Sometimes I’ve wished I was a soldier in some of my rowdier classrooms. I could have swaggered with my rifle and my combat fatigues before the spotty teenagers who have told me where to get off and worse, and blasted them with some military discipline; asking them to do push-ups every time they sniggered, to […]

Teaching to the SATS tests can be murder. Recently, they have become more and more fiddly – and more boring. In English, there is a complicated reading paper, which consists of lots of small questions that pupils have to answer precisely to get a good mark, a writing paper which never seems to test writing, […]

So just what is the key to success at GCSE? As a teacher in various state schools for the past two decades, I still chew over the issue virtually every day! Just recently, I was talking late into the night at a Year 11 Parents’ evening. The parents of these sixteen-year-olds were desperate to know […]

Teaching to the SATS tests can be murder. Recently, they have become more and more fiddly – and more boring. In English, there is a complicated reading paper, which consists of lots of small questions that pupils have to answer precisely to get a good mark, a writing paper which never seems to test writing, […]

The truth about exams So just what is the key to success at GCSE? As a teacher in various state schools for the past two decades, I still chew over the issue virtually every day! Just recently, I was talking late into the night at a Year 11 Parents’ evening. The parents of these sixteen-year-olds […]

Of all the roles I thought I might play as a classroom teacher, it never occurred to me that I might be called upon to be a spook. Social worker, surrogate parent, cleaner, technician, crowd controller, salesman for the damaged goods of the national curriculum, yes – but I never imagined I might be required […]