Reading Time: 18 minutes At last our schools will be “set free” by George Osborne. They’ll be “free from local bureaucracy”, no longer run by councils but governed instead by academies, such as the one set up by carpet millionaire Lord Harris. It seems incredible that up until now, no one has taken the obvious step of handing over […]
Michael Gove
Posted inEducation, Politics, The Secular
Free School praised by Michael Gove ordered to close due to bullying and religious bigotry
Reading Time: 3 minutes A Christian free school lauded by Education Secretary Michael Gove has been ordered to close after inspectors accused pupils of harbouring “prejudiced views” of children from other faiths which went unchallenged by their teachers.
Posted inEducation, Politics
The Perfect Storm : Gove’s Teacher Shortage
Reading Time: 12 minutes For those of you who are in the teaching profession, or who are interested in politics, and how Govian free market economics is trying to usurp education, then this is fascinating. It’s a tour de force, from Disappointed Idealist:
Something hideous this way comes. It’s a teacher shortage. Nothing new there, I hear you say. But this one is going to be a cracker, and it’s one which has been manufactured by Gove and his fellow travellers.
Posted inEducation, Politics
Woo hoo! Yes! Zippedy doo whoop!… Oh shit…
Reading Time: 2 minutes YES!!! GIVE IS OUT, GOVE IS OUT, WHOOP DE DOO, GOVE IS OUT. GOVE HAS GONE, GOVE HAS GONE, YAY YAY YAY, GOVE HAS GONE!
Posted inEducation
My favourite video of the year
Reading Time: < 1 minute Bloody awesome. [H/T Zoe Flanagan] OK, this is UK-centric. But man, this fricking NAILS everything which is wrong with education at the moment. Most of that comes from those in power. Gove. Michael Gove. If I met him in a dark alley…
Posted inEducation
Annoying Parents and their Fallacious Arguments: The Teachers’ Strike
Reading Time: 4 minutes I don’t make a habit, as a teacher, of annoying parents. It doesn’t make my job easy. But I have spent the last week getting more and more incensed and infuriated over the claims and arguments I have been hearing on the radio and TV and at school. Why can’t presenters get some critical skills. Why can’t they challenge guests on false analogies and non sequiturs?
Posted inEducation, Politics
Why I am going on strike
Reading Time: 8 minutes Wednesday 26th is an important day for the National Union of Teachers here in the UK. We have voted to go out on strike and I am going to do so, foregoing my pay for the day. I don’t take this action lightly, but then nor do I accept hat he government is doing to the education system lightly. I would like to elucidate on this and give the reasons to support my action.
Let me just prime you with this scandalous statistic: 40% of teachers leave the profession within 5 years.
Posted inEducation, The Secular
‘Islamic takeover plot’ in Birmingham schools investigated
Reading Time: 5 minutes As a teacher, I cannot tell you how much this worries me. I will be striking later this month in opposition to this government push on ‘free schools’ an academies which is thinly veiled attempt to privatise education and politically liberalise it. I could bore you for hours on the ramifications and implications of such a stupid approach to education, not least adding in the utter stupidity of scrapping a national curriculum and assessment framework whilst neglecting to be organised enough to have something in mind and prepared to replace it. Total idiots. And yes, if I meet Education Secretary Michael Gove in a dark alley…
Posted inPolitics
Are Suffolk Conservative Party Members Idiots? (Er, yes)
Reading Time: < 1 minute As The BBC reports:
Senior Conservative MP Tim Yeo has lost his fight against being deselected by party activists.
The former environment minister demanded the secret ballot by Tory members in South Suffolk after the association’s committee voted not to re-adopt him as a candidate.
Posted inEducation, Politics
Gove and Free Schools are an embarrassment. Shocker.
Reading Time: 5 minutes So I have written a number of times about Gove and his penchant for free market economics in school and his libertarian approach to education. And how it totally sucks. Well, his Free School initiative is terrible and is faltering as the days go by. Between Free Schools and Academies, he is doing a fine job of dismantling education.