The average teacher costs a school around £35,000 each year. So over the course of a 40 year career (I know that sounds unlikely, that’s the length of time from qualification to retirement) the average teacher costs £1.4m. That’s a lot of money so you’d think that schools would also spend a fair amount supporting… Read More A view on a room
I happened to be waiting at the sports centre and was watching a group of kids being shown how to use the climbing wall. There were about 10 kids of late primary/early secondary age. The wall was one of those that had the little different coloured hand and foot holds everywhere. The kids had helmets… Read More Climbing the Wall
Here’s where I start. All other things being equal (which they obviously aren’t) there is no detriment to learning times tables. How ever you learn them. By continuous practice, by chanting, by using an app. It’s all good. I know mine and I’m glad I do. The more that children know them the better off… Read More Testing Times
This post falls under the heading of “things I’m not sure if I should write about but have wanted to for a long time so here goes anyway”. I obviously do stuff to make money. You know, a job. The reason this post falls under the heading above is that it could be considered some… Read More On observations and grades
There are teacher shortages in various subject areas. Maths, Physics, Computing to name but three. There are less people applying to enter teacher training this year than last and fewer in training this year. 5,000 or 12% down depending on your source of favoured method of describing shortages. Some areas of the economy are experiencing growth,… Read More A Perfect Storm
First the math. The BBC report today that equations can be beautiful. Apparently it took a few cognitive psychologists and an fMRI scanner to show what the more enlightened among us already knew (yes, I know its yet another fMRI story, but what the heck, it starts my post off). As I said here, Eulers… Read More Is this an imaginary number which I see before me?
This post started out as a comment on @johndavidblake’s excellent blog this morning, but then it got too long and I thought, what the hell, why should he get all the hits. I came into teaching late, in my early thirties. I’d already had one career as a chartered accountant, a successful one. But I… Read More Re-(licensing/validating/invigorating) the profession*
Maybe I’m a bit odd but I don’t care if teachers are: Male or female; Black or white; Old or young; Gay or straight. I don’t care if they went or Oxbridge or Uxbridge. I certainly don’t care if they got a Geoffrey or a Desmond. I don’t care if they’ve worked outside education before… Read More Maybe I’m a bit odd, but…
This morning I was accused of being rude to @daisychristo by saying that I had not heard any of the ‘myths’ she uses as chapter headings for her new book (available on Kindle (which is available as an app for all major devices)). I was subsequently advised that I couldn’t really take part in the discussion… Read More More nuance please
Judging from the feedback I get, if you could find the average school somewhere in the country and asked what had happened to their budget over the last three years you would get the answer “unchanged”. That’s not a real terms unchanged, but a cash unchanged, including the impact of Pupil Premium. There have been… Read More Structural fixedness and its impact on innovation monkeys
Distant Ramblings on the Horizon 