The Orlando Sentinel reports that people with bachelor’s degrees who are considering teaching have a new program available called the Education Preparation Institute. The program was first launched in 2004 to battle the teacher-shortage problem. It has been designed for students with degrees other than education, and takes as little as eight months to complete.

After which, you should be more than ready for the classroom.

Any more local accelerated teaching programmes that we should know about? Tell us in the comments below!

Here we go, here we go, here we go.

It’s Union Conference time again here in the UK! (more…)

You know how failing schools and failed schools in the UK are closed and then reopened as different entities like City Academies for example?
Well what happens when City Academies fail?
Do they close them and reopen them as ……. as …… as ordinary schools?????
Take Unity Academy in Middlesbrough as an example. Close two failing schools open them again as a new City Academy and spend 18 or so million quid into the bargain - result another failing (failed) school.
Read all about it on the OFSTED website but whatever you do feel sorry for the teachers who have to work there!
Contrary to much conventional wisdom it isn’t all the teachers fault - there’s a hell of a lot that society has to answer for here!

Found this recently:

“…..an exam I sat a few years ago while doing my English GCSE. We were given three pieces of writing, each with a set of questions attached, and were asked to “Choose one of the three exercises below”.

While we were all sweating out pages and pages of answers, a friend of mine simply wrote “I choose number two”, and did nothing for the rest of the exam. Since he had, technically, fulfilled the requirements of the paper, he had to be given full marks.

Almost all GCSEs I’ve seen since then have the instruction “Choose and complete one of the following”.

Is life really so simple? Do we believe this?

Teachers in the UK work 11 hours unpaid every week according to a TUC survey reports

Good innit?

For every person who wants to teach there are approximately thirty people who don’t want to learn–much.
W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman, And Now All This (1932) introduction

And its still true today isn’t it?

No doubt about it, you need to get noticed to get on!
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Recent information suggests that there are fewer teachers now than there were 4 or 5 years ago.

There are though more Teaching Assistants and this begs the question: Are Teaching Assistants being used instead of teachers?
This has undoubted career implications for all in the education profession so what do you think?

First reports on the new style Ofsted inspections in the UK suggest that more schools are not coming up to the expected standard.
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Think the Headteacher/Principal is important?
Think again. Education relies on the School Caretaker. Here’s a quick tongue in cheek profile of one of the most awesome of educational employees
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