Labour to junk Tony Blair’s flagship school reform

Headteachers to get more powers as era of centralised control ends

Farewell then the Numeracy and Literacy Strategy, all the heartache and disillusion these strategies have caused. For me the Literacy Strategy was always worse than the Numeracy, but then I’ve always found maths easier to teach. Just that bit more linear and explainable in bite size chunks.

Who remembers with fondness ‘the carousel’? It went against the grain of all your instincts as a teacher but it was the ‘bees knees’ and the way things had to be done. Similarly, I will miss trying to get in three of four objectives into a lesson and squashing all the weeks objectives into a weeks planning  and then throwing in the few that didn’t quite fit.. That 15 15 20 10 monika, although that’s largely gone, will be sadly let go.

Around the time they realised they’d left out speaking and listening from the melting pot, they began to blame teachers for it’s loss, saying it was within the National Curriculum really.

This blame game seems to be happening again on a big scale, “well the literacy strategy and the numeracy strategy were never statutary.” They might not have been but heaven help you if you weren’t doing them. Non Statutary - Foobah! It’s a bit like those ‘non statutary’ Yearly SATs tests which SATurated the time in school with so many tests. It took a brave head to stand out against ‘The Strategies” given the weight of paperwork, the advisors, the school development officers who advocated it, even if they didn’t believe in it’s advocacy. They all parroted the line. Even the University lecturers, who knew it wasn’t enough.

We’ll all miss that great timesaver, the online planning tool, that never worked!

There are so many fond memories from these fantastic strategies. Fantasy indeed both the thought and the strategies.

Will they take the website down? How will we plan? What are we going to do? How will ofsted check us? It’s all up for grabs now?

And why? Not because anyone has seen sense but because it all costs too much. On a day when the Bankers get their bonuses Back, 2000 steel workers loose their jobs and British Airways Staff are asked to work for free.

Are there comparisons to be made with ‘Care in the Community’? Pity the poor heads, who will have to make it work on a local scale?

Whithered ‘Education, Education, Education. on the vine, it did. In ‘whatsit’ speak ‘improvements have stalled’ But belatedly people have realised that teaching to a test can can only stall or get 100% every year and then you’re really up against it.

We need some better measures of what constitutes a good education. No longer, narrowly defined outcomes will measure our success. That narrow path has lead to the world we live in.

This appeared this morning.

Cadenzas in a curriculum

My school days were lit up by two wonderful teachers. Would there be room for them today?

Rebecca Front in the Guardian. Friday 26th June 2009