From September 2016, within five weeks of starting primary school, all children in England will receive an assessment that will stay on their record. But we have been here before and it didn’t work. The…
What lines of poetry are wandering through your memory?
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Is there a poem buried deep in the recesses of your memory? Earlier this month, on the UK’s National Poetry Day, we launched a nationwide poetry survey inviting people to tell us a poem they know by heart…
In search of better schools.
Primary desk via luminaimages/Shutterstock
Why are pupils from disadvantaged families more often found studying in poorly performing schools? Is it the choices their parents make, or are they not able to get into better ones? Perhaps families are…
You always win with fruit.
Children with fruits via alexkatkov/Shutterstock
Poor nutrition is a primary cause behind the rising cost of health care in many developed countries. Although pupils have good knowledge of what is healthy and what is not, that does not always translate…
Spell it out.
Alphabet soup via Brian Mueller/Shutterstock
Teaching children to read with phonics has been a central plank of recent “Govian” education policy. A new set of statistics shows that 74% of children in the first year of primary school now meet the…
Widening the achievememt gap.
Dave Thompson/PA Wire
The streaming of children at primary school by their ability is actually widening the achievement gap between low and high-attaining pupils. Our research has shown that streaming in primary school leads…
Growing up on broccoli.
School lunch via Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock
We should be concerned about our children’s diets. In 2011, nearly 10% of four to five-year-olds in the UK were classified as obese. By the time they leave primary school, nearly 20% of children are obese…
If only kids asked for this every day.
Healthy lunchbox via Dream79/Shutterstock
A fifth of four- to five-year-old children in England are overweight or obese, rising to one third by age ten to 11 years. This stark increase during the primary school years points to the potential contribution…
London’s schools have started to.
David Parry/PA Wire
London’s secondary schools have seen rapid improvement in the last decade. Inner London moved from being the worst-performing region in England in 2003 to having better school results than any region outside…
Present, but absent.
Kid in corridor via michaeljung/Shutterstock
At the end of last week the government released the autumn figures for pupil absence in English schools. The figures show an ongoing drop in the number of children skipping school. But they also raise…
The coalition government is to introduce the testing of young children soon after they enter primary school at the age of four or five. English children are already tested far more than children in most…
The Australian Primary Principals’ Association is worried the primary curriculum is too difficult.
AAP
The Australian Primary Principals Association (APPA) submission to the review of the Australian National Curriculum has stated the primary curriculum is overcrowded and some complex content is unnecessary…
What stops children from wanting to go to school?
AAP
Prime minister Tony Abbott has set a new goal of closing the gap for Indigenous school attendance within five years, saying a failure to properly educate children is “one of the worst forms of neglect…
Children are already experimenting. Teachers need the skills to keep up.
San Jose Library
Michael Gove is ploughing ahead with plans to gather an elite team of computer science experts to help bring coding into schools. He has rightly acknowledged that teaching programming in schools is vital…
The latest report into Australian education shows some positives and some negatives.
School image from www.shutterstock.com
Educational outcomes in Australia are showing signs of improvement, particularly in the early years and in Year 12 attainment, according to the latest reports from the Council of Australian Governments…
“DNA is your blood in you, we can use DNA as evidence if someone’s been stabbed. We can run tests in suspects.” (Girl, 12, central Queensland) “DNA has to do with blood types and fingerprints, it helps…