UK Education News

Science lessons in primary schools have been given a lower status since national curriculum tests for 11-year-olds in the subject were scrapped, says a report by inspectors out today.

If Penguin are looking to publish a classic about teaching, they should consider the one above.  Pam McCulloch is a science teacher who has worked at Durrington High School since 1978.  Last year, ...

It is time that teachers and administrators realize that public education has reached a dam in the river. We have gone about as far as we can go with isolated instruction and learning. While it may

Parents and teachers wrestle with all the time: Should we be making learning easier for kids—or harder? The answer, according to research in cognitive science and psychology, is both.

So: the way in which we should make learning easier is to reduce cognitive load, especially when we are introducing new or complicated materials. (Parents and teachers, who are already experts at this stuff, often don’t realize how much cognitive load they’re imposing on kids and other novices.) Slow it down. Break complicated ideas into smaller pieces, taking them one at a time. Offer lots of opportunities for practice with feedback. Avoid using jargon and other technical terms. Eliminate extraneous or distracting information and focus only on what the learner needs to know at this moment.

But once the learner has attained some degree of mastery, ratcheting up the difficulty will help her stay in her “sweet spot” of engagement, where the task is not too hard as to be frustrating and not so easy as to be boring. This is also the place where learners can practice encountering adversity and challenge and overcoming them, a key experience in the development of grit.

This week's Secret Teacher gives Michael Gove a mental arithmetic lesson, busting the myth that teachers are lazy

After the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) warned of a shrinking pool of skilled workers in the UK, new YouGov research among businesses and academics shows that nearly six in ten employers of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) graduates think there is a skills gap in Britain.

YouGov’s research backs up the OECD’s warning about the economic implications of not having enough skilled workers. More than eight in ten (83%) businesses and almost nine in ten (89%) academics think the skills gap needs to be bridged in order for the UK to be competitive in the world economy.

From Sir Richard Lambert and others.

Sir, The UK economy’s continued growth depends upon a rapid increase in the productivity of sectors such as manufacturing, life sciences and research. It is therefore our duty to inspire young people to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and maths.

A projected 40,000 extra Stem graduates are needed each year to fill the 104,000 graduate-level Stem jobs the economy requires. But if the current skills shortage in these areas continues, this will not be possible. As a business community, we have a shared responsibility to help address this.

We believe the solution is simple: inspirational Stem teachers.

More than three quarters of secondary teachers in Scotland lack confidence in how the new National 4 and 5 exams will be delivered, only months before pupils are due to sit them, a survey has found.

Almost 80 per cent of teachers polled by the Scottish Secondary Teachers Association (SSTA) said they were not confident in assessing pupils for the Nationals, which replace Standard grades from this summer. 

The survey, which was completed by about half of the 5,500 teachers who were sent it, also found that 60 per cent of respondents were not confident in delivering course materials for the exams.

The exams have been devised under the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) reforms and will be sat by about 54,000 15 and 16-year-old pupils from April.

Plans to cut lab work from science A-level need not alarm us. What classrooms need is creativity, writes Alice Roberts

Game-based learning forces students to apply knowledge in a contextualized way, it creates an interdisciplinary learning experience where subject-specific knowledge is used in a context that requires diverse applications. The borders between disciplines become fuzzy and ambiguous.

Contrary to the popular view of game-based learning, then, the game is not simply a robotic teacher. It is not about drilling students with animated adaptive flashcards. It’s more interesting than that. Great game-based learning platforms do not attempt to trick students into memorizing facts. They are not “chocolate covered broccoli.” Instead, video games can be used as tools that encourage students to apply class content in contextualized ways.

Teachers meet government officials to discuss changes to the primary curriculum and a headteacher attacks Wilshaw's call for all nursery students to be school ready – this week's round up

What keeps students motivated to learn? Relevance, connections, and their teachers' emotional investment, among just a few criteria.

Educators have lots of ideas about how to improve education, to better reach learners and to give students the skills they’ll need in college and beyond the classroom. But often those conversations remain between adults. The real test of any idea is in the classroom, though students are rarely asked about what they think about their education.

A panel of seven students attending schools that are part of the “deeper learning” movement gave their perspective on what it means for them to learn and how educators can work to create a school culture that fosters creativity, collaboration, trust, the ability to fail, and perhaps most importantly, one in which students want to participate.

If you wanted to remake the greatest science TV programme of all time, Carl Sagan's Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, your first choice of producer might not be Seth Macfarlane. But Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, about the history of the known universe and everything in it, which begins next Sunday, would not have happened without the Family Guy producer's sweary cartoon creations.

The result is, to paraphrase something Sagan might have said, billions and billions of light years from Family Guy's idiotic Peter Griffin: a lavish 13-part series shot by Hollywood film-makers, featuring jaw-dropping CGI and the music of a thousand violins, tubas and trumpets (just in case you weren't sure where to gasp at the epic-ness of it all).

One of the biggest chains of academies in England is to be stripped of control of 10 schools.

The decision was made after Ofsted inspectors raised serious concerns about the performance of some of the E-Act schools.

It will remain in control of the further 24 academies in its chain.