Independent Richard Garner
Shakespeare week will mark the Bard’s 450th birthday
Plans for an annual national Shakespeare week – to be launched next year on the 450th anniversary of the Bard’s birth – will be announced tonight.
The idea is to allow children from the age of five at primary school to celebrate the Bard in a week-long series of events which could include making traditional Tudor dishes in cookery lessons or playing Tudor sports like real tennis.
As part of the venture, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust will make available free online materials to …

Richard Garner Independent April 2013
Teachers are to demand a new contract limiting them to spending just 20 hours a week in the classroom.
The move was agreed at the National Union of Teachers’ annual conference in Liverpool as part of a demand for a 35-hour week for the profession.
Delegates said research had shown the average working week for a primary school teacher was 50.2 hours a week – and that of a secondary school teacher 49.9.
“We’re fed up with arriving at 7.45am and we’re there until 6.30pm,” said Richard Rose, a …

Richard Garner Independent
Schools across the country are likely to be affected by the rolling programme of walkouts, which will begin in summer term
Schools face a summer and autumn of discontent with teachers’ leaders unveiling plans for the most sustained period of strike action in more than 20 years.
The country’s two biggest teachers’ unions – the National Union of Teachers and National Association Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers announced a rolling programme of industrial action region by region which will cover schools throughout England and Wales by the end of the …

Express 27th Feb
Plans for a new history curriculum by Education Secretary Michael Gove have been given a ringing endorsement by some of the UK’s leading historians.
Dr David Starkey is one of 15 leading historians who have commended Michael Gove’s plans for a new hIn a letter published in The Times newspaper 15 historians, including David Starkey, Niall Ferguson and the Tory MP Chris Skidmore, commended Mr Gove’s controversial plans to have topics taught in chronological order, saying it has “long been needed” and is a “welcome” idea.
The new curriculum would …

By Sarah Harris Mail
At the age of ten English children are on a par with the brightest in Taiwan and Hong Kong .England’s brightest primary school children are lagging two years behind their counterparts in the Far East by the time they take GCSE maths, a study shows. The cleverest youngsters are as able as those in Taiwan and Hong Kong at age ten.But they make much less progress while they are at secondary school, between the ages of 11 and 16.By the time they sit their GCSE maths, the …

Andrew Grice, Richard Garner
Thursday, 7 February 2013
Education Secretary to announce dramatic climbdown over plans to scrap GCSEs
Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, will announce a major climbdown over his controversial plans to scrap GCSEs in favour of a new English Baccalaureate. In a surprise statement in the Commons, Mr Gove will reveal that he is abandoning plans to introduce the new qualification in 2015.
GCSEs will remain, although they will be reformed in an attempt to restore confidence in them as an internationally respected qualification.
The U-turn represents a political defeat for a …

Margaret Morrissey and Lynda Waltho Times
Published at 12:01AM, October 20 2009
I have worked with education secretaries since 1981 (Margaret Morrissey writes) and I have never previously come across someone with Ed Balls’s style.
He is intent on doing things his way and, if he cannot get his own way, he holds a consultation with those people who agree with him in order to produce the result that he wants.
His attitude is: “I am an expert. I know best and I will consult other experts who do it my way.”
I have told …

Mail on Sunday
 TV presenter Bear Grylls has backed a school’s programme to make children learn to deal with failure. A school that has introduced ‘lessons’ in failure to test the perseverance of children has been backed by Chief Scout and TV adventurer Bear Grylls.
Pupils at the independent Perse School in Cambridge are being challenged with physical and academic tasks that teachers do not expect them to achieve.
Ed Elliot, head of the £13,647-a-year school, said seeing ‘failure as your friend’ helped children to learn from their mistakes.
The activities for the pupils …

Exam seminars staged to help teachers boost pupils’ GCSE and A-level results face being routinely videoed under new rules designed to..

Exams watchdog Ofqual said there was evidence of widespread ‘over-marking’ Results from last summer triggered inquiry after marks fell short of