
John Bald: How many pupils start secondary school unable to read properly? The truth is we don’t know.
What is clear is that systematic phonics, followed by sustained teaching of reading, can tackle the literacy deficit.
John Bald began teaching in 1973, and has extensive experience as an adviser with Essex and Hackney, as a trainer of new and experienced teachers and as an Inspector. He has written two books on the teaching of reading and spelling.
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A casualty of its changes in government was a confidential questionnaire for pupils – given out and collected by inspectors.
I sat in a meeting with one of them. He was desperate to avoid the word “phonics”.
To our opponents, the term “fronted adverbial” is the gift that keeps on giving. No-one without a degree in linguistics knows what it means.
The Education Secretary gave an effective performance in Parliament yesterday. But there remains considerable anger, which is justified.
The headmaster of Eton has used the Equality Act to justify suppressing free speech at the school. That he stays in post is Eton’s loss.
Questions need to be set on every topic in each syllabus – with schools allowed to direct pupils to the parts of the paper they have covered.
If Gove’s goal of breaking down education’s Berlin Wall is to be achieved, it will be Birbalsingh and her colleagues who have made the first breach.
Dr Meadows said that all sorts of trials had taken place. The point is: why not this one, which would have allowed problems to be identified in advance?
We need to get rid of the idea that these grades are results. They are not, and cannot be relied on.
We can expect hard cases to make headlines, and universities to do what they can, to mitigate the most obvious injustices.
Defeating “the blob” requires attracting more good people into the teaching profession. Then giving the power to make a difference.
His view is backed by evidence about how the brain forms the neural networks that embody learning – as well as the example of our best schools.
Rather than having a genuine regard for safety, the hard left is resorting to threats and scaremongering as a “negotiating position”.
Highly-educated parents transmit their knowledge and understanding to their children. For others it is less easy.