Category Archives: Teaching

‘Our school had children who couldn’t afford event days’

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The Child Poverty Action Group helped a Dundee primary make life better for deprived families

  • Please donate to our appeal here

It was the “special occasions” at her children’s school that Anna (name changed) struggled with. She and her partner both work but, with four children, stumping up the cash for Halloween costumes, Christmas jumper days or pyjama days was tricky.

“Sometimes we could manage, other times we couldn’t,” she said. “I’ve kept my kids off school in the past when we couldn’t afford to send them in with whatever it was that they were meant to have.” On other occasions, such as book fairs, she would have to borrow money.

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Elli Glevey obituary

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My friend Elli Glevey, who has died aged 62 of cancer, was a passionate educator and philosopher dedicated to building links between the UK and Africa. Through his work at the Institute of Education, in London, Elli made a real impact in the field in the UK, but he was determined equally to make a contribution in his home country, Ghana.

Born in Accra, shortly after Ghanaian independence, Elli was the son of Gabriel Gleveh, an official in Kwame Nkrumah’s government, and Gladys (nee Atta Nee Boleh), who ran an import business. Elli’s first passion was music, starting with highlife and moving on to jazz. He came to London in 1977 and, along with various odd jobs, played saxophone as a session musician. As well as music, he wrote poetry and sketched throughout his life.

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Zimbabwe teachers refuse to return to work over low pay and lack of sanitation

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An acute shortage of sanitiser, PPE and clean water is putting pupils and school staff at risk of Covid-19, say unions

Teachers in Zimbabwe are refusing to return to work after the resumption of some classes this week, accusing the government of failing to adequately prepare for the opening of schools.

Schools reopened last week for pupils due to sit exams in early December, six months after they were closed because of a rise in Covid-19 cases in the country. But teachers say the government is ill-prepared to deal with a possible outbreak of the virus in schools.

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‘I do not see a single student wash their hands’: teacher’s diary of the first week back at school

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Children packed in like sardines, few face masks ... an English secondary teacher records pupils’ return

I wake at 4am, two hours before my alarm is due to go off, with sneezing fits and stomach cramps – cramps are one of my symptoms of anxiety.

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‘I’m going round in circles’: parents in England still undecided about return to school

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As government guidance continues to change over mask-wearing in schools, many are anxious about the risk to families

Eva Harratt, 13, would love to go to the park to meet her friends but it is forbidden because she lives in Oldham, the town in Greater Manchester facing restrictions due to a rise in Covid-19 cases. And yet, in five days, she is expected to return to her 1,370-pupil school and sit in classes of 30.

She likes school, misses her friends and wants to go back, but her mother is in the most vulnerable category because of an autoimmune disease. “Returning to school, I feel, is just not an option for me. They don’t appear to have given much thought to families with shielding members, or how that may affect them. Personally, I would prefer for things to go back to normal as soon as possible, but in the current situation, it is just not plausible for me,” says Eva.

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Jordan arrests 1,000 teachers in crackdown on union

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Coronavirus laws used to quash protests after country’s largest independent union suspended

He spent 17 days on the run, moving surreptitiously, sleeping in different homes. When Sharaf Obeidat saw security forces surrounding his building, he knew it was over. “They’ve arrested me,” he managed to write on Facebook, before he was hooded, handcuffed and led away.

Neither a violent criminal, nor a political dissident, Obeidat is one of what lawyers estimate is about 1,000 teachers arrested across Jordan in the past few weeks as part of a crackdown on the kingdom’s largest independent trade union, the Jordan Teachers’ Syndicate.

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Fall in Welsh-capable teachers risks missing language target, report warns

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Language decline among newly qualified teachers could undermine goal of reaching 1 million Welsh speakers

A “striking” decline in the number of newly qualified teachers able to teach in Welsh could undermine the country’s ambition to have a million speakers of the language in 30 years’ time, a report warns.

The Welsh language commissioner, Aled Roberts, expressed concern about the trend and called for the devolved government to take urgent action to reverse the fall.

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‘I was shielded from my history’: the changes young black Britons are calling for

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Exclusive: from schools to policing, 50 people share their experiences of growing up in the UK

Following the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the UK and across the world, the Guardian interviewed 50 young black Britons, many of whom have been at the heart of the recent anti-racism protests, to ask what changes they would like to see in their lifetime.

Three demands came up repeatedly: decolonising the curriculum; divesting funds away from police forces in favour of a public health-focused approach to crime; and better representation of black Britons across a wider section of society.

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European schools get ready to reopen despite concern about pupils spreading Covid-19

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Germany’s top coronavirus expert says children play as big a role as adults in spread

More countries across Europe are preparing to reopen schools in the coming weeks despite conflicting advice from scientifist, some of whom caution against underestimating children’s potential to spread the coronavirus.

Some schools and nurseries in Denmark and Norway have already reopened, and grandparents in Switzerland are allowed to hug grandchildren under 10, following a ruling by the health ministry’s head of infectious diseases that it is safe to do so.

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Schools close in north-east Kenya after al-Shabaab targets teachers

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Authorities face criticism for withdrawing teaching staff from an already marginalised region where education is badly needed

A series of targeted killings of schoolteachers by a militia group in Kenya has seen an exodus of staff and the closure of hundreds of schools across the north-east of the country.

Thousands of teachers have left their posts in the past two months following several suspected al-Shabaab attacks in the region.

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In New Zealand, we are starting to value women’s work fairly. It’s time for the world to follow

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On International Women’s Day, let’s commit to properly compensating women for the unpaid and underpaid work they have always done

The world would stop running were it not for the unpaid and underpaid work undertaken by women. It is past time for our contribution to be recognised, and remunerated fairly. Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, we are creating a new process to appropriately value the caring work traditionally undertaken by women.

It started in 2013, when a care and support worker named Kristine Bartlett, supported by her union (E Tū), filed a pay equity claim under the Equal Pay Act 1972. She made the case that the caring work she did was undervalued because it was mainly performed by women. This was compared to work that was male-dominated but required a similar level of skill, effort and responsibilities.

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Dutch schoolchildren make video appeal amid teacher shortage

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Amsterdam primary among many schools in Netherlands suffering from a lack of staff

Parents of children at a primary school in the Netherlands have responded to a national teacher shortage by making a short video of their offspring asking for candidates to come forward and help make their dreams come true.

In the film the children talk about their plans to be a caretaker, pilot, plumber, acrobat or director when they get older. “But that is not possible without a good teacher,” the parents write on the website of Wereldboom school in Amsterdam.

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Teachers strike over pupils ‘carrying knives and brawling’

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Staff given panic buttons at outstanding-rated Starbank school in Birmingham

Teachers have gone on strike at a school in Birmingham rated outstanding by Ofsted where they say “feral” students are carrying knives, threatening staff and brawling in classrooms.

Staff at Starbank school, whose pupils’ ages range from three to 16, have been given panic buttons and are “scared to come out of their classrooms” between lessons, according to a teaching union.

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Teachers want climate crisis training, poll shows

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Survey says teachers feel ill-equipped to educate pupils, as school strikes continue

A growing number of teachers want their pupils to learn more about the climate crisis and are calling for environmental training so they can prepare children for a rapidly changing world, according to a poll.

The findings from YouGov research commissioned by Oxfam come before the latest round of school climate strikes on Friday, in which it is expected that hundreds of thousands of young people will walk out of classrooms around the world.

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Teacher suspended after her pupils criticise Italian far-right law

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Schoolchildren’s video presentation compared Salvini decree to 1930s racial laws

An Italian teacher has been suspended over a video made by her students that compared a security law drafted by Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, to Mussolini’s racial laws, provoking a storm of protest against her suspension across the country.

Rosa Maria Dell’Aria was last week suspended for 15 days on half pay after an investigation by the education ministry’s provincial authority in Palermo found she had not “supervised” her students’ work.

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Year 6 pupils spend Easter at school cramming for Sats

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Teaching officials angry that children are having to attend revision classes over holidays

Children at hundreds of primary schools in England are being asked to attend Sats revision classes over the Easter holidays, a teaching union official has revealed, warning that it was part of a disturbing trend.

Darren Northcott, the NASUWT national officer for education, said revision classes for primary school pupils were unheard of five years ago but that he now knew of hundreds of cases of pupils in their final year of primary – Year 6 – being asked in for “cramming” by their schools ahead of the tests next month.

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