Northern Education Activists

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Baseline Boycott: Why we should take a stand!

Imagine a world where the actions of a 4-year-old go on to determine their worth for years to come. I’d like you to picture Tom. Tom spent every day crawling on his hands and knees in a circle before he sat on the carpet. He liked to hide under chairs and had a fondness for running up behind people and sniffing them. Tom did not like sitting still for very long; at 4 years old, why should he? Give him an adult led task and he would not give you his attention. Why? Because you’d stopped him from doing what he loved: being a dog. Asking Tom to sit and answer test based questions on an iPad was an absolute waste of time. I knew that Tom could blend and segment simple CVC words and recognise most tricky words, I knew he could count to 50 and I knew he was starting to be able to write recognisable words. I did not need a baseline test on an iPad to tell me that. And neither did Tom. Tom was exactly where he needed to be. He was making progress and was having a successful ...

Invisible Children: How we are sweeping SEND under the carpet

The crisis in SEND has reached epidemic proportions; children and their families are in crisis. There is no money, there are no places, there is no support. In the Statement of SEN and ECH plans published by the DFE in May 2017 it was reported that over 8000 children currently do not have a place in an educational setting. I believe this is just the tip of the iceberg. What about the children who are on reduced timetables, what about the children who are receiving 2 hours a week of tutoring. These children are not counted in these number, these children also deserve a full and balanced curriculum where they can thrive. I recently carried out a survey of parents with children with SEND and the facts are shocking; within 30 hours of posting the survey on a SEND support page on social media I had received over 100 responses of those responses 59% of parents stated their children where not in the type of setting they wanted. Over 39% of parents reported that it had taken over 2 ...

Everyone's' place is in their Union.

A Nursery teacher, a Maths teacher, an English teacher and a Physics teacher walk into a pub… Sorry it’s not a joke, although often hilarity ensues and inevitably someone falls over. These are my union colleagues, my support network and my friends. Most teachers are in a union. If you are reading this and you are not- stop reading and go join one immediately and then come back and read the rest. I have been in the NUT since 2003 when I started my training. I’ve used the union benefits to get cheap home insurance and discounted vouchers but other than that my union membership was always an insurance policy just in case something terrible happened a work. I did join the call to strike way back in 2008 but other than that I was not an active union member. This changed about 2 years ago when a Young Teacher Officer got in touch to suggest I became the rep in my school. It sounded interesting and I decided to meet up with her at a division committee meeting. This meeting h...

We have a rich musical tradition - let’s not make it just a historical one

Let me make it clear from the start – I love music. I love playing music. I love listening to music. It provides the background to so much of my life – the good times and the bad. In fact “We’ve come a long, long way together, through the bad times and the good! It was this love of music that inspired my option choices at school – taking music at O and A level. It was music that was my main study when training as a Primary teacher years ago, and it was as a music teacher that I gained my first job – and others since! So what is wrong, I hear you ask! Where do I begin? For too long, schools have been narrowing down their curriculum. Whether this is for alleged lack of interest at GCSE and above is open to debate, but if the option does not exist in school then how can children study the subject. Music, like sport, is a life-enriching study. Many clubs, band, orchestras etc take place outside curriculum time. Certa...

SATs destroyed my son's love of reading

Once upon a time there was a boy, let’s call him Child 1. He loved school, he loved learning he wrote beautifully. Then one day he started to get upset at the thought of school. He cried on a Sunday night. He complained that his day was spent completing dull comprehension and soon he began to hate reading. Then along comes child 2. He loves school, he loves books, he writes beautifully. In fact he spent his summer writing a journal about his adventures. His idea of fun is snuggling up in bed and reading a book. He is seven. He reads paper back novels and begs for another chapter before he goes to bed each night. These children have similar life experience. They are brothers. They exceed ARE in all subjects. But there is one significant difference. Child 1 has had his love of learning squashed. His writing is stilted and awkward. He hates to read. But why? SATs. Every piece of writing (including his letter to Santa) has a ‘Did you know’ fact. To demonstrate that h...

Memorable moments can be educational... educational moments often aren't...

From an Early Years Teacher based 'Beyond the Wall'. I feel a boycott coming on… Walking into any Early Years classroom, I expect to see mess. Toys strewn across the carpet, paint dripping from an easel, playdough that has fallen from the table onto the floor mixed with sand that has met a similar fate. Mess shows that children are interested in their environment, are engaged with it and are learning through their play. When I moved into my new classroom this summer, I removed roughly 3 tables. Tables that were for children to sit and ‘work’ at. The children are 3 and 4 years old. They should be learning through play not sitting at desks being forced to do work in a book. This week I was deeply saddened and angered by the Bold Beginnings report in which Ofsted claim that Reception aged children are being failed by a lack of emphasis on reading, writing and maths. The idea that 3 R’s should be taught formally, not through a play based curriculum, is one that ...

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