Creativity and art are often neglected parts of the curriculum. Yet, their importance in promoting confidence and improving health and wellbeing in young people is backed up by research.
During COVID, there were long periods of school closures and restricted access to all aspects of art. Sky Arts have decided to promote the arts by introducing Access All Arts week.
This project celebrates everything art-related and will help teachers bring the arts into their classrooms in 2022.
Teaching is often described as a vocation, and indeed, many teachers are driven by their passion for education. However, it is also true that teaching is a profession where career development has an important part to play.
As teaching is constantly evolving, it makes sense for teachers to take ownership of their own growth.
There are plenty of good reasons to look for a new job as a teacher. You might want to progress to a more challenging position, find a more specialised role or travel to a new location.
Whatever the reason for your search, here are some excellent ideas for making your job hunt more successful.
Sometimes it seems as though there is no greater issue of contention in education than marking! Whether in Primary or Secondary education, there seems to always be an ongoing conversation about the value, necessity and regularity of marking with differing opinions from teachers, pupils, parents and SLT.
Teachers themselves don’t always agree about the benefits of marking, with some seeing it as an essential tool for feedback and progression while others see it as a waste of their precious time with no real benefit to pupils.
What exactly is it that causes marking to be so open to debate with no agreed solutions?
New Year resolutions are banded about in January with many good intentions and then often forgotten by February. Teachers might do better if they think about making some changes that will have a real impact in 2022.
Here are 4 ideas for changes that teachers can consider:
There is an ongoing crisis caused by staffing shortages in schools because of the pandemic. Due to the Omicron variant spreading so widely and quickly, many teachers across the country are having to self-isolate. There is immense pressure on the government, particularly from parents, to ensure that schools remain open for face-to-face teaching so that another school year is not lost.
On 20th December 2021, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi put out a call for retired teachers and those who have left the profession to return temporarily to fill the gap.
On 12th January, the government reported that it was estimated that 585 teachers had already signed up to return to teaching.
Ofsted has recently announced that they are going to reinspect the schools that were previously graded outstanding. This is significant since many of these schools have not been inspected for more than a decade.
Amanda Spielman, Chief Inspector, aims to halve the number of outstanding schools which is not unrealistic considering that schools may be under a new framework and standards since they were last inspected.
The issue is that many people within education do not trust the reliability of Ofsted findings and are calling into question whether the inspections have any real value in determining whether a school is effective.
The stress and anxiety experienced by children due to lockdowns and lack of socialisation has already been well documented. However, one thing we are beginning to see is the effect of the government’s pressure to “catch up” children to meet their age-related goals and regain momentum towards pre-pandemic results.
Inevitably, teachers are already coming under intense pressure to ensure the pupils in their classes are reaching their expectations with very little mitigation of the difficulties this is causing.
Unfortunately, it isn’t just the teachers feeling this pressure, as the children are at risk of experiencing the fear of failure too.
Did you know that whilst many children of parents serving in the British Armed Forces attend schools that have a high percentage of service pupils, the majority attend schools with less than ten service children?
Children in this situation have unique circumstances where they may have been separated from a parent for long periods, moved homes and schools frequently, or even relocated to different countries.
Teachers can be ill-equipped to understand how they can help these military pupils but fortunately, a charity called Little Troopers has developed a programme of resources to help pupils from reception to sixth form. Designed with the help of educational psychologists, behavioural experts and play therapists, the resources are very helpful to any school that has children from a service background.
With climate change in the headlines daily, it has been impossible to miss the news coverage of the COP26 conference held in Glasgow from 31st October. Despite this being the 26th Conference of the Parties brought together by the United Nations to discuss climate change, it has only been this year that it has obtained so much attention in the media worldwide.
The UK government took a leading role in this year’s conference and the Department for Education (DfE) has been given the huge responsibility for fighting against climate change by educating young people.