From ‘flashdance’ teachers becoming an online hit, to boys being put off by ‘long’ books, plans for extra years to study for core subjects and parents being reprimanded for wearing nightware to school meetings – what’s making the headlines in the world of education? We take our monthly poke around the papers to find out what’s got people talking.

Two years more studying for English & maths

Education Secretary Michael Gove has announced plans to tackle the number of pupils leaving school without a basic grasp of English or maths, says The Guardian.

Addressing MPs, Mr Gove said pupils who fail to achieve a good GCSE in English and maths will be made to study these subjects for a further two years, or to take a high-quality alternative qualification, until they leave school at 18.

The plans are part of the government’s response to a specially commissioned review into vocational qualifications. The review found that up to 400,000 teenagers were “wasting their time on college courses that did not lead to jobs or further training”.

Boys put off by long books

A survey into boys’ reading habits has found many teachers may be avoiding longer texts, as they believe boys ‘switch off’ if a book is too long, reports the Daily Telegraph.

The poll questioned 500 teachers of 11-13 year olds and found around a quarter believe that boys’ interest is often lost in the first few pages. Around one in five (22%) say it can happen within 50 pages and a further 24% at around the 100-page mark.

The research was conducted to mark the launch of Heroes, a school reading series aimed at boys. Of 260 boys aged 11-13 questioned, one in five said they prefer books with 100 pages or less.

Teachers become YouTube hit

Teachers at a high school in Fife have become a YouTube hit since they surprised pupils with an impromptu ‘flashdance’ performance, reports the Daily Mail.

Around 40 teachers at Bell Baxter High School in Cupar broke into a medley of cheesy pop songs in the school’s busy canteen, in honour of older pupils who were due to leave the school. Stunned pupils watched as teachers sang and danced to classic hits such as ‘YMCA’ and ‘Thriller’ before erupting into rapturous applause for the unexpected display. The YouTube hit has now racked up over 350,000 views.

The long and short of it

A 12-year old pupil from Cambridge decided to tackle a rule he thought was discriminatory, by wearing a knee length skirt to school in protest, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Aspiring politician Chris Whitehead decided to wear the skirt in protest that boys are banned from wearing shorts during the summer months, while girls can wear skirts. He marched to school while a group of pupils waved banners, before addressing over 1000 pupils in morning assembly wearing the skirt.

Teacher in the mire over Facebook comments

A teacher in Cornwall has apologised after branding a pupil’s coursework as ‘s**te’ on Facebook. The teacher, from Falmouth School, made the comments after working late into the evening marking year 11 coursework. They were immediately contacted by the pupil who said the comments were a ‘bit harsh’.

Unions have warned that the line between private and professional life is blurring and that teachers need to be very wary, says the Daily Mail.

In a similar case, a group of primary school teachers, including a deputy head, have been criticised by parents for posting photos of themselves on Facebook. The photos show the group on a night out, wearing army gear and posing ‘provocatively’. Privacy settings were not used to keep the images out of the public view, again reports the Daily Mail.

Pole dancing classes spark outrage

Meanwhile a dance school which is running pole dancing classes for children as young as twelve has caused outrage among residents, Christian groups and a local MP, says the Daily Mirror.

The Art of Dance pole dance and burlesque school in Plymouth is reportedly offering the classes for children aged 12 to 15 for £5-an-hour, saying it is a ‘gymnastic art, helping pupils get fitter, stronger and more confident’.

Kent school excludes eight pupils a day

The head teacher of a school where more than 400 pupils have been excluded in the space of six months has quit, reports the Daily Mirror. Christopher Sweetman has left Bishop of Rochester Academy in Kent, a school where 738 incidents of bad behaviour were logged by teachers in just one week.

And finally….

Parents reprimanded for attending meetings in nightwear

It seems it’s no longer just naughty pupils who are getting into trouble with head teachers; the parents of pupils at 11 Middlesbrough primary schools have been asked to improve their ‘decency and respect’ by ensuring they come to the school gates properly dressed, reports The Daily Express.

Parents have been issued with letters making the request following an increase in the number of parents turning up to drop off and collect pupils, and even attending meetings with teaching staff, wearing pyjamas or nightwear.

But, claims the Express, wearing pyjamas outdoors is ‘common in the town’, it quotes one pyjama wearer as saying: “I can’t be bothered getting dressed.”

Tweet

What’s making the headlines in the world of education? Here we take our monthly snoop around the papers to find out what’s got people talking. From exceedingly good cakes from Rudyard Kipling, to playground games getting the boot and bad pupil behaviour that’s blamed on the weather, join us and have your say.

Playground favourites expelled

A survey of school staff by the Association of Teachers & Lecturers (ATL) has found playground games such as British bulldog, conkers and leapfrog are increasingly facing the axe due to safety concerns and schools becoming more risk averse.

Research was published at the ATL teaching union’s annual conference in Liverpool. Of the 653 school staff they surveyed, more than a quarter said British bulldog has been banned, playing conkers has been banned for 14% and leapfrog for 9%.

Bad behaviour blamed on the weather

Governors say adverse weather conditions – wind and rain – are partly to blame for the aggressive behaviour of some pupils at a school in Lancashire.

Seventy of the 80 staff at Darwen Vale high school in Blackburn say students are out of control, pushing them, challenging them to fights and threatening to film their lessons and post them online. Staff have criticised school management, saying they feel unsupported by governors and the head teacher, leading them to stage a walk-out.

However, a senior governor has defended management, saying the violent and abusive behaviour of pupils is in some part due to the bad weather.

See also our earlier blog: Discipline: do teachers get enough support?

Parents don’t have money to feed children

In a separate survey by the ATL, teachers have revealed that pupils are turning up to school hungry and in worn out clothes because their parents do not have enough money to feed and clothe them. Four out of five teachers said poverty is affecting their students and many fear the situation will worsen.

Teachers ‘should have a good degree’

Most teachers believe students should be required to have a good level of degree to work in the classroom, according to research published in the Daily Telegraph.

Some 62% said trainees should have at least a 2:2 to work in secondary schools and 58% said students should have a decent degree to work in further education colleges. However, many insisted that degree classification alone was not enough to guarantee a good teacher.

Female stereotypes in schools

Ofsted has criticised mixed sex schools, saying they are not doing enough to promote girls’ confidence and ambitions. A survey from the School’s Inspector has found work placements for female students are almost all in ‘stereotypically female’ occupations. Out of more than 1,700 examples of work placements, less than a tenth were ‘unconventional’, while the vast majority were in education, hair and beauty, offices and shops.

Girls in single sex schools exhibited the most positive attitudes, with pupils saying they would definitely consider doing jobs stereotypically done by men.

Exceedingly good cakes from Rudyard Kipling?

More than one in three children in the UK think Rudyard Kipling makes cakes, says an article in the Daily Mail.

The research was carried out to support an initiative to print extracts from children’s books and poems to breakfast cereal boxes.

And finally…

Time travel concerns for parents

Parents in China are worried that their children are seriously thinking about how to time travel, says an article on Chinese website Xin Hua News.

Parents’ concerns have grown since pupils started writing about time travel in school essays and exams. One teacher quoted puts the popularity of time travel fantasies down to pupils needing an escape from school pressures and as a response to a lack of available quality reading material.

The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, China’s film and television watchdog, has reportedly issued a circular to discourage the broadcast of time travel related shows.

Tweet

With Lancashire teachers taking the highly unusual move of striking over pupils’ bad behaviour and a ‘lack of backing from management’, we ask just how widespread these kinds of concerns are.

It’s an abnormal day when teachers strike over issues other than pay and conditions. It was widely reported in the media last week that around 70 staff at Darwen Vale High School in Darwen, Lancashire went on strike and formed picket lines to protest over what they described as threats, violence and ‘poor management.’

The Lancashire Telegraph reported that ‘members of the NUT and the NASUWT voted overwhelmingly to take strike action to protest against the management’s failure to support staff in dealing with challenging pupil behaviour.’

‘Children no better or worse than anywhere else’
A representative from the local NUT branch emphasised to the BBC that the school’s children were no better or worse than anywhere else: “This is not a strike against pupils. It is about management and management failure to support staff in dealing with challenging behaviour.”

The school is now said to be in discussion with the unions and staff to resolve the situation and to ensure “that staff feel well supported when they do need to deal with behaviour issues.”

‘Creating an allegations war zone’
The action came during a week when education secretary Michael Gove was accused of creating a “much more aggressive culture” and “creating an allegations war zone,” when he issued new guidance to schools on discipline, which reminds teachers that, where necessary, heads can bring criminal charges against pupils.

Darwen Vale has been rated as a good school, with pupils’ behaviour also given a good rating, by Ofsted (June 2010).

If you’re a teacher, do you feel supported by management over discipline issues? Do teaching staff need greater powers to deal with unruly behaviour? Why not share your views below?

Tweet

The recent decision to publish reports detailing how much money English Secondary Schools are spending compared to how their students are performing in exams, has caused much debate amongst those who support the decision and those who oppose it.

The government describes the move as a drive for transparency and feels that by identifying schools which are spending more than others, steps can then be made to reduce costs and make significant savings.

Those who are not in favour of this information being published argue that there may be genuine and unpreventable reasons for two neighbouring schools to be spending such varying amounts of money. For example, one school may have poorly insulated buildings so will have higher heating bills, have no leisure facilities so has to pay to use others or mostly have members of staff near the top of the incremental pay grades.

Ministers have argued that this move has not been conducted in order to point the finger, but rather to make people realise that throwing money at schools does not necessarily being them better results. They have concluded that those spending more don’t necessarily perform better and there is no proven correlation between spending and results.

Various studies into this matter have been conducted but no concrete evidence has ever been found. The only finding has been a link between good results and teachers’ salaries. It has been found that countries which invest a higher proportion of their wealth into teachers’ pay, do tend to get better results.

What do you think about this information being made readily available to the public? Do you think it will help to reduce costs in schools or should these details be kept private? Let us know your thoughts below.

Tweet

Spending more and more time in meetings that often go nowhere? From a meeting between an NQT and their mentor, to staff meetings, year group meetings or even a parents’ evening, we examine essential skills and techniques that can boost productivity and save your time.

Meetings can be a great way to communicate and make decisions. They can even be empowering. But any type of meeting can slip into a kind of meaningless blur if appropriate boundaries aren’t set. They can end in confusion – even acrimony. Or they can conclude with all having a sense of having participated in making key decisions, and knowing what they need to go away and do to put them into effect.

“Our staff meetings used to drag on without much focus, or a clear end time, every Monday after school,” reports one, now ex-, teacher. “We couldn’t go and tidy our classrooms until it had finished.”

So what went wrong?

“The people who ran it needed to keep their points short, focused, and not let issues be hijacked by every person giving their anecdote about what happened at their last school. Each meeting needs a definite finish time to allow participants to give their full attention, knowing that afterwards they’ll have time to complete their other duties.

“Whoever is chairing needs to let everyone have a chance to speak, to give ideas – and to then move it along, especially if it’s in the lunch hour and people need to get back. Letting people go off the point and ramble on and on is a big time waster.”

Why have meetings at all?
It all begs the question: what are meetings for in the first place? Is a meeting really necessary at all? Generally meetings are considered the place to communicate information and make decisions. And it’s true: they can be a great place to do that if effectively run. But it is worth stepping back and considering who needs to be invited to make the decisions, and whether some information would best be communicated in another way – on a noticeboard or via an intranet or email, for example.

Chairing skills are critical
Chairing the meeting effectively is clearly critical to keep things on track. Part of the art of chairing, like teaching, is effective preparation. Creating and circulating an agenda that identifies each decision that needs to be made is essential. Ideally a time budget should be allocated for each item, which allows for some discussion or even brainstorming where it’s useful, but which can be used to steer the meeting back on course when things look like overrunning. Many swear by limiting Any Other Business to 15 minutes or less, to end on time – and in reasonable spirits! To keep things short and sweet some even champion meetings where everyone has to stand up throughout the entire proceedings!

While it’s important to have an assertive chairperson who always has an eye on the clock, it’s also important that they encourage everyone to have a say, value each contribution, know how to intervene and can move on to the next item while not putting people down by ending a discussion abruptly. The chair also needs to be able to defer decisions that can’t actually be made for some reason – perhaps due to a lack of information. This prevents the meeting getting bogged down in discussing issues that can’t be decided anyway.

It’s also important to be aware of ‘hidden agendas’ and ‘game playing’ that can go on between personalities in meetings at a covert level, and which, if not nipped in the bud, can hijack the real agenda and waste hours of everyone’s time through point-scoring and nit-picking.

If you’re new to chairing, it can all seem rather daunting. But the good news is that many of the skills required can be learned through practice.

Parents’ evenings
If you’re a teacher at a parents’ evening, you’ll need to chair your own small meeting. You’ll probably only have about ten minutes with each parent, so being assertive and keeping things on track is essential. Strategies might be: to note a big issue and defer it to another meeting or another member of staff; to ensure the parent only discusses the child in question; and, when the time’s run out, to stand up, smile and thank the attendees for coming and to explain that you now have to move on to your next meeting.

As a meeting participant
Meeting participants should prepare beforehand, by reading through background papers and considering how they can add to the discussion. Arrive at the meeting on time, and remember to focus on issues and not personalities. You are at the meeting to listen, so it’s good to demonstrate you’ve done this and acknowledge others’ contributions even if you disagree with them, before putting forward your own views.

Keep a record
It’s important that some kind of record is kept of virtually all kinds of meeting. More formal meetings need a minute taker – a skilled job in itself. Minutes don’t need to record every nuance of debate, but in general just key decisions. And, critically, actions must be recorded, with one or more individuals assigned to each.

Minutes should be circulated swiftly following the meeting, and reviewed at the beginning of the next one to check that actions have been carried out. At more informal meetings, perhaps between just two or three people, it may well be enough for each participant to take their own notes about what’s been decided and what they’ve agreed to do.

And when it’s all over
When the meeting ends, it’s time for the decisions to be put into effect through actions. And if actions are consistently not being completed by the next meeting, you may well be holding too many meetings!

For extra marks, when your meeting’s over you might want to find out from some of the participants how they think it went – and how your next meeting can be improved.

Share your tips with us – do you know of any tips that have made your meetings more effective? Have you tried and tested any methods that really work? Add a comment now!