Literacy should be a good 20 points higher than today’s national averae. Do the guilty hide this by saaying it is too good to be true? Or do they just say “We are the professionals” and that ends all discussion?
Once you UNDERSTAND (which takes perhaps an hour, no more), you have to wonder how the silly ideas ever got accepted by, I suppose, intelligent? professionals!
Until the teachers wake up, it is up to parents to teach their child to read before he starts school, from www.phonics4free.org which IS DEcoding phonics! Teachers please note.
Name and email supplied

Margaret Morrissey from ParentsOutLoud had this to say:

“If I take my child off school I am in danger of having to pay a fine but teachers can close a school down for their own needs…. What an example to set, what a sad day it will be, Never never complain to a parent if they take their child out of school for a day saying “it is irresponsible and affecting their education”. You obviously do not believe that or you would not be striking.”

Ministers warn a wide range of steps are needed to combat ‘transphobic bullying’, which is defined as
the taunting of children who express ‘gender variant behaviours’. The document
was produced by the Home Office, which is responsible for equality policy
within Government.It states that schools need to be ‘more inclusive for
gender-variant children’.‘We know that over 70 per cent of boys and girls who
express gender variant behaviours are subject to bullying in schools,’ the
document states. in. ‘Tackling
transphobic bullying helps to address unacceptable behaviour and ensures that
our society becomes more tolerant.’ As part of its review of PSHE, the
Department for Education will consider adding ‘the teaching of equality and
diversity, including transgender equality’ to the curriculum.But critics said
there was a danger that children were being overloaded with ‘adult issues’ as a
result of such lessons.

Margaret Morrissey, founder of
campaign group Parents Outloud, said: ‘These are adult issues and we should
leave it until children are older or until they ask. ‘The problem is we are
overloading our children with issues that they should not have to consider at a
young age. PSHE is already overloaded with other issues. ‘We have given them
sex education and teenage pregnancies have risen year on year. ‘We have told
children about drugs education and we have a serious problem with drugs. We
have told them about drinking and cigarettes and we have more children with
alcohol problems and smoking.’

Transgender people include
those who have had sex change operations and people who have both male and
female sexual organs. Other measures proposed as part of the equality drive
include help for transgender job seekers and rules for the NHS designed to
ensure transgender people are dealt with fairly. The move comes after a
Government survey found nearly nine out of ten transgender employees suffered
discrimination or harassment at work. Also announced yesterday were longer jail
terms for murderers who are motivated by hatred of transgender people.The basic
sentence for anyone convicted of such killings will be 30 years, Kenneth Clarke
said. Similar attacks on disabled people will also face the same tough minimum
term. The Justice Secretary said that offenders ‘should be in no doubt that
they face a more severe sentence for these unacceptable crimes’. Click here to see Daily Mail article

]]> http://www.parentsoutloud.com/transgender-lessons-for-pupils-aged-five/feed/ 0 http://www.parentsoutloud.com/my-teacher-hates-me%e2%80%99/ http://www.parentsoutloud.com/my-teacher-hates-me%e2%80%99/#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2011 18:37:54 +0000 Margaret http://www.parentsoutloud.com/?p=2388 There are some things you never want to hear your child say, and when it comes to his education, “Mummy, my teacher doesn’t
like me!” tops the list. So what can you do if your child insists the teacher thinks they’re bottom of the class? Sarah Ebner offers some advice.

Join TheSchoolRun now to instantly download
100s of educational worksheets, past SATs papers, essential learning packs plus
much more – all for just £1.97.

Your child-teacher conflict action plan

• Start by
  finding out more about why your child believes there is such a problem with their teacher. Don’t panic – it’s vital that you
  stay calm in order to try to help. You can’t just go rushing to school making accusations; you need to be properly prepared.
• Give yourself
  time to chat through the problem with your child, and ask specific questions about what has happened and when. This will
  help reveal how serious the problem is, or if your child is overstating the facts a little (for example, they might not actually like the teacher, but that doesn’t mean they’re being treated badly). This is also important because, if something really serious is going on, you will need to arm yourself with proper evidence before you speak to the school.
• Personality clashes can, and do, happen in the classroom, and they can prove to be particularly tricky in primary school because children have just one (or sometimes two) teachers eachyear. If the situation sounds salvageable, speak to the teacher about it first. Make sure you’re tactful, as Margaret Morrisey from parentsoutloud.com  recommends. “Suggest to the teacher that your child is struggling to form a relationship with them. Ask if they could try to keep an eye on what’s going on and for suggestions on how best to workit out. Don’t infer that it’s the teacher’s fault or accuse them; their defence will be that you don’t know what the child is like in the classroom. You need
  to be polite, but also to get to the bottom of it. You could always suggest meeting again in a few weeks to see how things have improved.”
• If the situation is seriously affecting your child and you don’t think it would help to speak to the teacher, make an appointment to see the headteacher and make sure you bring your evidence to the meeting. The head’s responsibility is to work with your child
  and the teacher to sort out the problem if at all possible. Sometimes the whole thing is a misunderstanding, and the teacher is horrified when it is mentioned. Unfortunately, at other times, this is not the case. The headteacher can address this through discussions with the teacher, as well as lesson observations.
• If your school is a two-form entry school, you could ask for your child to switch classes. Leaving the school altogether is not a brilliant solution as it could look like “running away”. Do try to see if the situation could be resolved in other ways.
• Approach the
  school governors only if you feel there is nothing more the headteacher can do (or if you think they haven’t done enough).
  Contacting Ofsted is a much more serious last resort.

Uncover the real problem

Don’t forget to consider that sometimes children use the “my teacher hates me” line to cover up other challenges they’re facing. Yes, it could be a personality clash or a genuine example of bad teaching, but it could also be that your child is struggling in school or behaving badly. In other words, ask yourself some honest questions about your child’s school experience, and consider if there are any other issues (friendships, for example) which might be the real cause of their unhappiness.

Join our forum discussion about whether children like or dislike going to school,
and find out what to do when your child hates school.

Sarah Ebner is the author of The Starting School Survival
Guide: everything you need to know when your child starts school,
published by White Ladder and also available on Kindle.

Head teachers are at the top of the pay scale so I accept have more to lose but they  can afford the extra pension. If I take my child off school I am in danger of having to pay a fine but teachers can close a school down for their own needs. Not onlywill the strike action stop children’s learning it will damage their moral outlook. The message is if I cannot have what I want I will stop work and cause harm to children at a time many of their parents have lost their jobs and pensions with no chance of recovery for some months/years. We are in deep financial trouble nationally from the last government and failures in Europe again with weak and inadequate governments. So when your country is on its knees kick hard hold allthe people to ransom and think only of how we can line our own pockets .  What an example to set what a sad day it will be and to think men ,women,  boys have given their life for this nation,   sorry teachers who strike we expected better from you , you who lead our children you make no one feel proud and many feel ashamed. N ever never complain to a parent if they take their child out of school for a day saying  it is irresponsible and effecting  their education , you obviously do not believe that or you would not be striking.

To the thousands of teachers who are working and not striking thank you so much

Leading literacy experts will utrge the Government to abandon plans for a compulsory national reading test for all six-year-olds next summer.
Ministers argue the assessment, which will see pupils reading real and made-up words to test their phonics skills, will help identify slow readers. However, the experts say a pilot of the test ended up baffling the brightest youngsters and warn it could even end up lowering reading standards.
In a letter to the Education Secretary Michael Gove, they and teachers’ leaders – who include Professor Robin Alexander, the Cambridge don who three years ago headed the most thorough investigation into primary schooling in the past 40 years – say the Government has misinterpreted the findings of a pilot of the test.
The Schools minister Nick Gibb argued that “the check will be of real benefit to pupils but takes just a few minutes to carry out and is a positive experience for most children”.
However, the letter says 72 per cent of schools found difficulties with the use of “pseudo words”, which led to some of their most able readers becoming confused. The trial assessment included 20 real words and 20 made-up ones.
The signatories say the findings confirm their worries that the test “could actually harm standards in the longer term with able readers mistakenly identified as needing further teaching of phonics and being held back as a result”.
They also take issue with Mr Gibbs’ claim that the evaluation takes “just a few minutes”. They say the average time teachers devoted to it in the pilot was 15.5 hours. They urge ministers to reconsider the introduction of the test. “The signatories of this letter would welcome an opportunity to discuss how teacher assessment of reading would identify and help young readers who are slow to start,” they add.
It is signed by Professor Alexander; David Reedy, chairman of the UK Literacy Association; and John Hickman, chairman of the National Association of Advisers for English. Fellow signatories include several teachers’ leaders.
A spokeswoman for the Department for Education accused the authors of the letter of misreading “much of the evidence” from the pilot tests. She added: “Only last month we learned that one in 10 boys can read no better than a seven-year-old at the end of Key Stage 2 (11-year-olds). We cannot let this continue.”

Mum’s anger at school punishment after incident
A Mansfield Mum.who says her eight-year old daughter was ‘sexually assaulted’ at school has criticised the punishment handed out to the two boys responsible.
The girl was allegedly pinned up against a wall and kicked while the pair of boys,
who are also aged eight and in the same class, carried out the attack .Her 24-year-old mother said the schoolgirl was left upset and frightened by the incident, which took place earlier this week And she says the two boys should be suspended for a lengthy period of time or even excluded from school. “I was shocked when I fi rst found out,” she said .“But now I feel angry because of the way it has been handled. I do not want my daughter anywhere near the boys and I don’t think other parents would want their kids near them either.” The girl’s mother, who Chad cannot name for legal reasons, says the incident happened when her daughter went to the toilet during afternoon break. She claims they waited for her outside and then pinned her against the wall. “Both had hold of her and would not let her go,” she said. “She approached the playground teacher but it was the end of break so was not able to say what happened.” The girl then told her grandma when she got home and later informed her mother what had happened. “The next day I was very angry
because of the way the head teacher spoke to me and the punishment
which has been given to the boys,” she added. According to the mum, they have
both been told to write a letter saying ‘sorry’ and one of the boys has been told to stay off school for two days. “I think it is pathetic,” the girl’s mum said. “They should be excluded from school or at the very least suspended for a couple of weeks so
they know the seriousness of what they have done. “It should be made clear it is wrong and not acceptable behaviour.”

Parentsoutloud, a group set up in 2008 to give parents a voice in education, says the boys and the girl involved should be kept at home until a full investigation has been held.

.

Margaret Morrissey, founder of Parentsoutloud.com, said: “By the very nature of the way this is being dealt with, it says to an outsider there would seem to be things not being revealed about the children involved.”

John Peck, a former head teacher at a Mansfield Woodhouse primary school, said cases of this type involving young children were very
rare. Sometimes young children do things which are of a sexual nature without fully understanding what they are doing,” added Mr Peck, a spokesman for the National Association of Head Teachers. “It could be just children being children or it could be something in the background of the particular child which you don’t know about.
“I am sure the head teacher has investigated it fully and taken the appropriate action. It is very much a matter of judgement for the individual head teacher as it is very
difficult to set guidelines because every case is different. “If the parent is not satisfied they should ask about the complaints procedure which every school has .”Chad is not able to name the school, but the social care department at Nottinghamshire County Council has been informed. Steve Edwards, service director for social care, said: “We always take allegations of this type of behaviour seriously. For reasons of confidentiality it would be inappropriate for us to comment further at this time.”
A spokesman for Nottinghamshire Police said yesterday that no incident had been reported and officers were not investigating as the individuals concerned were below the age of criminal responsibility.

http://www.chad.co.uk/

Wizard of Oz, 1939 Photo: REX FEATURES
Teachers should censor the toy box to replace witches’ black hats with a pink ones and dress fairies in darker shades, according to a consultant who has issued advice to local authorities.From the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz to Meg, the good witch from the Meg and Mog children’s books, witches have always dressed in black.
But their traditional attire has now come in for criticism from equality experts who claim it could send a negative message to toddlers in nursery and lead to racism.
Instead, teachers should censor the toy box and replace the pointy black hat with a pink one, while dressing fairies, generally resplendent in pale pastels, in darker shades. Another staple of the classroom – white paper – has also been questioned by Anne O’Connor, an early years consultant who advises local authorities on equality and diversity. Children should be provided with paper other than white to drawn on and paints and crayons should come in “the full range of flesh tones”, reflecting the diversity of the human race, according to the former teacher.
Finally, staff should be prepared to be economical with the truth when asked by pupils what their favourite colour is and, in the interests of good race relations, answer “black” or “brown”.
The measures, outlined in a series of guides in Nursery World magazine, are aimed at avoiding racial bias in toddlers as young as two. According to the guides, very young children may begin to express negative and discriminatory views about skin colour and appearance that nursery staff must help them “unlearn”.
If children develop positive associations with dark colours, the greater the likelihood that the attitude will be generalised to people, it says. The advice is based on an “anti-bias” approach to education which developed in the United States as part of multiculturalism. It challenges prejudices such as racism, sexism and ageism through the whole curriculum and teaches children about tolerance and respect and to critically analyse what they are taught and think. Ms O’Connor, who has worked with Newham and Tower Hamlets local authorities and recently devised equality material for Lancashire council’s Sure Start, early years and childcare service, said the approach developed children’s empathy and helped early years teachers to explore their own conditioning and possible prejudices.
“This is an incredibly complex subject that can easily become simplified and inaccurately portrayed. There is a tendency in education to say ‘here are normal people and here are different people and we have to be kind to those different people’, whether it’s race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or faith.
“What we hope to do is help practitioners put themselves in the shoes of the child or the parents who is considered different. What we want for future generations is a sense of self that does not deny everyone else’s sense of self.
She added that helping to develop empathy in children should be central to the curriculum and not an add on or tick box exercise.“People who are feeling defensive can say ‘well there’s nothing wrong with white paper’, but in reality there could be if you don’t see yourself reflected in the things around you,” she said.
“As an early years teacher, the minute you start thinking, ‘well actually, if I give everyone green paper, what happens’, you have a teaching potential.
“People might criticise this as political correctness gone mad. But it is because of political correctness we have moved on enormously. If you think that we now take it for granted that our buildings and public highways are adapted so people in wheelchairs and with pushchairs can move around. Years ago if you were in a wheelchair, then tough luck. We have completely moved and we wouldn’t have done that without the equality movement.”

Margaret Morrissey, a spokeswoman for the Parents Outloud campaigning group disagrees. She said: “I’m sure these early years experts know their field but they seem to be obsessed about colour and determined to make everyone else obsessed about it too. “Not allowing toy witches to wear black seems to me nonsense and in the same vein as those people who have a problem with ‘Bar Bar Black Sheep’ or ‘The Three Little Pigs’.
Children just see a sheep in a field, whether it be black, grey, white or beige. I have worked with children for 41 years and I don’t believe I have ever met a two year old who was in any way racist or prejudice.”

However, recent research by Professor Lord Winston provides evidence that children as young as four can hold racist views. In an experiment carried out for the BBC’s Child of our Time series, children were presented with a series of images of faces of men, women, boys or girls. Only one of the faces in each sequence was white.
Children were asked to pick out the face of the person they wanted as their friend and the person they thought would be most likely to get in to trouble.
Almost all white children in the survey associated positive qualities exclusively with photographs of white children or adults. More than half of the black children made the same associations.
In contrast, people with darker faces were viewed as troublemakers.

Margaret Morrissey, spokeswoman for the campaign group Parents Outloud, said: “If we are to continue to see population growth, either through a rising birth rate or through taking more immigrants, councils must ensure that new schools are written in to their plans.
“It is no good saying there are a few places at poor schools miles across countryside or cities. Parents want and have a right to a place at a good local school.”

Councils claim that migrant populations are difficult to predict and that plans to provide new schools have been badly affected by the Coalition’s decision to scrap Labour’s £7 billion scheme to rebuild 8,000 primaries.
In Barking and Dagenham the birth rate has risen by 58 per cent in the last ten years.
A minimum of 305 more reception class places are needed next year to ensure all 3,758 four year-olds in the borough find a school. Secondary school places are also needed from next year and until the end of the decade.
The council has drawn up a plan to split schools between the morning and afternoon – which is entirely legal.
“We are making a case directly to the Treasury, but as a last resort, we will consider operating ‘split shifts’,” a council spokesman said.
“Using empty MFI stores for schools is not ideal, but we have a responsibility to school our children.”
In other parts of the country, measures to deal with places shortages include adding “bulge” classes to existing schools, erecting Portacabins in the grounds of schools, driving up school rolls and creating so-called “Titan primaries” with upwards of 500 pupils, and even lobbying for increasing class sizes beyond the legal limit of 30.
Several local authorities are already transporting children by taxi to schools several miles away.
Ten children from Portishead in North Somerset who failed to get places at their local school go by taxi to schools in another town, at a cost of more than £700 a week. Green Meadow a private school in Lowton, Wigan, offered to give places to local children at the same price as the amount of cash given to councils for each pupil when parents were struggling to get in to local schools. Wigan Council rejected the offer even though local authorities are allow to use public funds to buy private school places and many do to cater for special needs pupils.
Plans at some local authorities are on hold as they wait to find out if they have a share of a £500 million pot announced by the government in the summer to help local authorities provide extra school places.
A Department for Education spokesman said: “We know that many schools across the country face real concerns about how to provide every child with a school place. We are investing £500 million to meet pressures caused by increased birth rates.”