A version of this article appeared in the Times, Tuesday 8th May. When a pupil of mine, Gerry, presented me with his English Language A level coursework, I couldn’t believe my eyes.  It was A* with knobs on! “Blimey, Gerry, how did you do that?” I asked, “Your last piece scarcely scraped a D grade.” [...]

Assessment of educational needs should be overhauled, as parents may be encouraging misdiagnosis to access resources (This article was first published by The Guardian) Plans to change the “special needs” system in schools will have a big impact upon teachers like me, as well as millions of pupils and their parents. That said, the system does need an [...]

Reform would be smoother and more effective if you worked together, says Francis Gilbert Earlier this month, education secretary Michael Gove said that top academics should reform our A-level system, implying that only the elite Russell Group universities can stop the chronic “dumbing down” going on in our sixth forms. His announcement was on top [...]

For secondary school teachers like me, training sessions run by the exam boards are invaluable. And I’ve attended plenty of meetings where there have been strong hints about upcoming questions, similar to those exposed by the Telegraph this week. I’ve never heard an examiner being so open about the sorts of topics that the exam [...]

The orgy of violent disorder that has swept like wildfire through our cities during the last few weeks has certainly shocked teachers like me, but having said that, knowing young people as we do, I’m not sure that we’re too surprised. But first, a definition: to understand where I’m coming from, it helps to understand [...]

Observer columnist Barbara Ellen and teacher Francis Gilbert debate whether children and parents would benefit from a shorter summer break Barbara Ellen: Francis, I would always have argued that school holidays are too long. For parents, that is. A case of: “My child, I would fight a lion for you, but if you ask me to [...]

Vocational courses help students develop key skills employers are crying out for. League tables should reflect this The government’s decision to drastically downgrade the value of vocational qualificationsis deeply troubling for teachers like me, and must be sending many schools and colleges into a tailspin of despair. At the moment over half a million teenagers are [...]

The news today that assaults on teachers have risen to a five-year-high and that nearly 1,000 children are excluded from school every day got me thinking about behaviour in our schools. I find headlines like this depressing because they actually tell us very little about what is really going on in schools. I suspect, though I [...]

I attended the Teach First Awards this Thursday and interviewed some of the award winners afterwards. The ceremony was your average award winning affair: lots of praise for sponsors and quite a bit of back-slapping. I like the Teach First programme because it has at its heart the idea of promoting good teaching — which is [...]

The Summer Reading Challenge is a really cool project which aims to get schools, libraries and parents working together so our children might actually do some reading they like this summer! For an English teacher like me, this is the Holy Grail: if one of my pupils actually enjoys reading, then everything else follows; happiness [...]

The faceless bureaucracy of exam boards has led to error-strewn papers. Exams should have a single, accountable author My pupils are all looking very stressed these days. Not only are they sitting their mocks, but they’ve also been sitting “modular” exams and have had to endure the nightmare of tackling exam papers sprinkled with errors. [...]

Last night, I attended a meeting convened by the National Union of Teachers about my local secondary school, Bethnal Green Technology College, becoming an Academy. The school has already had a public meeting about this – as I noted in a previous post. Alex Kenny, a prominent NUT activist in east London, Alasdair Smith of [...]

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was shocked to read today that climate change may be dropped from the national curriculum. As a teacher in various state schools for 20 years, I’ve seen how much the education on this issue has really improved in the past decade and how everyone has benefited from it being a prescribed part of the curriculum. [...]

From the outset, the coalition’s support of free schools was heralded as its defining education policy. Groups of parents, teachers or community members would be given the power and resources to set up their own schools, particularly in areas of high social deprivation. These groups would sweep aside the concerns of the bureaucratic local authorities [...]

.prezi-player { width: 550px; } .prezi-player-links { text-align: center; } The problems with free schools on Prezi

Recently we have had localised strikes over pay, badly behaved pupils, redundancies and cuts to school services, but the biggest ones in a generation are on the way over pensions. While the majority of us were not surprised that the most left-wing of the unions, the NUT, voted to strike over pensions last week, you [...]

Michael Gove’s plans to move teacher training out of universities will provoke protest at teachers’ conferences No article on matters educational is complete without a disquisition on standards. So here’s one, right at the top. The coalition’s plans to replace teacher-training at university with on-the-job learning will mean that standards – standards in teaching, that [...]

Motivated by the £10K offered to my school for winning The Dream Teacher competition, I’ve decided to start videoing little sections of my “teacherly” explanations and uploading them to YouTube. My videos are not of great quality, but I think my enthusiasm comes through! Like thousands of teachers up and down the country, I do this [...]