News Archive
Wednesday, 02 July 2008NPSA & NPHA merge
NHA Chairman Tony Lovatt recognises the challenges and welcomes the opportunities presented by the uniting of our two organisations
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Friday, 16 May 2008
Teaching & Learning (Alexander Review)
This report focuses on the practical, hands on approaches to teaching and learning. What is effective teaching? How do children best learn? How do you create the climate and environment for success? All of these questions are answered in this succinct and powerful paper.
To read the briefing paper please register and go to members news.
Friday, 29 February 2008
Testing, Tables and the narrowing of the curriculum?
Main findings of the survey
The period from 1988 to 2006 was characterised by increasing government control of the curriculum, the assessment of pupil attainment, and mechanisms for assuring system effectiveness. The establishment of a national curriculum in 1988 was followed by a further tightening of control over the curriculum and teaching methods in primary schools through national testing at Key Stages 1 and 2 and the national literacy, numeracy and primary strategies, the first of which was implemented in 1998. In 2006, this process continued with the requirement that reading should be taught with the use of government-approved methods. The reasoning behind this increased intervention has been that it, combined with a rigorous system of national testing, will raise educational standards.
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Saturday, 09 February 2008
Starting at 5 and rigourous testing doesn't work!!!
‘Since the 1967 Plowden Report there have been a number of significant structural changes in English primary education, many of them initiated by or as a consequence of the 1988 Education Reform Act. These have resulted in an increased standardisation of primary school curriculum, teaching, assessment and inspection arrangements across the country’ (9/1). Yet ‘education should become more fluid, with a greater emphasis on the dispositions of the learner than exclusively on what is to be known ... Despite a changing landscape it is not easy to shift existing paradigms and long established practices’ (3/3).
When should children start primary school?
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Tuesday, 22 January 2008
OFSTED - Turns its attention to GEOGRAPHY!!!
Who is Geography? And why isn't he doing enough about climate change?
According to Ofsted 'Geography is not doing enough to help children develop a picture of climate change, learn to lead sustainable lives and find their feet as global citizens of the 21st century.
Yet at a time when geographical issues such as floods, rising sea levels, conflict resolution, famines and trade disputes constantly make the headlines, there is evidence that the provision of geography teaching in schools is declining.'
Ofsted's report shows that in primary and secondary schools, although there are many good lessons, too much teaching and learning is mediocre and pupils' achievement is weaker than in most other subjects. Many children interviewed in Key Stage 3 (age 11-14) said that they found geography to be boring and irrelevant and the number of children choosing to study the subject at Key Stage 4 (age 14-16) continues to fall.
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Friday, 18 January 2008
AIMS & VALUES IN PRIMARY EDUCATION -national & international perspectives
This briefing provides an overview of the four Primary Review Research Reports to be published on 18 January 2008. The reports relate to the first of the Primary Review’s ten themes, Purposes and Values. Together they offer historical, contemporary and international perspectives on the question of what in a fast-changing and uncertain world the central aims of England’s system of primary education should be, and by what values that system might be underpinned.
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Tuesday, 11 December 2007
Hands up all those in favour of a review
LONDON (Reuters) - The government is due to unveil details on Tuesday of a 10-year plan to create a "world class" education for every child in England.
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Thursday, 06 December 2007
NPhA and Dolly Parton are way out in front
Bill Larr's article (see past NPhA newsletters) on reading pinpointed the excellent work of Dolly Parton in raising the profile of reading in deprived areas of the USA and which she has now begun in our very own Rotherham
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Friday, 23 November 2007
PRIMARY REVIEW children's lives & their primary schools
On 12 October 2007 the Primary Review published its first interim report, Community Soundings, an account of evidence collected by the Review team between January and March 2007 at 87 regional meetings with teachers, heads, children, parents, school governors and a wide range of community representatives.
The community soundings, along with the national soundings and submissions, elicited professional and public opinion. Complementing this, the Review’s research survey and official data search strands investigate evidence from national and international published research and from government departments and statutory educational agencies. Whereas the soundings and submissions register what people think now, the published sources add a historical dimension, charting change in educational thinking, policy and practice over time, and revealing the way evidence on particular questions has accumulated.
On 2 November 2007, the Review published the first three of its thirty research surveys, on the theme of standards, testing and assessment. Next in line (23 November 2007), and the subject of this overview briefing, are four reports which survey published research on children’s lives outside school, on parenting, caring and relations between home, school and other agencies, and on the voices and views of children themselves. Like all the interim reports in this series their purpose is both to inform and to encourage discussion and debate.
Children’s lives and voices: research on children at home and school
This group of interim reports includes the following four surveys of published research, specially commissioned for the Primary Review:
• Children’s Lives Outside School and their Educational Impact, by Berry Mayall (Primary Review Research Survey 8/1).
• Parenting, Caring and Educating, by Yolande Muschamp, Felicity Wikeley, Tess Ridge and Maria Balarin (Primary Review Research Survey 7/1).
• Primary Schools and Other Agencies, by Ian Barron, Rachel Holmes, Maggie MacLure and Katherine Runswick-Cole (Primary Review Research Survey 8/2).
• Children and their Primary Schools: pupils’ voices, by Carol Robinson and Michael Fielding (Primary Review Research Survey 5/3).
TO READ A SYNOPSIS OF THESE REPORTS GO TO MEMBERS' PAGES
Wednesday, 14 November 2007
FURTHER QUESTIONS ABOUT STANDARDS AND TESTING
Following widespread interest in its Community Soundings report (12 October) the Primary Review today publishes three further interim reports, this time from its research survey strand. Commissioned from academic specialists and grounded in some 240 sources of published evidence, both official and independent, the reports raise important questions about standards of pupil achievement in English primary schools over recent years, about how English primary pupils compare with those from other countries, and about the national and international tests on which evidence about standards has been based. Concern about the KS1/KS2 tests was also a prominent theme in the Community.
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