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England’s schools should take lessons from Japan and the Far East on how to improve performance, the shadow education secretary says. Stephen Twigg says despite many school reforms, there has been little change to the style of classroom teaching since Victorian times. Labour’s number one priority for education is raising the quality and status of [...]

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Parents were told today to demand more of grammar schools that are “coasting”. Some are not being held to account for failing to stretch bright children, as might a comprehensive, because admission is so competitive that parents are only too pleased that their child has won a place, says the Good Schools Guide. Figures from [...]

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Teachers are being told not to  correct more than three spelling errors at a time to avoid damaging pupils’ self-confidence, an MP revealed yesterday. Andrew Selous highlighted the practice at a secondary school in his South West Bedfordshire constituency but fears it is widespread across the country. The Tory MP condemned not correcting all errors [...]

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Neil Sinclair has spent six years in the commandos. He has survived winters in Arctic Norway, cleared minefields in Iraq and tracked drug traffickers in the jungles of Belize. He has guarded the British mission to the United Nations in New York. But he has never felt so panic-stricken as when he was facing a howling two-month-old at 3am. [...]

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All-girl schools could be pushed to the margins as pupils increasingly reject the “reserved” surroundings of single-sex education in favour of mixed classrooms, according to the editor of The Good Schools Guide. Lord Lucas estimated that fee-paying girls’ schools were in danger of losing a quarter of their British pupils over the next 20 years as [...]

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Boarding school in the 1960s usually conjures up images of cane-wielding disciplinarians, Latin lessons and smart uniform. But not if you had the fortune to go to the avant garde social experiment that was Burgess Hill – where lessons were voluntary. Fancy a cigarette during class? No problem. Plough through the school grounds on a motorbike? [...]

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As educators, we have a genuine wish to contribute to a happier society. And yet, we sometimes wonder how we can keep this intention alive and make it a reality. Do you remember this letter written by a Holocaust survivor? It said: “My eyes saw what no person should witness: gas chambers built by learned [...]

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In 2009 the UK’s education policy directors suffered a significant blow. The PISA tests (OECD Programme for International Study Assessment) results were published, ranking the UK way down the international league table in reading, maths and science. In total 65 countries were assessed; the UK scored: 25th in reading, 28th in maths and 16th in [...]

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Children whose minds wander ‘have sharper brains’ Children whose minds wander might have sharper brains, research suggests. The results appear to confirm previous research that found working memory allows humans to juggle multiple thoughts simultaneously Photo: CORBIS 8:37PM GMT 16 Mar 2012232 Comments A study has found that people who appear to be constantly distracted have [...]

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A Birmingham woman who had “issues with language” as child has been appointed the National Storytelling Laureate. Katrice Horsley said: “I would have been classed as a selective mute by today’s standards I suppose.” She said that telling stories became “her salvation” and she planned to make people aware of the importance of storytelling and [...]

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We were watching Family Fortunes. I was 11 – a late-blooming August baby who looked more like a nine-year-old. A Sunday evening: the end of my first week at high school. It was darkish: my dad liked to have the big lights off and only one of the fringed table lamps on at a time, [...]

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