tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22217783926746320952024-09-04T16:35:34.674+01:00reflections of a working educatorM B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-31881250597686143472016-07-14T14:28:00.000+01:002016-07-14T14:28:01.955+01:00

 It is easy to forget that progress, and the long arc of hopeful change towards global understanding and citizenship, are never guaranteed. Our expectations informed by the cursory glance that has seen us move from Renaissance to Enlightenment to the Internet age, we think positive change in education, technology and life quality, in international awareness and peaceful prosperity, are a

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-89627813413937795552013-01-14T07:31:00.000+00:002013-01-14T07:31:53.586+00:00

Whatever happened to study leave? Cutting study leave prior to exams - a drift which has happened at different rates in different schools, but all gone the wrong way over the past decade or more - was motivated by several different reasons: one idealistic-if-misplaced, one spinelessly convenient, one exploitative - and perhaps a depressing fourth. Importantly, the agendas of developing

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-34621400470597850702013-01-14T06:50:00.000+00:002013-01-14T06:50:25.206+00:00

How exactly did we subscribe to the myth of attendance being more important than engagement? One of my biggest bugbears of the last few years has been the tedious puritan orthodoxy that missing a single day of school means doing badly. I am constantly bowled over by the incredible commitment of the people who so tirelessly chase the attendance agenda but in many cases something

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-53516070454745435152012-11-12T08:21:00.000+00:002012-11-12T08:21:08.573+00:00

This will be one for the military history fans - but please don't stop reading there, the 90% - bear with the analogy. I hope it will be revealing. Several former colleagues at the moment are reflecting on the frankly depressing turn their school has taken. Whether it's the effect of brutal cuts, the Gove-driven nonsense that's causing rigged-down results / unsuitable EBacc pressures /

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-13774999827142439912012-08-26T17:54:00.001+01:002012-08-26T17:54:20.103+01:00

I've had an awesome first day back today with an INSET led by the rightly well-known and -regarded Paul Ginnis (www.ginnis.eu, @paulginnis) and a number of the materials and examples he showed us set me thinking and offered something new - as good INSET ought, but so rarely fails, to do. Over the past year I've been trying to be adventurous with one particularly trailblazing set, a mixed-ability

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-1628531657415590752012-07-17T08:58:00.000+01:002012-07-17T08:58:21.405+01:00

We ask students to write all the time but rarely ask why. The Ken Robinson enthusiasts among you will claim there's an outdated Victorian model in place; other liberals will argue it's all about teacher accountability and not quality. System technocrats, especially in English and Maths, will claim it embeds and proves attainment of learning objectives for e.g. Assessing Pupil Progress, while

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-27451445796745224152012-06-20T14:42:00.001+01:002012-06-20T14:44:37.578+01:00

Right, let's rattle some cages. That headline probably makes you think, as we pass through exam season and await the grades that August brings, that this will be another blog / movement / initiative / mentoring scheme which is about pushing up "satisfactory" or "bog-standard" schools / teachers / students through forceful management and monitoring, so that your class / department / school /

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-63805178822998290842012-05-14T09:19:00.000+01:002012-05-14T09:35:07.628+01:00

Further to recent remarks by Sir Michael Wilshaw, Head of Ofsted ("Teachers don't know what stress is"), a leaked document from the National Audit Office has revealed that the government is forming a calculus for levels of teacher stress. MBD on Education can exclusively reveal the content of this calculation process and why the document has not been released to the public courtesy of an

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-82755050921332203182011-10-19T16:22:00.005+01:002011-10-19T22:44:47.380+01:00

Under advice, I've removed this article temporarily from the blog. I hope to return it soon, either in full or as mildly amended as possible. Please check back soon :)

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-52393384077228740112011-10-16T17:38:00.002+01:002011-10-16T17:51:30.518+01:00

So, apologies for the two-month absence. Rumours of my demise are greatly exaggerated etc... I've just moved to the Persian Gulf is all. Predictably, a new job is a fount of chaos, and so it has proved as ever - you don't know any of the new place's systems, procedures, where to find resources, whom to ask for what etc - but actually it's a positive pressure: you want to do well, to make a good

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-77988638607850321252011-08-19T12:44:00.000+01:002011-08-19T12:44:31.523+01:00

No - this isn't an article about the riots. But yes, I am going to go a little Tory-traditionalist on you and take the Telegraph point of view. I want the abolition of grade inflation at A-level and GCSE by the imposition of fixed boundaries of percentages of students for every grade. First set a fixed quality boundary for "minimum standard" and call below that U. Then take all the results

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-47032927684682489762011-08-18T18:39:00.002+01:002011-08-19T18:57:20.351+01:00

I can't do it. I can't resist. I swore to myself I would stay out of A-level results day, what with having no A-level students this year. But I can't. It started a couple of years back when murmurings began about top universities beginning to look down on certain kinds of subject. I confess a mild negative prejudice myself towards Media Studies and Travel & Tourism but the leaked

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-59374690463456185992011-08-16T11:59:00.011+01:002011-08-16T17:20:29.822+01:00

It's been an odd summer, having just finished in one post and preparing for a major move out to the Persian Gulf for a new teaching job. If you thought moving home in the UK was a task, you should try reducing your life to 70kg, selling any vehicles you own and arranging house lets - and all before coping with the well-meaning flurry of friends and family wishing to bid you farewell and

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-44596251960523682322011-08-10T14:50:00.001+01:002011-08-10T15:09:16.181+01:00

A recurrent theme of this blog is the analogy between schools and society, teaching and government. This is no surprise: schools are our society writ small, with the same tensions, pressures, authorities, contradictions, and community issues. This week the link became stronger as many educators will have watched riots in UK city centres and known some of their own students will have been

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-49776367654843656382011-08-01T15:11:00.000+01:002011-08-01T15:11:53.516+01:00

Teachers are familiar with reporting the badly-behaved (moot point as to what difference it makes when they do...) - so it's entertaining to read in today's Guardian that the police want us, in our communities, dobbing those around us in if we think they're anarchists. This is all part of a creeping system of social "telling on" - universities have been told to report extremists for some time,

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-72445899700141454942011-07-17T14:31:00.001+01:002011-07-17T14:34:31.783+01:00

Teachers everywhere will know and bemoan the existence of school filter systems. More draconian than the inquisition, more inflexible than plastercast, more arbitrary than a roulette wheel, they have a suppressive and stifling effect on classroom practice. A day barely goes by without an education blogger or twitterer having a (generally justified) rant about some latest inanity or perversity of

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-62989238585494704952011-07-13T23:34:00.002+01:002011-07-15T20:22:04.319+01:00

I’d be the first to suggest that analogies between the management of government and school classrooms are a little forced, but it just can’t be resisted this week: watching the police squirm and News International being disciplined by the normally absentee supervision has reminded me of nothing so much as an incompetently-handled boarding-house shenanigans. Allow me to indulge us by playing it

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-76147986461637427842011-01-20T13:49:00.006+00:002011-01-20T20:03:17.583+00:00

You have to be amused about the whole EBacc thing, predominantly because a red rag has rarely so transparently been waved at the educational establishment with such little substance behind it. The spitting fury is palpable, from teachers and teaching associations of the "new" subjects suddenly downgraded, to the Heads of the best private schools who suddenly find themselves at the wrong end of

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-77614653029317524362010-01-18T23:55:00.005+00:002010-01-19T00:02:56.879+00:00

It's a clever move by Cameron, you have to give him that. In the days of tight budgets, the declaration that he is going to raise the entry profile for teachers above third-degree entrants in act of "Brazen Elitism" is smart because it's simple. It will cost nothing (a few quid on PGCE subsidy is a drop in the salary ocean); it will be divisive amongst teachers on subject and age lines; it

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-81730823295266362742010-01-15T19:38:00.005+00:002010-01-15T19:44:32.444+00:00

It's difficult to see from where a Labour election victory could come this year. Teachers, perhaps more than any other group, should be the core of the Labour vote. But, as the Guardian reports, rates of teacher support from Labour have fallen from almost a half to one quarter of the profession; Tory support amongst the profession has doubled, and now stands equivalent to Labour's own. Partly

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2221778392674632095.post-85008035264766315192010-01-13T22:34:00.006+00:002010-01-14T18:55:31.824+00:00

Well, whaddaya know... it turns out that Academies are not all they were cracked up to be. For those long anticipating / salivating for their eventual and inevitable tarnishing, the apparent ever-upward trajectory (setting aside the question of just how massaged their "successes" had always been in the hands of the media-dominating politically-invested) has finally stalled in a quite

M B Drennanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13638838868178879527noreply@blogger.com