By Gove! Michael Rosen’s open letter to the Education Secretary

Novelist and poet Michael Rosen has written to Michael Gove in yesterday’s Guardian, asking for some explanations about the curriculum, and the concept of making schools into academies – especially when they don’t want it to happen…

Credit: author's website

Read it here.

Local league tables distilled

And following on from the previous post,  here is a table of comparative results for our three local schools: click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge

New certificate aims at rewarding pupils taking more academic GCSEs

Earlier this month, the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, announced the creation of a new qualification, which will be awarded to pupils who take more traditionally academic GCSEs.

The English Baccalaureate will be awarded to those achieving a grade C or better in five subjects: English, Maths, a science, a modern or ancient foreign language, and a humanities subject.

The move is, in part, attempting to redress the reported rise in the number of pupils taking vocational qualifications. The number taking sciences in particular has also declined.

The results of children achieveing the new qualification would also feed into schools’ league table results.

Read more in the Telegraph article here.

The English Baccalaureate: coming to a school near you.

What parents want from schools: new report published

A new report into what parents really want from their schools, written by the education writer Fiona Millar, makes for very interesting reading. Her report for the Pearson Centre for Policy and Learning, shows that parents have high expectations of their children’s schools. In it,

…a very clear, almost unanimous picture emerged of what that good local school should be like. Academic qualifications, good teaching and well managed behaviour matter hugely, and good levels of literacy and numeracy are particularly significant, but so too is the social and emotional development of pupils, their wellbeing and the opportunities to develop according to their specific personal or special needs.

And there is a clear hunger for more and different information than a league table or government data set will ever be capable of providing. Parents want a more rounded, balanced picture of how their children and their schools are performing and not just academically. Bullying, exclusions, behaviour management, the personal development and happiness of pupils, the views of other parents and even the CVs and qualification of heads and teachers were mentioned. Moreover they want that information regularly, in an easy to digest format, preferably directly from the school, either by text, email or via the school website.

And most significantly of all:

…everyone from headteachers to government ministers will need to listen carefully to what parents really want, rather than what they think we should have.

As the final, illuminating paragraph indicates, schools are now having to wake up to the fact that a more enlighted culture of parenting is emerging, one where parents are actively interested in addressing, assessing and monitoring their children’s education, are aware of the standard of provision that schools should be delivering, and are becoming more pro-active about addressing areas in which they perceive an issue. Communication between school and parent is vital: school websites in particular are expected to provide clear, relevant and useful information and to be regularly up-dated.

Read the full article here, and details of the report on the Pearson website here.

National Literacy Trust research makes alarming reading

As reported in yesterday’s Education section of The Guardian, a recent survey by the National Literacy Trust makes for very grim reading.

A survey of over eighteen thousand children, aged between 8 – 17, reveals that 19% have never been given a book as a present, 12% had never set foot in a bookshop, and 7% had never been to a library.

Of the materials they read, most are likely to read ‘e-mails and websites than comics.’

Combined with recent or planned closures of local libraries across the country, this makes for an alarming view of our children’s literary culture.

The National Literacy Trust said “fresh approaches” were urgently needed to encourage young people to read more. “The number of children who never read a book suggests the government has a huge challenge on its hands if the 50 books-a-year initiative is to reach every child,” it said. Last year, a major international study of children’s reading revealed British children had fallen from 17th to 25th place in the world.

Read the full article here.

Suffolk school embraces dance and drama to improve standards

As reported in an article in The Independent last week, a Suffolk school has forged links with a local dance organisation; pupils go for weekly dance lessons and attend productions at the DanceEast centre.

DanceEast

The move has engaged both girls and boys at the school, as well as parents, who go to productions with their children, with a real sense that the parents are engaging with their children’s education once more. Children are more confident, develop critical thinking as they write reviews of the productions they visit, and have a more positive view of their schooling experience.

With the arts increasingly being sidelined in school curriculum delivery, this step is a positive one; the school’s recent inspection report noticed an imnprovement in achievement and higher standards since the project began.

Speaking and listening skills, in particular, have been improved by developing pupils’ arguments about what they have seen when they act as dance critics. And those speaking and listening skills, according to the recently published review of primary-school national-curriculum assessment carried out by Lord Bew’s inquiry team, are essential to improve reading and writing standards.

Read the full article here.

New venture: Open Dawes!

We’re excited to announce the launch of a new community venture, Open Dawes, aimed at providing a broad range of workshops, activities and events for the local community, in particular its children and parents or carers.

Aiming to provide local access to arts activities, as well as to support the educational development of pre-school and primary children, Open Dawes is a visionary, forward-looking project with the welfare, education and recreation of the community at its heart.

You can read more about Open Dawes in its mission statement on the DCA website here.

Music: a secret of longer-lasting youth ?

As reported in The Telegraph yesterday, musical training may help keep you young!

Image credit: Holden Leadership Centre

Researchers claim that musical performers have active memories and intact hearing for longer, as the ability to process and discern sounscapes and deal in patterns, a feature of musicianship, develops the faculties associated with such activities; they should be – as one of the researchers says -  ”sharpened” (no pun intended, I think…!).

The study co-author Dr Nina Kraus, at Northwestern University, in Chicago, said: “Lifelong musical training appears to confer advantages in at least two important functions known to decline with age – memory and the ability to hear speech in noise.”

The writer also claims the findings give additional support to the benefit of musical training giving a knock-on effect in a greater learning ability in the classroom.

Click here to read further.