secondary school | Schools Week

Secondary moderns must have a voice, too

Grammar schools are back in the news with Nicky Morgan’s approval of a Kent school’s expansion. But they’ve never been away, with one in five students in England attending a school affected by academic selection The National Association for Secondary Moderns (NASM) sees the expansion of a Kent grammar school as a chance to raise […]

Ofsted’s Michael Wilshaw praised primaries – but missed some important points

Ofsted’s Chief Inspector had positive words for primary schools in his first monthly address – but was it as genuine as it seemed? It’s difficult to judge whether Sir Michael Wilshaw’s first written monthly commentary is in praise of primary schools, as he claims, or really an attack on secondary schools. Those of us in […]

“Dare we hope the new post-16 maths course will change pupils’ minds about the subject?”

The Channel 4 series Educating Cardiff is a brilliant portrait of school life and, along with its predecessors set in Essex and Yorkshire, it is doing much to shine a light on secondary education in modern Britain. In one particularly telling moment in the current series, a pupil sums up the mood of generations of […]

Why I moved from secondary to primary and love it

Six years in a challenging secondary school were fulfilling, but this Teach First ambassador wanted to make the greatest possible impact on children’s lives. And so she switched to the primary sector My road to Damascus was a graffiti-clad street in Berlin, which is where I escaped to after almost six years of slogging it […]

Let’s move towards graduation at 18

Tristram Hunt is right to suggest a move away from exams at 16-plus. But there’s a danger in his proposals for a 14-19 curriculum Most developed countries have graduation at 18. Few tests are taken at 16-plus and if they are, they are restricted to core subjects. The OECD found in 2011 that just 15 […]

‘If I were education secretary (again)…’

Secondary schools have become an increasingly diverse and rather chaotic gathering. It seems to be held together (more or less) by Ofsted and the examination system, with huge emphasis on league tables and exam grades to the detriment of creativity and imagination. The result is the imposing of great stress on youngsters in the later […]

Why do secondary pupils pick easier reading books than primary pupils?

James Bell, Director of Professional Services at Renaissance Learning, discusses the challenges of the secondary transfer and the impact this can have on student progression, as well as what can be done to combat any negative effects. Just as moving house or job can be stressful and require a period of settling in, the move […]

The complicated ‘truths’ of the SAT resit debate

The Conservatives will force year 7 pupils to resit their SAT exams if they don’t achieve a level 4 while at primary school. Is it a good idea? The answer isn’t as black and white as we may initially believe. Things that are true – Children who don’t get a level 4 in English […]

The myth busters

Education bursts with myths: such as teachers don’t need qualifications, local authorities control schools and academies raise standards. But there are more, all of them easy to disprove. And it’s vital that they are Many things widely supposed in education to be true, simply aren’t. It’s widely supposed that choice, competition and markets are the […]