UK foreign language learners finished ahead of their European peers for the second year running in the Association for Language Learning (ALL) World Championships 2012. UK students answered 5,821,761 questions in a ten-day on-line competition. UK was third in the world overall, winning Bronze medal behind New Zealand (Silver) and Australia (Gold). The top UK school was Colonel Frank Seely School, ... read more and comment →
The project leader of the Riverside Cooperative Free School, a planned secondary school in Barking and Dagenham, told TES that free schools offered teachers the opportunity of “applying alternative models of teaching”. This is despite two-fifths of academy heads in a recent survey saying that there was sufficient room in the national curriculum for innovation and despite thousands of schools ... read more and comment →
Once again Mr Gove shows he is moving away from the high-performing countries he admires. He extolled their curricula but was out-of-step with their proposals. He said he had researched international exam systems so that England could have a system which equals the world’s best but his ideas disregard what these countries are doing (see FAQs above). He has praised ... read more and comment →
Latest comment by Rebecca Hanson: "Funnily enought that's exactly the same point I was making to Nick Gibb today at ACME. I asked him how it was that the government had analysed maths curriculums of the best countries in the world - Finland where maths ......"
Comment + Debate The evidence that market mechanisms in education have a positive effect on outcomes is “fragmented and often inconclusive”. So says a major review of empirical research on markets in education. The reviewers found that the scope of much research had been limited. It focused only on test scores in reading and maths and neglected other subjects or other kinds of achievement. ... read more and comment →
Latest comment by Rebecca Hanson: "There is substantial and significant evidence of the benefits of free market practices in education in countries where education does not have complete coverage or a responsibility for the most vulnerable. The theory and evidence regarding free market practices in countries ......"
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