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Schools – Where to Start?

on Jan 9, 2017

This article was commissioned to Magus Education  by ParentVille. We republish it with their permission. This is how it goes. You pee on a stick. Small hurrah. You bite your nails for the next 12 weeks before sharing the news. Toast. Sorry, mocktail for you. Flash- forward a few weeks — you have yet to hit check out on that flattering maternity dress in your Seraphine basket — when it starts. A whisper from a colleague here, a flash of panic across a well-meaning friend’s face there, a schools’ special in Parents magazine. The chorus of voices becomes deafeningly loud, the same question repeats again and again: have you put your unborn child’s name down for nurseries? Schools? Universities? You laugh it off at first; they can’t be serious. But they are. And soon you laugh no more, because the whisper has built to a terrifying roar of third-hand horror stories along tales of creepy...

Is it time to ditch homework?

on Nov 17, 2016

Last  week Inverlochy, a primary school in Scotland, made headlines as it became the latest U.K. establishment to abolish homework. The school argued that neither parents nor pupils wanted it, that it encroached upon precious family time and that it prevented pupils from participating in more enriching after-school activities. The fact that the somewhat innocuous decision made front-pages news reflects the zeitgeist: setting or not setting homework is a question that increasingly haunts headteachers. On the one hand giving “challenging” homework that aims to consolidate classroom learning is a condition of obtaining an “outstanding” or “good” rating from much-feared Ofsted inspectors.  Scrapping it entirely is thus a dangerous proposition that could result in a very public –and costly– slap on the wrist for the school. On the other hand, multiple studies (including a recent...