The Future Has Arrived

How refreshing it was to read again Sir Ken Robinson in last week’s TES, reflecting on the 10th anniversary of the All Our Futures report on creativity and educational policy in England and Wales, and to consider some of his comments alongside the discussions which are going on around Curriculum for Excellence . Robinson was bemoaning the [...]

Read Full Post »

Brave New World

I would guess this is by far the most significant post I have written since I started the blog, as today I announce to the world that I will be leaving Learning and Teaching Scotland in early July and stepping out into the world on my own as an independent learning consultant. Finally, I will actually be The Literacy [...]

Read Full Post »

Creating Confident Individuals

Thanks to Laurie O’Donnel for reminding me in his recent blogpost of what a significant text Carol Dweck’s Mindset is, especially in the context of the four capacities of Curriculum for Excellence, and in particular the aim to develop confident individuals. To many people, and perhaps particularly to Scots, “confident individuals” has connotations of arrogance or [...]

Read Full Post »

The New Meaning of Text

Today will come to be seen as a landmark in the history of Scottish education, with  the publication of the new Curriculum for Excellence frameworks in the eight curriculum areas of expressive arts, health and wellbeing, languages, mathematics, religious and moral education, sciences, social studies and technologies. The revised curriculum has a clearly stated purpose – to ensure that all the [...]

Read Full Post »

Testing not the Answer

Interesting to read of the interim report of Professor Robin Alexander’s Cambridge Primary Review this week, which delivers a fairly damning account of the state of primary education in England and Wales, claiming that children’s lives are being “impoverished” by the narrow focus on maths, numeracy and literacy at the expense of broader experiences in areas [...]

Read Full Post »

Literacy and Health At Heart of Doon Valley Revival

Continuing my completely coincidental and unplanned return to old haunts last week I found myself in Doon Academy in Dalmellington, where I spent three very interesting, productive and happy years as a young (and very naive) Principal Teacher of English in the early 1980s. This time around I was talking to Patrick – the headteacher [...]

Read Full Post »

PPP-Practise, Participate, Perform

Took the opportunity on Thursday to visit the new Prestwick Academy. Having worked in the old school for over ten years it was always going to be an interesting experience, but I could not have envisaged just what a difference the change of environment would make. Built on the same site with funding from the [...]

Read Full Post »

Get On With Your Work

Most people will be familiar with Pat kane as one half of the succesful pop duo Hue and Cry, but he is also a successful writer, journalist, broadcaster and thinker. In his acclaimed book “The Play Ethic” he explores the notion that human being are players by nature, that we learn and create through play, [...]

Read Full Post »

The Examination Business

I’ve been critical throughout my career of the fact that the examination industry determines how the curriculum is organised in our schools, especially in secondary schools of course. It’s the assessment tail wagging the curriculum dog. Having said that, we do examinations well in this country and of all the examination bodies and systems in the world [...]

Read Full Post »