Stay Curious
The following article appears in this week’s copy of TES Scotland (8th December) Do I have to spell it out? Synthetic phonics works Last month I gave evidence at the Scottish Parliament on my petition to improve literacy standards in
Next week (Thursday 9th November) I will be giving evidence at a hearing in the Scottish Parliament on the petition that I submitted over the summer. Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to i) provide national
You can feel it in the air. The end of term. Proms, prize-givings, leavers’ assemblies and celebrations for all that’s been achieved in another full-to-bursting academic year. As schools close their gates for the summer, many involved in Scottish education
A Journey to the Dark Side: from Phonics Phobic to Phonics Fanatic I am delighted to have a feature article published in the summer edition of the NATE Primary Matters magazine. It’s quite a personal one, but it will hopefully
As 2016 drew to a close, Strictly Come Dancing, X Factor and The Apprentice all crowned new champions, as the losers clapped to hide their misery in the side-lines. In PISA, the biggest education tournament of them all, Scotland recorded
Upstart Scotland is actively campaigning to introduce a Nordic-style kindergarten system between the ages of three and seven, with learning being undertaken through ‘creative play’ rather than ‘formal’ learning. As a campaign that sits outwith Scottish education, I was shocked
I am delighted to be able to post this letter from Dr Marlynne Grant, to the Prime Minister, on the subject of tackling inequality through education. The Rt Hon Theresa May MP Prime Minister 10 Downing Street London SW1A 2AA
Today Nicola Sturgeon officially launched the ‘First Minister’s Reading Challenge’. Here is an article that I wrote for TESS about the challenge. It was published in TESS on 1st April 2016. TESS article: When it comes to literacy, let’s start at page
KIA Briefing 2: Early Reading Back in February, Education Scotland published this: A Knowledge Into Action resource for practitioners and education staff Briefing 2: Early Reading. I blogged about the document and how it was a small step in the
Well, it has been just over a year since I started writing angry letters to the Scottish Government and campaigning about the need for proper phonics teaching in the classroom and in teacher training in Scotland. So today gave me
A simplified timeline of events: 2010: Curriculum for Excellence (forward-thinking, aspirational and inspirational) begins full implementation. 2010: Standardised testing is abolished. BUT: HMI start asking to see our standardised testing. (But, erm, we just got rid of it… ) THEN: Schools
Recent comments from Nicola Sturgeon suggest that national testing might be about to return to Scotland. I do support our forward-thinking curriculum, but I also feel there are bits of it where we could do better. We cannot ignore the
Dear Ms Constance I wrote to you in March 2015, although I realise that you probably don’t actually get to read every email you receive, given the demands of your job. I also wrote to my MSP Alasdair Allan back
I’ve just finished an interesting article in TESS: ‘When will literacy get its fairy tale ending?’ by Emma Seith. It has a great graphic showing the depressing SSLN results compared with two years ago, and there’s some super stats about
It has been a busy few weeks in the education world in Scotland, with what has felt like hunners of literacy reports and results being published. Having read them all, I am disappointed to find a lack of specific advice as
On 29th April the latest SSLN results were published, revealing the performance of our children in reading, writing, talking and listening. You would hope, that given the fact that almost all of our teachers now feel confident in delivering the
In response to last night’s blog post ‘The Attainment Gap? What about The Teaching Gap?’ lots of people have contacted me looking for recommended reading and research. I could just tell you the name of the game-changing book that challenged