New Teaching Standards

Staff may be interested to know that the Department for Education has issued new teaching standards that affect all teachers:

'The new standards will apply to all teachers regardless of their
career stage, and define the minimum level of practice expected of
teachers from the point of being awarded QTS onwards.'

The full document can be viewed here:

New Teacher Standards

Ofsted Inspection Overview

In anticipation of the imminent Ofsted inspection, it might be useful to for staff to read guidance and support material about the inspection procedure:

Ofsted Official Website
NASUWT Guidance PDF Report
NUT Ofsted Inspection Framework Document
Ofsted New Inspection framework
Article on creating outstanding lessons

SSAT becomes The Schools Network

The Specialist Schools & Academies Trust (SSAT) has now become 'The Schools Network'

www.ssatrust.org.uk

About us

SSAT - the schools network

• We work with schools and academies throughout England, and in36 countries across the world, to raise achievement for pupils of all ages and backgrounds.
• All our resources are invested and reinvested in supporting the school system. To extend this commitment , we plan to build an education endowment fund.
• Most English mainstream secondary schools, half of special schools, and a growing number of primary schools are members of our organisation.
• We are the largest membership organisation for all types ofacademies and have been supporting innovation in the schools system for over 20 years.
• There is no comparable network for school leaders to access leading practice and innovation in other schools.
• We are aiming to become an academy sponsor and school provider, drawing on teh strength of our networks.
• Our approach is 'by schools, for schools'. All our work designed and delivered by serving school leaders, and in many cases it is accredited by universities.
• Our national headteacher steering group make sure ensures that the professional perspectives of school leaders inform national policy development and debate.

PISA UK Education Ratings

The lastest PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) ranking, showed that the UK is fairly average in its scores (although ranked 11th in Science) throughout the 34 participating countries and has been stagnant for the past few years. This animation gives an interesting overview of the assessment process behind the PISA rankings are made and it is important to understand the impact that these have on how government's shape educational policy. PISA looks at the correlation between what is learnt at school and then applied in contexts outside of school. The following statement is made in the PISA 2009 Assessment Framework:

PISA 2009 covers the domains of reading, mathematics and science not merely in terms of

whether students can reproduce specific subject matter knowledge, but also whether they can extrapolate from what they have learned and apply their knowledge in novel situations

There is no mention of creativity, possibly because it is difficult to quantify and compare easily, but I can't help thinking that it needs to be more explicit in the types of intelligences it aims to measure, especially since it is focused on very traditional academic concepts of intelligence with respects to reading, maths and science. It would be interesting to know how they might measure according to Gardner's Multiple Intelligences:

Creativity, Learning and the Curriculum

This video documents Ken Robinson's most recent conference in the UK, when he examines how the government's current plans for the future of education are retrograde and will only exasperate current problems and miss out on the opportunity to make serious changes that develop pupils interest in learning and prepare them for the future: