for teachers

Here I post a variety of material for teachers. You can reorder the table to aid your search by clicking any of the headings.

  • One long SATS test

    In this emotional indictment of our education system, the writer and teacher Francis Gilbert explains how an obsession with testing has broken enthusiasm for learning The decision by the Children’s Secretary, Ed Balls, to kill off the Sats exams for 14-year-olds is arguably the most momentous decision taken by a politician since Gordon Brown became […]

  • How to make your child succeed at GCSE

    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 […]

  • How a good headteacher can save a school

    Without leadership and discipline, chaos rules. But this is exactly what the Government is allowing to happen, argues Francis Gilbert A few years back, I taught at a school that terrified me. Just walking down the corridor was hazardous. Frequently, children would rush up behind me and hit me on the back of the head, […]

  • Links to English teaching sites at the Guardian

    A useful page of links to English language teaching resources can be found on the Guardian‘s website here.

  • Rewarding the bad, punishing the good

    I knew he’d be difficult to teach: a child who had learnt that violence is generally rewarded with bribes, and good behaviour is ignored or punished.

  • The re-marking lottery

    Any experienced Head of Department knows that results’ day can be a nightmare. The worst problem to deal with is the sobbing student, often accompanied with the angry parent, brandishing a tear-stained results’ slips, exclaiming in loud and outraged tones that there’s no way he or she could have got their sub-standard score, and that the […]