Schools

If it wins the next election, New Labour proposes to reshape primary education. Pat Yarker reports on a challenge to the Government’s line of march. In January 2008 Ed Balls appointed Sir Jim Rose to review the current Primary curriculum and recommend changes for implementation from September 2011. Jim Rose, a distinguished professor of education, had already conducted a review of the teaching of reading (in 2006); that was seized on by education ministers to justify imposing on teachers, despite much opposition, a single method (phonics) to teach children to read. As we go to press his report...

In January 2008 Ed Balls appointed Sir Jim Rose to review the current Primary curriculum and recommend changes for implementation from September 2011. Jim Rose, a distinguished professor of education, has reported for this government before. In 2006 his review of the teaching of reading was seized on by education ministers to justify imposing on teachers despite much opposition a single method to teach children to read. A decade and a half earlier, Rose was one of the ‘Three Wise Men’ tasked by the Tories with reporting on the state of England’s Primary schools. The report which Rose together...

Barratt Homes has pulled out of its agreement with Northants County Council to purchase 18 school sites and playing fields. More collapses of such deals, and of PFI contracts, must be likely in the coming months, as contractors find it harder to raise the credit required. Northamptonshire "Save Our Services" states: "Northants County Council... PFI deal... method of financing new schools... guarantees the PFI speculators high profits over thirty-two years while at the same time charges us, the public, £865 million for capital projects costing only £235 million. The anticipated payment by...

Staff and students begin a new school-year with business unfinished from the old one. The system for marking public tests undergone by eleven and fourteen year olds in England’s state schools spectacularly imploded in the early Summer. Thousands of test-papers went unmarked and results were delivered weeks late to many schools. Some staff will be discovering the full extent of the chaos and incompetence which plagued this year’s tests only now, as they face the arduous task of reviewing returned scripts and considering whether to spend precious time and money on the appeals process. It is...

Against the “National Challenge” The National Challenge scheme, launched in June 2008, is supposed to push up school standards. Schools have been threatened with being forced to convert into Academies, and could face the loss of specialist status and the removal of funding. The 638 National Challenge schools were selected on the basis that fewer than 30 per cent of their students have achieved five or more A*-C grade GCSEs, including English and maths. Now, according to the Times Educational Supplement, “300 extra schools can expect to be subject to special scrutiny under an extension of the...

SCHOOLBOOKS We bought schoolbooks in Ennis classrooms then: Penny by penny the poorest paid. My mother Would skimp on call; others found it too much bother, And some could scarce afford to feed the children. One day my Reader disappeared, and when The teacher searched the desks was found, covered In flowery wallpaper. The small thief hovered, Shamed; blushing and trembling, he was beaten. And me, I sat and saw him cringe and beg, A nervous clever granny's boy, an orphan Of eight or nine, Anthony Cullinan, Who boasted to me once he'd eaten an egg. Property has rites, and childrens' rights are...

In May, 11 and 14 year olds in England’s state schools faced the tedious annual round of public tests in English, Maths and Science. All results of those tests were supposed to be with schools this week. They won’t be. At the last moment the government acknowledged that such was the incompetence of the private company newly-charged with administration for this year’s testing-programme that a delay in the return of all results to schools was unavoidable. The Education Secretary, Ed Balls, promised an inquiry. ETS Europe, the hapless company who won the £157M testing-contract for the next three...

If you ask teachers what the worst aspect of their job is, a very big majority will point to excessive workload. We know this because they have been asked by trade unions and by academic researchers on a regular basis. In particular, research commissioned by government to identify why so many people leave the job consistently shows that workload is a crucial factor. Teacher trade unions are aware of the importance of this issue but have taken two diametrically opposed paths in dealing with it. The NASUWT and ATL have taken the route of social partnership. They made an agreement with the...

“Teachers are proletarians. Indeed, it has been some time now since a significant number of teachers owned their own means of production; in order to survive they sell their labour power…” Beverly J. Silver, Forces of Labour: Workers’ Movements and Globaliation since 1870 The significance of teachers as workers has increased in Western capitalist economies in the post-war period. Mass education and the work of teachers within the “education industry” has become the lynchpin in an economy dependent upon workers with high levels of “knowledge”: “Like textile workers in the nineteenth century and...

I am a local officer of Leeds NUT. One of our biggest sources of casework is workplace bullying. It is also one of the most depressing and frustrating aspects of our work because it is very difficult to protect individual members from systematic intimidation by school managers, and the problem grows like a malignant tumour. Recently I found myself sitting in the reception area of a Leeds secondary school staring at a wallposter which stridently proclaimed the legend “The power of me can tackle bullying in Leeds”. In the previous weeks I had frequently sat in traffic jams and stared at this...