Yes. So it makes sense having a primary national curriculum, to help academies work out what they need to cover for the assessments in phonics, maths and English in year 1, year 2 and year 6 but not a secondary one as there are no KS3 assessment and reporting arrangements.

Our primary school sent out a survey to parents re. homework the other day ..... the worst set of survey questions I have ever seen in my life, but that's by the by .......... one of the questions was, "What type of learner is your child?" (visual, aural, kinaesthetic ). The question after this was ...

You don't have to do the MA - can do it this way for a mere £3,000:

http://ilc.ioe.ac.uk/rr/1485.html

Hopefully we are in the minority.

Yes, I like those different categories. They can of course, all exist in the same school and a child can pass through those 4 different types of teaching as they pass through the primary years. Add in different types of help at home and different book provision at school and home and there are many ...

Fascinating to hear from you Stuart. I'm a fellow suffering parent. It sounds though that your school is pleasant to discuss things with and does listen in some way - ours does not. I have encountered similar problems and many more too. Ours is not a reading recovery school, just a very confused one...

Thanks Lesley. I like the idea that something should be done about the remaining spellings that are not corrected - but I am not so sure how a teacher would do that with 30 children in the class nor how they would choose which 3 spelling errors to make the child aware of. This is what I am experienc...

Can we trust that ofsted judgements are consistent right across the country though for sweeping conclusions from adding the data together like this to be made? Are all the companies that carry out ofsted inspections working nation-wide or are there companies which predominantly inspect in the south,...

Our primary school says they have a policy of only pointing out that there are spelling errors in a maximum of three words in any piece of work. One of my children is now in year 5 and this policy does not appear to be paying off! A quick search on Google reveals that this is a very popular policy a...

KS1 is all teacher assessed these days. It's all very confusing. As well as their judgement (from APP grids used throughout the year I presume) old reading tests had to be used. The reading test was a written comprehension - for the past few years old tests have been used again and again within scho...

It's frustrating when you get nowhere in the way you feel was the case Debbie - but you never know, you may have sewn some seeds doubts into the heads of people about their approach and it could make a difference to someone somewhere in the future. It's easy to give up and think it's not ever worth ...

Unfortunately, I think you are absolutely right Debbie. Hopefully, we have had isolated bad experiences but I suspect not. A lot of these regulatory / inspection organisations seem to be there "just for the sake of it" and their stated mission etc is never achieved either because it's unachievable w...

Yes, unfortunately you are right in my experience. I possibly had more luck with the quality care commission and a private nursing home - but that might just have been a matter of luck and their judgement was still overly rosy considering what I had seen from the inside. All these systems seem to re...

That's good. But there are other things about the process which aren't quite right in my view. Our school has just had a two day inspection with one inspector named in the report. The school was "good" beforehand and it has remained "good". But there's stuff in the report that is not strictly accura...

Ofsted announces major changes to inspections Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw has confirmed the biggest changes to education inspections since the inception of Ofsted more than two decades ago. From September, Ofsted will inspect good schools and further education and skills provi...