Children Aged 6 – 9 Have over 292 friends on facebook what are the parent’s doing? So went camping over the bank holiday weekend to flamborough, It was a family campsite and was full of kids about 6-9 years of age. One of their conversations was about facebook.  The children were asking each other several questions and they weren’t exactly been quiet about this. these are the questions they were asking and below will be some of their answers. Do...

Source (CPD update bullitin) From September 2012, the teaching profession will be working to brand new professional standards. The government has launched a review because it thinks that teachers’ standards have become ‘a vague list of woolly aspirations’ that do not focus on the essentials of teaching. Announcing the review, education secretary Michael Gove said that heads and teachers had told him in ‘no uncertain terms’ that the...

Source ( PCPro) Teachers could get the right to search mobile phone content in a bid to clampdown on cyber-bullying under the new Education Bill. The bill was introduced into parliament in January and is now being honed in committees, but education officials are split over the need for Draconian rules that would would enable teachers to search a pupil’s mobile phone. Part of the bill’s remit is to “help teachers maintain good discipline”, and some...

“Last week I joined a colleague and a school in Wakefield to deliver a day’s training on the NEW Fizzbook 10.1 and the rather special SMART Classroom Suite software.” It was my first opportunity to really analyse the Fizzbooks along with 30 mixed primary teachers and see if their reaction warranted all the hype. We started the session with a Fizzbook 10.1 for every teacher and asked them to switch them on.  First test passed!  We then played with...

Amongst the myriad of new releases from the coalition, forging new areas of public openness recently, two documents caught my eye as interesting and yet somehow unnerving. The schools White Paper, (Education.gov) , the importance of teaching “sets out a radical reform programme for the schools system, with schools freed from the constraints of central Government direction and teachers placed firmly at the heart of school improvement”. The foreword, we’re...

The axing of school buildings ‘unfair’, High Court hears Source (BBC) Six councils have told the High Court that ministers acted “unfairly and unlawfully” when they abolished school building schemes in England. The Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme, introduced by Labour, was axed in July after the coalition government came to power. Education Secretary Michael Gove said the scheme was needlessly bureaucratic and beset by...

Source (BBC) Early intervention will improve the lives of vulnerable children and help break the cycle of “dysfunction and under-achievement”, a report says. The government-commissioned report recommends regular assessments of all pre-school children, focusing on their social and emotional development. Graham Allen’s report also calls for a national parenting programme in the UK. The Labour MP was asked to assess how children from disadvantaged...