English in the News
Below is a selection of articles which are archived online and may be of interest to NATE members. If you know of others please let us know. Keep up to date with our Twitter feed, too.
- National tests for 14-year-olds are scrapped after marking chaos - The Independent, Wednesday October 15, 2008
National curriculum tests due to be taken by 600,000 14-year-olds at schools in England next summer have been scrapped in the wake of this year's marking fiasco.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Sats for 14-year-olds abolished: Teachers and parents praise decision - Daily Telegraph, Wednesday October 15, 2008
Teachers and parents have praised the decision to scrap Sats exams for 14-year-olds, and called on the Government to go even further by ditching tests sat for younger children.
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - SATS yer lot - The Sun, Wednesday October 15, 2008
NATIONAL school tests for 14-year-olds were scrapped yesterday in the wake of this year’s marking fiasco.
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Primary school Sats will stay, says Balls - The Guardian, Wednesday October 15, 2008
Tests "show how individual children and schools perform"
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Secondary schools' "grave concerns" over replacement - Goodbye Sats, and good riddance - The Guardian, Wednesday October 15, 2008
It's a relief the government has scrapped Sats for 14-year-olds – but is it a sign of a new, non-Blairite direction for education?
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Tests scrapped for 14-year-olds - BBC, Tuesday October 14, 2008
National tests for 14-year-old school pupils in England are to be scrapped, following this summer's Sats marking "shambles".
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Scrapping Sats for 14-year-olds: the background - The Guardian, Tuesday October 14, 2008
Controversy over the tests reached a peak with this year's marking crisis. But the problems run much deeper
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Unions welcome end of secondary SATs - The Guardian, Tuesday October 14, 2008
Tories and Lib Dems hail U-turn
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Teaching unions call for abolition of primary tests - A few choice words from the guru - The Guardian, Tuesday October 7, 2008
Cliff Yates has a tip for teachers: "To write poems, pupils need to read them."Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Pupils 'distressed over spelling' - BBC, Thursday October 2, 2008
A primary school has stopped carrying out spelling tests because children find them distressing.
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Gene link to poor reading skills - BBC, Wednesday October 1, 2008
A common genetic variant may be partly to blame for poor reading ability, research suggests.
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Life getting you down? Turn a new leaf with 'bibliotherapy' - The Independent, Friday September 19, 2008
For those buckling under the pressures of modern life, help is at hand in the age-old form of books. A group of authors, including Alain de Botton, have established a shop in Bloomsbury, London's literary heartland, offering stressed-out readers therapeutic solutions.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Free poetry for reception pupils - BBC, Thursday September 18, 2008
A charity is giving free poetry books to thousands of reception class pupils in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, to inspire a love of reading.
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Official: Texting does not rot kids' brains - The Guardian, Tuesday September 16, 2008
Language guru David Crystal tells John Crace that txt spk is responsible for neither bad spelling nor moral decay Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Death of the bookworm - The Guardian, Tuesday September 16, 2008
Children are being taught to read at school – but not to love books' complexity and depth. It's a national disgrace says Michael Rosen.
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Parcel book club 'boosts reading' - BBC, Tuesday September 16, 2008
A reading scheme which sends parcels of books to foster children struggling with literacy helps them improve at twice the usual rate, researchers find.
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Their on the warparf about speling again - Times Educational Supplement, Friday September 12, 2008
GCSE pupils think that looked ends with a t, coming should be spelled with an e, and that it is possible to suffercate from angshuseness.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Knife crime: Can drama help stop it? - The Independent, Thursday September 11, 2008
They were young dropouts on the road to ruin. Then they discovered the theatre – and a whole new sense of self. Angela Neustatter reports on a remarkable programme that's turning lives aroundLink broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Laureate bemoans 'thankless' job - BBC, Wednesday September 10, 2008
Poet Laureate Andrew Motion has said that the job of writing verse for the Royal Family is "thankless" and gave him a case of writer's block.
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Teaching correct spelling is a waste of time - and the apostrophe should be scrapped, says expert - Daily Mail, Tuesday September 9, 2008
If ur a stikkla 4 good spelling, u may not wish to read on.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here