ScotBlog Award for Go Lassie Go!


Total Politics Award for Go Lassie Go!


TypePad Profile

Get updates on my activity. Follow me on my Profile.
Share |
Mobilise this Blog
Blog powered by Typepad

« Gordon Brown backs Votes at 16 | Main | More on the Curriculum for Excellence - this time from teachers »

September 21, 2009

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Very nice write up. Easy to understand and straight to the point.

You did a really nice job
Thanks for sharing here..

Thanks Carole I forgot you were from Shetland. Do you keep in touch with Isobel Mitchell? I believe she is still there. I imagine the school in Lerwick remains good. I think the CfE will mean that some good schools remain, but only if the leadership is strong and the focus remains academic. The Post Code Lottery point made in the Scotsman is endorsed by many people

Having one daughter just out of the school system and one just about to leave, I despair at the state of Scottish education. There have been passionate teachers who truly want to convey their subject - far outnumbered by those who treat it as a job to sit out until pension time. One daughter won the fourth year prize for English, despite atrocious spelling and no grasp of grammar.
At my school, coincidentally the same school Ronnie Brown of the EIS attended Anderson High School in Lerwick, we had passionate teachers. Our language teacher spoke 23 languages fluently, our history teacher gave up a lot of free time to take pupils on school trips. The English teacher could talk so knowledgeably about most genres of literature and link this in with art, history and politics. Our class sizes were huge by today's standards but levels of attainment - and engagement- were high.
A recent article in The Times http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article6826859.ece says we are being seduced by the red herring of smaller class size targets. I agree -we need better teaching and better teachers. And once we have them, let them get on with it. Stop the nonsense of the PE teacher taking biology one day and home economics the next.
You're right, Joan. The teachers' role is to instil passion and knowledge - not to follow trends or fads. Education is too important to leave it to the bureaucrats.

The comments to this entry are closed.

My Photo