Monday, May 05, 2008

Statements of the Obvious.....

The Institute for Public Policy Reserach used to be regarded as one of the key New Labour think-tanks, thinking the things that others didn't dare to. So how about today's stunning report, which looks at teaching and concludes that better teachers can get higher grades out of students than poor teachers! I don't know about the level of intellectual rigour required for teachers in today's climate, but I'm beginning to wonder if think-tanks aren't picking up a few duds themselves!!

The report apparently also says teachers should be given 20 days training a year. A good idea, once you've dealt with the currently absymal state of teacher training. We have a couple of INSET days coming up which will offer nothing more useful than government initiatives poorly presented, and which could be better focused on offering revision sessions to exam classes. And I can well remember attending several days on one of the government's flagship training courses (run by something called the National College for School Leadership) and wanting to go and pick salt grains in Siberia rather than suffer any more of their extraordinarily low-level 'training'.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe if you paid attention, you'd get beeter grades out of your students rather than take them on hotel-trashing tours around Europe. Pier

Anonymous said...

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