Secret Teacher: I'd rather leave the job I love than teach Gove's propaganda | Teacher Network | Guardian Professional The Secret Teacher would rather leave the teaching profession than put up with the proposed curriculum changes. Photograph: Alamy I was once the sort of graduate that Teach First now aims to entice into teaching . Having studied history at Oxford and considered academic research I decided to teach instead. People's reactions were sadly reflective of the status of teaching. One tutor sneeringly asked why I was "intent on pedagogy?" Now, some 17 years on, I know hardly anyone with greater job satisfaction than me. Yet none of these frustrations threaten the essence of the job. My pupils are a constant source of intellectual challenge, especially now the information revolution has democratised history. But I won't put up with what's happening now. Gove wants me to jettison academic integrity, to exchange teaching a serious subject with civilising, democratising and humanising potential, for the imparting of nationalist propaganda.
Headteachers pass vote of no confidence in education policies | Politics Michael Gove has been accused of bullying headteachers into turning schools into academies. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images Headteachers have passed a vote of no confidence in the government's education policies, declaring that Michael Gove 's policies are not in the best interests of children. Delegates at the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) conference in Birmingham raised concerns about the new national curriculum, major test and exam reforms and schools being forced into becoming academies . Tim Gallagher, proposing the motion, said: "Enough is enough. The NAHT is the first headteachers' union to pass a vote of no confidence in the government's education reforms. The UK's three biggest teachers' unions, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the NASUWT passed similar votes at their Easter conferences. "You cannot fail to be aware that the morale of the profession is at an all-time low.
Gove's claims of teenagers' ignorance harpooned by retired teacher | Politics The education secretary, Michael Gove, has come under fire for citing PR-commissioned opinion polls as evidence of teenagers' ignorance of key historical events. Gove's department has admitted he cited polls originating from Premier Inn and UKTV Gold press releases. Gove said in a Mail on Sunday article in March: "Survey after survey has revealed disturbing historical ignorance, with one teenager in five believing Winston Churchill was a fictional character while 58% think Sherlock Holmes was real." The comments prompted Janet Downs, who describes herself as a grandparent and retired teacher, to send a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the Department for Education asking for the evidence to support Gove's claim. Three weeks later, the department wrote back to say "unfortunately, I am not able to provide you with the details of the survey as it was commissioned and conducted by UKTV Gold". "There is plenty of other evidence to support this argument.
Govewatch: The curious case of Mrs Blurt: why Gove must go Over the past few months, Michael Gove and his advisers have brought the Department for Education into disrepute through their use of private email for official government business. By neglecting to use their governmental email addresses, they had hoped to exploit a loophole which would prevent their correspondence being vulnerable to a Freedom of Information request. In a scandal that is befitting of the cliched '-gate' suffix, Gove and his advisers have taken a number of measures to prevent the public from accessing this information. The first was the choice to use their private email addresses in the first place. In the case of Michael Gove, this meant a bizarre pseudonym called 'Mrs Blurt'. The second was to claim that it was 'party political business', which is not covered by the FOI act. The third and final way, and perhaps the most dubious, has been to reveal that these emails are not available because they have been deleted. Perhaps the DfE spokesman was inadvertently spot-on.
Teachers speak out against Michael Gove's 'lists of facts' curriculum - UK Politics - UK The unprecedented grass-roots revolt by teachers comes after 100 leading academics signed a letter to The Independent savaging the new curriculum's obsession with "lists of facts". The teachers' main concerns are over the contents and direction of the new curriculum – specifically its return to more rigid rote learning – and what they perceive as Mr Gove's dismissive attitude towards his critics, They are also angry at the restricted consultation period over the proposals of just over two months – which expires on Tuesday. The petition, which started as an informal post on one teacher's blog, will be presented to MPs and members of the Commons education select committee in Westminster tomorrow. Debra Kidd, a Manchester secondary school teacher who launched the petition, said those who had signed were "tired of a 'yadda yadda' approach" being adopted by Mr Gove to those who disagreed with his policies. The petition already has the backing of many teachers' leaders, particularly the NUT.
Michael Gove attacks use of Mr Men in iGCSE history lessons | Politics The education secretary, Michael Gove, has attacked a "culture of low expectations" in English schools, criticising the use of Mr Men characters in teaching 15 and 16-year-olds about Hitler. Too many teachers were treating "young people on the verge of university study as though they have the attention span of infants," Gove said. He said worksheets, extracts and mind maps had replaced whole books, sources and conversation in history and other subject lessons. "As long as there are people in education making excuses for failure, cursing future generations with a culture of low expectations, denying children access to the best that has been thought and written, because Nemo and the Mr Men are more relevant, the battle needs to be joined," Gove said. Active History, the online resource for history teachers Gove was referring to, has a lesson plan in which iGCSE students depict the rise of Hitler as a Mr Men story. "Unless, of course, we write for Guardian Education."
Gove's boarding academy borders on the ridiculous | Catherine Bennett | Comment is free | The Observer With his surname out of a Billy Bunter story and views on race dating even further back in British history, Mr John Cherry, Chichester and West Sussex Conservative councillor, has not been an easy character to believe in. Not that one doubts, for a second, the veracity of the Mail on Sunday but, even at their most unreconstructed, the lads at Greyfriars school never accused the Indian prince Hurree Jamset Ram Singh of having urges that would inevitably propel him into the "forest", wherein he would ignite a "sexual volcano". Mr Cherry's views would be arresting at any time; they came to national prominence as residents of Stedham, West Sussex, mustered against a scheme by the Durand Academy to build a weekly state boarding school at a disused school one mile from their homes. For the Conservatives, as the Labour education spokesman, Stephen Twigg, gratefully reminded us, Mr Cherry is not a good look: "It's no surprise people still think of the Conservatives as the nasty party."
Headteachers mock Jesse Norman's claim Eton breeds best public servants | Education | The Observer An attempt by one of David Cameron's policy advisers to defend the number of old Etonians in government backfired when he was lampooned by headteachers for claiming that Eton was better than other schools at promoting a "commitment to public service". Jesse Norman, the Tory MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire, himself an old Etonian, suggested on Saturday that its pupils received the best grooming for office because of the values the school instils in them. "Other schools don't have the same commitment to public service. He added: "It's one of the few schools where the pupils really do run vast chunks of the school themselves. The remarks met with incredulity among heads in the state sector. "I think the gentleman should go into a state school and see what work young people there do on school councils, the voluntary work they are involved in and what they do in the community. Norman praised the way Eton focused on old-fashioned subjects.
Deadline looming? How to write an essay in a hurry Procrastination. The age-old nemesis of the student species. Lurking beneath desks, living inside your laptop and hiding in the library. It teases you with Facebook, dangles your favourite TV show in front of you, and convinces you that now really is a good time to read the Song of Ice and Fire saga. Or, at least, that's what we want to believe. Instead procrastination is merely an inability to dedicate our time appropriately to the task at hand. This advice is not meant to condone laziness or leaving things to the last minute but as a guide for if you do happen, for whatever reason, to be zeroing in on deadline. 1. Before you start writing, work out what textbooks are likely to be of help and find them in the library. 2. Yes, you want to get a good degree in the end. 3. Everyone works at a different speed and only you know how much is possible. 4. Speaking of the bibliography, do it while you write. 5. 6. 7.