Wednesday, June 18, 2008
News in brief, June 2008
A summary of educational news items from June.
Find Your Talent Pilot Areas Announced.
The pilot areas for the UK government initiative to provide all schoolchildren with 5 hours of cultural activity each week have been announced by the DCSF. The scheme, Find Your Talent, will be run in conjunction with Arts Council England, starting in September. The 10 trial areas were selected from 141 who applied and will trial different approaches and collaborations with arts organisations to give children access to cultural experiences in and out of school. The ten pilot lead organisations are:
Bolton Borough Council; The Creative Foundation (serving Shepway District and including Folkestone, Hythe and Romney Marsh); Customs House (North and South Tyneside); Hampshire County Council; Leeds Children’s Services; Leicestershire County Council; ‘Liverpool City Region’ Partnership (serving three Merseyside neighbourhoods); North Somerset; Telford and Wrekin Council; and Tower Hamlets.
To find out more about the Find Your Talent initiative, click here.
Winners of the 21st Century Learning Alliance Awards were announced on 18th June.
The awards which are judged the alliance formed of representatives of key educational bodies including NCSL and BECTA, are designed to identify and reward innovative practice in providing education for the learners in the 21st century. Four schools were jointly recognised in the 2008 awards for leading the way in the main aspects of 21st century learning: teaching and learning methods; people; resources and curriculum; time and space. The schools are: Abbots Green Community Primary School in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk; Leasowes Community College in Halesowen, West Midlands; Cramlington Community High School, Northumberland; and Greys Education Centre in Kempston, Bedford.
The 21st Century Learning Alliance, set-up in 2006 aims to encourage, support and promote change to make teaching and learning the most appropriate for learners in the 21st. There are case-studies of all the winning schools on the website.
Rise in number of secondary school teachers with a degree in subject currently teaching.
Teaching is a well-qualified profession with 96% of teachers in UK secondary schools having a degree or higher qualifications. However, it has been a well-known secret that behind this picture there have been many teachers teaching subjects they do not have a degree in, often as well as and sometimes instead of their own degree subject. This situation usually arises from staff shortages in certain subject areas and timetable constraints
Now a new survey reveals positive new figures. The Secondary School Curriculum and Staffing Survey is commissioned by the UK government every few years as an audit of teacher's qualifications in relation to the subjects they teach. The results of the 2007 survey have just been published and reveal that the number of teachers with a degree in the subject they are teaching had increased by 10% since the last survey in 2002. There is still huge variation between subjects with some subjects less than 10% (careers education) and the highest 87% (music).
The latest survey was conducted by NFER, with 14,147 teachers from 327 schools taking part.
More primary schools are offering language teaching as part of their curriculum.
When the UK government accepted the findings of the Dearing Review of language teaching in full it included the recomendation for all primary schools to teach languages. Following the consideration of the report the government announced a target of all primary school children in England and Wales to have the opportunity to study another language by 2010. Since then there have been lots of initiatives announced, launched and funded across England and Wales.
New research by NFER, published in June 2008, reveals that progress is being made. The proportion of primary age children studying a foreign language was 84% in 2007, a dramatic increase from 44% in 2002.
Significantly, there has been an increase in the amount of the language teaching which is part of the curriculum in the classroom, rather than in a lunchtime or after-school club. 84% of provision took place in the classroom in the latest survey, increased from 70% in 2006.
Most provision is still focused on key stage two, although 54% of primary schools are teaching languages to all year groups in the latest survey.
The findings of the survey, commissioned by the UK government indicate that children are now, and in the future, are very likely to arrive at secondary school with some experience and confidence in language learning. It is anticipated that these learners will be more likely than current secondary school students, who commonly started studying languages at age 11/12, to opt to continue language study to GCSE, A Level and in higher education.
The NFER survey was based on a questionnaire sent to all local authorities in England and a survey of nearly 4,000 schools.
The final report of the Williams Review of Primary Mathematics teaching in England has been published.
Following a period of research and wide consultation, the Williams report was published this month. The key findings are that although there has been some improvement in the teaching and understanding of mathematics in the primary classroom through the introduction of the National Numeracy Strategy there are still significant gaps in the knowledge of teachers and the conceptual understanding of pupils. The report highlights that the UK is one of the few industrialised countries where there is a culture of acceptance of lack of knowledge and understanding in maths in adults and hopes that it's recommendations will prevent this continuing into future generations.
The review argues for an increase in maths specialists in both early years settings and primary schools with a recommendation of a trained maths specialist in every primary school in ten years time. The final report proposes a rigorous two year training programme for existing maths co-ordinators or other teachers to raise their expertise with financial rewards such as £2,500 on completion of training and £2,500 for those who gain a Masters Degree in mathematics.
A further finding is that more specific maths play should be introduced in pre-school early years settings and using mental maths and the language of maths with children of all ages.
The government has accepted the findings of the Williams Review and committed to a ten year training programme costing £187m to complete.
To read the Williams Review in full, click here.
University College London and The Open University have become the first UK universities to make lectures, interviews, seminars and news available for free on iTunes. Using a part of the iTunes store designed for universities, iTunes U , students will be able to download lectures and seminars free at anytime. Some of the materials will be available for the general public to download free too. To have a look, visit theucl site or the ou site.