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.
- Sats results: brightest children 'going backwards' at 11 - Daily Telegraph, Tuesday August 2, 2011
Fewer children left primary school this summer with top exam results, it emerged today, sparking claims that teachers are failing the brightest pupils... Results plummeted fastest in writing, with the number of pupils achieving upper-level scores down by a fifth in just 12 months.
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Glaswegian and Brummie accents 'sound more stupid' - Daily Telegraph, Monday August 1, 2011
People from Glasgow and Birmingham are wrongly judged to be less intelligent and capable because of their accents, researchers have found.
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Slaughterhouse-Five banned by US school - The Guardian, Friday July 29, 2011
Kurt Vonnegut's celebrated second world war satire censored along with teen novel Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah OcklerLink broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Concern over secondary pupils' reading ability - Daily Telegraph, Friday July 29, 2011
One in seven secondary pupils has a reading age two years lower than their actual age, a study has found.
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Pupils' reading difficulties often undetected, finds study - Times Educational Supplement, Friday July 29, 2011
Researchers have warned that secondary pupils may have reading difficulties that are going unnoticed.
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Private tuition firm to provide maths and English at state secondaries - Times Educational Supplement, Friday July 29, 2011
A private tuition company has struck a deal worth about £200,000 to teach English and maths lessons in five state secondaries in East Anglia.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - It's good to talk, but it's even better to listen - Times Educational Supplement, Friday July 29, 2011
Once you start to listen, though, they are riveting. I don't know why anyone bothers to hack into mobile phones. These people are happily spraying their most intimate decisions all over the 10.38am to Paddington, writes Catherine Paver
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Dyslexia makes voices hard to discern, study finds - BBC, Friday July 29, 2011
People with dyslexia struggle to recognise familiar voices, scientists suggest.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Some children 'don't know own name' - BBC Radio, Thursday July 28, 2011
Some children entering the education system in the UK do not even know their own name, according to one head teacher interviewed on the Today programme. Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Gilbey on Film: from bard to verse - New Statesman, Wednesday July 27, 2011
What happens when movies take on poetry?
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Lil Chase's top 10 unwords - The Guardian, Wednesday July 27, 2011
From snozzberry and heffalump to muggle and singleton, the author of Boys for Beginners picks her favourite made-up wordsLink broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Booker judge's fears for reading in the age of Twitter - Daily Telegraph, Tuesday July 26, 2011
Children are reading fewer novels because they spend so much time on mobile phones and Twitter, the chair of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction has warned.
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Sats tests shift more to teacher assessment - BBC, Monday July 18, 2011
Primary school Sats tests in England will use more assessment by teachers, as the government accepts the review carried out by Lord Bew. The review called for the English creative writing test to be replaced by a composition which will be assessed by teachers, rather than outside markers.
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Thousands got wrong Sats grades, claim angry teachers - Daily Telegraph, Friday July 15, 2011
Most complaints concern a writing exam taken by more than 560,000 pupils in May. Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Spelling mistakes 'cost millions' in lost online sales - BBC, Thursday July 14, 2011
An online entrepreneur says that poor spelling is costing the UK millions of pounds in lost revenue for internet businesses.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Headteachers reject 'appalling' marking of this year's Sats tests - The Guardian, Monday July 11, 2011
Headteachers fear their targets may be missed thanks to what some say is 'appalling' Sats markingLink broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Phonics test sounds phoney - The Guardian, Monday July 11, 2011
There's more to reading than sounding out letters, as Ros Asquith illustrates.
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - MPs say phonics will put children off reading for pleasure - The Guardian, Thursday July 7, 2011
Report criticises government's plans to test pupils on their reading ability at the age of sixLink broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Schools 'pushed into phonics by financial incentives' - BBC, Thursday July 7, 2011
Schools in England are being given financial incentives by the government to use certain phonics materials to teach reading, MPs have said.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Hundreds of heads report concerns over Sats marks - BBC, Wednesday July 6, 2011
More than 300 heads in England have lodged concerns with the National Association of Head Teachers over the marking of some of this year's national curriculum tests, known as Sats.... The calls relate largely to a section of the English test, where pupils are asked to produce a piece of creative writing.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here