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Michael Gove

Who's to blame for the new English literature GCSEs?

2014-05-30T11:29:18+01:00May 30th, 2014|English|

The sound and fury surrounding text choices for GCSE English literature just won’t go away. The exam boards got their digs in first with Paul Dodd of OCR claiming Gove wanted to ban US authors because he "had a particular dislike for Of Mice and Men and was disappointed that more than 90% of candidates were studying it". Gove then struck back saying neither nor anyone else had banned anything: ‘”Just because one chap at one exam board claimed I didn’t like Of Mice and Men, the myth took hold that it – and every other pesky American author – had [...]

Whose English literature is it anyway?

2014-05-27T20:28:04+01:00May 27th, 2014|English|

Have you heard? Education Secretary, Michael Gove has personally intervened to ban the only books worth teaching in the entire canon of English literature. Twentieth century American classics like To Kill A Mockingbird, A View from the Bridge and Of Mice and Men (Not to mention one of my personal favourites, The Catcher In The Rye.) have been summarily removed from English classrooms.  Only, he hasn't. Here's what he has actually said: I have not banned anything. Nor has anyone else. All we are doing is asking exam boards to broaden – not narrow – the books young people study for GCSE. [...]

What inspirational teaching looks like according to Ofsted

2014-02-18T17:27:12+00:00February 18th, 2014|Featured|

So, as we know, Sir Michael Wilshaw is determined to make clear that Ofsted has no preferred teaching style. Right? Wrong. Just in case you were breaking open the Spumante to celebrate a return to common sense and autonomy, Ofsted have released a brand new example of best practice in English just so as we're all clear on exactly the type of thing inspectors are looking for. I really don't want to denigrate anything the school in question has done in order to be awarded their outstanding badge; their results speak for themselves: In 2013, 83% of the cohort gained a GCSE [...]

Why do so many teachers leave teaching?

2013-10-20T11:28:31+01:00February 27th, 2013|Featured|

  Apparently 50% of  teachers leave the profession within their first 5 years. I've heard this statistic bandied about for quite a while, and while you can argue the exact figure back and forth a bit (some estimates put the figure at 40%) either way it's a bloody big number. Here's another perspective: 404,600 fully trained teachers under the age of 60 are no longer teaching, compared to around half a million still actively working in English and Welsh schools. So that's almost half of the qualified teachers in the country not actually teaching. And it's getting worse: some 47,700 teachers [...]

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