Keystone Education blog

Disclosure: I own a large stake in a publisher of phonics resources which are NOT on the approved list and work for others; some on and others off the list. This is a personal view.
Two months ago the government announced that there would be matched-funding for phonics resources and training to support synthetic phonics in [...]

In September 2009, having been asked to by the shadow education team, I submitted Technology in Education as a ‘think piece’ about the state of technology in schools then, with specific actions about how to develop our education system to take advantage of the leading position that the UK had assumed in the world.
Having heard [...]

Updated 11th December 2010
There is a new link on the DfE statistics website that projects pupil numbers through to 2018. The numbers are similarly concerning, especially when you consider that the government are directly linking numbers to migration (sheet 3). Even with zero migration there is a considerable upswing in Primary schools but there must [...]

Updated 29th November
The widely trailled Education White Paper (#eduwhitepaper) was launched yesterday to huge numbers of tweets. At one point “Michael Gove” was trending on twitter (about 6th most popular phrase on the social networking site!). It marks the biggest change to education in some time.
Rather than comment at this point, here is a handy [...]

Updated 1st December 2010
White Paper focuses clearly on phonics
Section 4.16 makes explicit reference to ’systematic synthetic phonics’.
http://bit.ly/gOnSoF
There is also reference to funding in the Economic Impact Assessment:
37. We will invest to support phonics teaching in primary schools to increase significantly the number of children who develop secure reading skills as early as possible in their [...]

Amidst the excitement of the Chilean miners being released from the San Jose mine Lord Browne released his much leaked review into university funding and tuition fees. Many tweets and comments followed as students, parents and politicians realised that an UK university, very highly valued across the world was now going to cost.
My personal [...]

I have created a Prime Numbers game which can be played below or at www.zondle.com
See if you can squish the zondles and turn them into frisbees!

I wrote last week about how crowdsourcing was now a big part of mainstream culture from X-Factor to the Coalition government trying to cut laws. The response was great as it was when I tweeted about crowdsourcing an education business. It prompted me and the team at Zondle to consider whether we should crowdsource the [...]

Tom, a little quiz about Australia that might be useful. If you would like more and then set to add to Curriculum Catalyst then let me know,
Ben

Crowdsourcing is described by Wikipedia (whose founder hates the word) as:
“the out-sourcing of tasks traditionally done by a contractor or employee to a large group or community through an open call”.
It has been enhanced by Web 2.0 technologies in recent years but has a much, much longer history – Longitude was ‘discovered’ after a competition [...]

I have been working with the Zondle team for the past few months, specifically looking at its application for schools, colleges and english language learners. We have had some great success in getting teachers and especially GCSE students to add their own questions to the site and create games that support their revision process.
In order [...]

This Year 4 Test for Mathematics covers the KEY OBJECTIVES for Mathematics in Year 4.

I thought I would try to get behind then numbers and information given out so far about Academies. They seem set to be a bit feature of education in the UK over the coming years and it makes sense to get to grips with the issues.
So, about 1100 schools have applied to become Academies since [...]

Updated: Son is still 12 and now in Year 8. Grounded for 2 weeks (nothing major) but the issue remains. His entire homework delivery system is guided towards internet connected computers (love that, great stuff) but blocking facebook and other social media he uses (and when pressed he will use them all), also tends to [...]

#tmfuture – further thoughts
As a sometime presenter and lurker, and sponsor of a couple of teachmeets, I have been fascinated by the debate and thought over the last week or so on this topic. Its wonderfully summed up by @ewanmcintosh ’s blog earlier today but I also loved @chrisrat ’s post too which I thought [...]

Teachmeet – The Future
“Education is the new rock’n’roll!” – Tweet at TMNE09 after Gwyn Ap Hari had finished.
I have been to a couple of Teachmeets, presented at one, sponsored one and spent a great deal of time talking with various people including @tombarrett talking about Teachmeet and how it might grow.
The multiple posts do seem [...]

On May 13th The DFE published the provisional results of the English 2010 School Census. It’s encouraging to see these statistics published as it sets a benchmark for the new government’s education policies.
If you want to see the detail of these numbers then go to: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000925/index.shtml
Primary Schools

696,490 of children in English schools are considered to [...]

On May 13th The DFE published the provisional results of the English 2010 School Census. It’s encouraging to see these statistics published as it sets a benchmark for the new government’s education policies.
If you want to see the detail of these numbers then go to: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000925/index.shtml
Secondary Schools

There are approximately 3,250,000 students in 3127 Secondary schools, [...]

On May 13th The DFE published the provisional results of the English 2010 School Census. It’s encouraging to see these statistics published as it sets a benchmark for the new government’s education policies.
If you want to see the detail of these numbers then go to: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000925/index.shtml
Primary Schools

There are approximately 3,961,000 children in 16,971 Primary schools.

The [...]

There is a new man at the DCSF. Michael Gove.
Here is a reminder of the Conservative education policies.
For Pupil Premium read Lib Dem figures (£2.5bn suggested in their manifesto).

The Conservative Party Manifesto – Education Section
Here is a summary.
Headlines

Reinforcing discipline and raising the entry requirements for trainees entering the profession.
Improving the curriculum and exam system [...]