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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...

Headless Chickens? Well, we do live in interesting times. Last week it was decided that, in order to allow school leaders to have Christmas Day off from monitoring Covid, schools could close to children a day early, as their education clearly wasn't that important, after all they would only miss one day and teachers could be made to stay at work and take advantage of an extra Inset day. Luckily all those end of term Christmas parties had been cancelled because of the need to keep children 2 metres apart even though they do not apparently spread the virus. This week, when an increasing number of schools are unable to stay fully open because their staff have succumbed to illness, the Secretary of State has issued a court order to insist that schools stay open even when local conditions suggest that closure would be a sensible decision. Am I detecting a certain inconsistency he...

Well that went well, didn't it? The first half- term is almost over now. Many schools have opened and then sent children home, some have closed for all but the children of key workers and those who are vulnerable. Most have kept it all together and done their best to create a good learning environment for those who have returned. Unfortunately no one was able to predict that schools reopening would cause a spike in the cases of Covid 19 among families, nor that the students who had been given such a difficult time about their A level results would find it difficult to trust the education establishment about going to university. Of course no one expected them to spread the virus as they attempted to kick over the traces in a parody of the freshers' weeks they had heard their predecessors enjoyed. But they obviously weren't supposed to realise that they had been convinced to...