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Ten years ago NAPE ran very successful face-to-face events in schools with multiple workshops which were of use to hard-working class teachers. However, with lockdown and large-group restrictions over the last two odd years our Association was stuck. It was desperate to reach out to its members by providing conferences and workshops on a face to face basis...but could not. Teachers over that time have became used to administering (was it teaching?) lessons across the internet to their classes. Last year when NAPE  ran an 'online only event' with 'break out rooms'  we saw a good number of participants such as teachers, parents, governors and University staff, signing in! Yesterday (Monday 14th March) we held our yearly Schiller lecture in an Oxford primary school. We gave participants the choice of joining on Zoom or attending in person. It was a brillian...

A Response to a DFE Blog, The Education Hub, 16 February 2022: We are told that The Education Hub is a site for parents, pupils, education professionals and the media that captures all you need to know about the education system. What an extraordinary claim regarding the omnipotence of this particular site which encompasses everything you need to know about the education system! How can any site do justice to the breadth, the contradictions and the complexities of our educational world? Surely, in place of such blatant missionary zeal, there should be a touch of realism, honesty and humility? In reality The Education Hub is a mouthpiece for the government, focussing on what it perceives to be its priorities and policies. Of course, it is entitled to do just that, but that is very different from the communication of all you need to know about the education system. This week the b...

Shivering with cold. In the Science programme for Key Stages 1 & 2 (2013) there are some notes and guidance (non-statutory) about properties and changes of materials. The latest government guidance reported by the BBC is that schools need to keep the windows open in classes in order to ‘help stop the spread’ of Covid. So, this means that teachers do not have to take children outside to observe icy puddles or conduct a science experiment by the ‘wrapping of ice-cream to stop it melting’ mainly because it would take too long to melt inside…As a comment by a frustrated teacher said on BBC’s Twitter Feed, ‘I’m wearing thermals + kids are shivering in their coats, what a glorious way to learn’. Years ago, pre-national curriculum (<1988), children’s experience of cold would be exploited by the teacher by teaching genres of ...

Another Ministry of Silly Thoughts It's perhaps reassuring to know that the hand of the Education Secretary has not been having much to do with schools lately, but who needs him to make life difficult for us, when we have the Health Secretary stepping in to tell everyone that children and teachers never get Covid 19. He is simply following the scientific evidence that some studies show that teachers who have not been in school or have only had a few children in their class are at no more risk of catching the disease than an NHS worker in a hospital where there are lots of confirmed cases. Now, while this may be reassuring to the government and means that teachers apparently don't need to be vaccinated as a matter of urgency, it overlooks some unscientific consequences of such a foolhardy approach. It doesn't recognise that when a teacher becomes ill and cannot teach ...

The Hokey Cokey. Somebody complained to me that my last blog was unfair to headless chickens the world over. I can only apologise to all headless chickens  who made it through Christmas, it was an insensitive slur at a very tense time for chickens Then just when you thought you were safe from the Hokey Cokey being performed over the Christmas break, we're back to the in, out, shake it all about system of school strategy. As a plan, telling schools to stay open, threatening local authorities with legal action if they close schools, then closing them, then calling it an Inset day, then expecting it to be a training day about how to make a flow chart of children's spit and snot, before saying never mind we'll get a few people from the army who have no experience of testing children, nor probably, managing a hall full of those waiting for results, to train all you t...