by reckless driving were seeking to work with children.

Duking The Stats 3: Arbitrary Rewards

I was at an INSET recently about behaviour and behaviour policies. It was … interesting.

The Political Baccalaureate

Is the ‘English Baccalaureate’ anything other than a stick for Michael Gove and the rest of the ConDems to use to beat State education?

Some Conservatives Learn From Experience

It may help you to be a trade unionist and/or a Labour supporter in order to oppose removing schools from Local Education Authority oversight but it would appear that it is not a requirement. A conservative council is opposing what appears to be a hostile takeover of one of its schools by the Harris Federation of Academies.

Falling Off The Learning Curve

I am probably stating the obvious when I say that science teachers need to know about the experiments they will be teaching and know how to use the apparatus availabe. What is beginning to concern me is the fact that this will not continue to happen for much longer.

Duking The Stats 2: Campbell’s Law

[BPSDB]Duking the stats seems to be continuing apace in my workplace. Now management want behaviour to seem better than it actually is.

Duking The Stats

The title comes from a scene in “The Wire” where detective-turned teacher Presbelouski is called to a staff meeting where he is told that children are to be withdrawn from normal classes in order to practice for the assessment tests. He complains to a colleague who explains the need for the school to improve their SATs scores. “Ah!” he says. “we’re duking the stats!” To her blank look he says “Making rapes disappear, turning felonies into misdemeanors. I’ve been here before.”

I have to say that “duking the stats” is neither peculiarly American nor peculiarly fictional.

Re-Inventing the Wheel – Badly

If there is money to be made in education, it is certainly not from working in a school. Now that Building Schools for the Future has been binned, the best way is probably publishing materials for new courses.

Bizarre Tory School Plan

[BPSDB]I have been somewhat critical of education policy under the current Government but compared with what the opposition have planned, Labour are sane and clear thinkers.