Thank you for all your comments. Let me take this chance to help clarify what I said. I have not criticised teachers just the opposite until today I have spent the last 30 years respecting them and defending them against others who did so. I fully accept there will be schools who need to close however government health and safety legislation leaves little for headteachers to make their own judgment and that is wrong. Also next time we have headlines about “sick days” costing the country millions I will remind …

The report focuses on a new regime introduced in 2005. The new short, sharp Ofsted inspections present a “superficial snapshot” of England’s schools and rely too much on test and exam results, a report claims. The report by the think tank Civitas says poorly trained inspectors take a “tick-box” approach to gauging quality. Civitas says Ofsted reports - used by many parents to judge schools - do not give a “well-rounded picture”. Ofsted denies relying on test results, and says it considers other evidence, including the observation of …

Ed Balls wants healthy eating to extend beyond the school gates. He says he supports “stay-on site” policies, in which pupils are not allowed to leave school premises during the day - stopping them from eating in local fast-food shops. Is this practical who will supervise the pupils, let’s remember we are talking up to and over 12 hundred young people. Can schools afford supervisors remember whilst pupils are on site their safety is the school responsibility and supervision is costly. How many schools have a canteen that can feed …

Chris Keates, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, said teachers should not face jail for having sex with pupils who are over the age of consent. If a teacher has a relationship with a pupil at the school at which they teach - it could be an 18-year-old pupil in the sixth form - then the teacher can be prosecuted and end up on the sex offenders’ register.’ Teachers who have sex with sixth form pupils are only guilty of …

More than 20 years after corporal punishment was banned in state schools, many teachers said it was acceptable to hit children “in extreme cases”. The Times Educational Supplement surveyed 6,162 teachers. Support for a return to corporal punishment was strongest among secondary teachers, with 22 per cent backing the idea compared with 16 per cent of those in primary schools. The cane was abolished in state schools in 1987 and 1998 in the fee-paying sector.
So how do you feel?
What message does this send to children, there is …

Why are we as a nation so obsessed with homework, we send our children to school at an earlier age than any other country and our school day is longer, we have shorter holidays and our children have more homework than other country. The results of all this are we getting better educated children, no, higher result than others, no.
I would never suggest we should not help our children at home, help them to read and write and if they ask help with maths or what ever subject they …

Well surprise, surprise after removing all the school home economics departments (cookery classrooms) and decimating the trained staff who pleaded with Government and Opposition to save cookery from extinction in the curriculum we have an announcement cooking is back. It is criminal that politicians can continue to ruin our schools in this way, ignoring the professionals and parents who fought hard with teachers to retain cookery lessons. I feel bad that yet again I need to complain about government past and present but having been in education for …

Lock in for school lunches I tire of the continual stream of “experts” who tell us with great authority what our school and children should and should not be allow to do on an almost daily basis. First we are told by Jamie Oliver with a flood of bad language how to feed our children, we then have legislation on what we can and cannot provide in children’s school lunch boxes. School lunch menus have been so structured that many older pupils have vote with their feet and no longer …

As thousands of parents around the country wait anxiously for the letter to arrive, this week, telling them which secondary school their child has been allocated a place at, there will be much anxiety that they have selected the best school for their child.
Choosing a school for your child has become somewhat of a mystic art. Do you remain true to the methods of old and visit the school to get a feel for the atmosphere and the way it operates and talk to other local parents with children already …

First evidence of school meals is in 1899 when the London School Board established the School Diners Association.
The elected government of 1906 passed various measures to try to deal with this problem of the community. They were particularly concerned to try to improve the health of children. They passed laws to ensure midwives were notified of each new-born baby, they introduced School Medical Examinations. Most importantly in 1906, they gave permission for schools to offer meals to their pupils. One asks what has changed with regard to government trying to …