Archive for the 'education' Category
Seek, locate, triangulate: The hypocrisy of Ed Miliband
Yazan: Sara | 25 September 2011 | No Comments
Categories: education, students
Many years ago, in the days when Dr Who made some sense and was played by the masterful (sic) talents of David Tennant, my daughter was the proud owner of a two foot high remote control Dalek. As it moved menacingly down the landing it would repeat a number of phrases, the most frequent of [...]
Teachers should know that cramming is not the answer
Yazan: Sara | 25 November 2010 | No Comments
Categories: education
Most of us learned the hard way that cramming for an exam usually doesn’t work. Except, it seems, teachers. Today’s item of Royal Wedding related non-news is that teachers believe that the date of the nuptials will have a serious effect on the 2011 SATs tests and public examinations. The choice of date for the wedding means [...]
Rage against the party machine
Yazan: Sara | 08 November 2010 | 7 Comments
Categories: education, students
I’m furious! It’s taken me several days to calm down enough to write a blog post that would not see me thrown out of the party, or at the very least lose a number of friends. But here I am, back on the issue of ‘graduate contributions’, the new, wonderful euphemism for student fees. My [...]
The Lib Dems must not become the battered wives of British politics
Yazan: Sara | 12 October 2010 | 4 Comments
Categories: education, students, Vince Cable
So the leaks from the Browne Report were right. The cap on university tuition fees will be removed. A real rate of interest will be applied. The cost of studying for a degree will reach the level of a small mortgage. Many young people will have a lifetime of debt hanging over them as they [...]
Does your child’s school have a vacancy for an incompetent teacher?
Yazan: Sara | 11 July 2010 | 2 Comments
Categories: education
So the outgoing Chair of Ofsted thinks that ‘one good thing about primary school is that every kid learns how to deal with a really s*** teacher’? Oh great! Zenna Atkins told The Sunday Times that ‘every school should have a useless teacher’, believing that learning to cope with incompetent people was a good lesson [...]
Now will you leave our children in peace?
Yazan: Sara | 06 January 2010 | No Comments
Categories: children, education
At the end of last year, I blogged on the stupidity of pushing literacy on children at ever-younger ages, often before they are ready for it. Today, a report from a leading New Zealand university shows that early reading makes no difference to the reading age of children at the age of 11. The author [...]
Hey! Minister! Leave them kids alone!
Yazan: Sara | 31 December 2009 | 1 Comment
Categories: children, education
Ten years ago, my neighbour and friend was in despair. Her son, only a month younger than my daughter, was almost three and was not reliably potty trained. Pressure from relatives left her with the feeling that she was a failure to her oldest child and all his ante & post natal class peers were [...]
Education isn’t just something that you get in a classroom
Yazan: Sara | 29 December 2009 | No Comments
Categories: education, television
Recently I heard proud dad Demetrios Demetriou speaking about withdrawing his 14 year old son from school. But this isn’t just a story of a father upset with the school his son attends, or a family taking up home schooling on principle. Demetrios and his son Lagi make up Stavros Flatley, the novelty dance act which [...]
Social mobility ain't what it used to be
Yazan: sarabedford | 21 July 2009 | No Comments
Categories: education
I was lucky enough to attend a grammar school, the only selective school in the London Borough that I then lived in. If i was lucky, my parents were delighted. Both had left school without any qualifications. My mother had gained a scholarship to the local direct grant school from a working class household, where [...]
Saved from abuse, but doomed to illiteracy?
Yazan: sarabedford | 16 July 2009 | 4 Comments
Categories: civil liberties, education
I have a 12 year old daughter. Along with I suspect every other mother, I am not keen for my daughter to be sexually assaulted. But being reasonably sensible, I know that the risk of such assault is pretty low. So she goes over the park with friends, has travelled on her own to school [...]
