Professional update

Recruitment matters

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:10 +0100

Undoubtedly the key asset and investment in any school is its population, both staff and students. Therefore, it makes sound financial sense to ensure that everything possible is done to safeguard their welfare, a fact which is recognised in the DfES document Safeguarding Children: Safer Recruitment and Selection in Education Settings. In this article, we review the major features of the document and suggest how ignoring its content can have serious financial implications for your school.

Personalisation: what does it really mean?

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:09 +0100

Personalisation can be said to have sprung onto the educational scene with David Miliband’s speech in 2004 to the North of England Education Conference. Two years later people are still debating what it means.

But it was not a new idea in 2004. Ten years ago John West-Burnham was asking in as many words: ‘If I can have a mass production car built to my specification, why can my child not have a mass production education built to his?’

How can your school help victims of domestic abuse?

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:09 +0100

Background

Domestic violence accounts for a quarter of all reported violent crime: it is a crime which takes place largely unseen but which has tremendous costs to family and community life and to local services. The reality is that women are more at risk of violence from men they know than from stranger attacks and street violence.

How safe are your school trips abroad?

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:09 +0100

After consulting on a draft of the standard, it is now working on a final version which should be ready for publication in March or April of 2007. The draft version contains a section on the protection of children and vulnerable adults.

The BSI surveyed parents across Britain and found that they had many concerns about their children participating in school trips abroad and that they wanted a national safety standard to be established. It found that:

Creating support staff development plans

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:09 +0100

For schools, long- and medium-term strategic planning is extremely important to ensure that they identify, anticipate and prepare for change, and that they maintain a culture of continuous self-review and improvement. In keeping with this, all schools are required to go through an annual self-evaluation and improvement planning cycle in which the headteacher and leadership team evaluate the school’s performance in key areas. From this, they should identify a number of aims and objectives for development and specify how they will act to achieve these.

Study of early support highlights benefits and problems of multi-agency work

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:09 +0100

The Early Support (ES) programme represents the translation into practice of key DfES/DH joint policy guidance on improving multi-professional services and enhancing child and family outcomes for disabled children from birth to three years. The experience of its implementation in England is the focus of an evaluation study of its third phase, which indicates possible benefits and problems for the multi-professional approach envisaged in the Every Child Matters agenda.

Helping adults develop

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:08 +0100

Thinking about how adults learn is crucial for anyone involved in helping staff develop. If individual teachers understand how they learn, and can appreciate that others have different learning styles, they will be better able to support the learning of both pupils and colleagues.

Learning cycle

Experiential learning is particularly important for adults. Someone who wants to get better at taking assembly, for instance, might usefully go through the cycle of:

How music can promote wellbeing

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:08 +0100

Music is now more widely available than ever before in human history. Young and old are constantly accompanied by their personal music players. Public spaces are filled with ambient sound and homes are dominated by electronic transmission devices. How does this music influence our emotions, moods and behaviour?

Physiological effects

Music is known to affect a listener in many different ways:

Helping adults abused in childhood

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:08 +0100

Whenever I’m asked to write something about NAPAC (National Association for People Abused in Childhood) I experience excitement and fear in about equal proportions. Excitement because it gives me the chance to tell others about our amazing and unique charity and fear because it conjures up the possibility of making a fool of myself by trying to tell people things they probably already know and that puts me in touch with my childhood… where it all started!

A critical professional learning framework

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:08 +0100

I want to begin by looking once again at the notion of a framework. I guess that most of us assume that frameworks are there to support something. It might be a set of arguments each relating logically to the other so that when combined they constitute a powerful and coherent school of thought. It could be plants that are trained to grow in particular directions. But a frame can constrain as well as support. We also, for example, talk of ‘framing’ questions so that they elicit the desired response.

Recording and assessing children's language using 'virtual books'

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:08 +0100

This is a practical guide to one way of recording children’s language development in the nursery and offers the potential for creating a record of achievement throughout the Foundation Stage and into Key Stage 1.

Why is there a need to record children’s spoken language skills?

Child protection, schools and the media

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:07 +0100

There probably isn’t a day that goes go by without a child protection story in the press and such reports often give a negative view of how professionals have handled a case.

Report exposes gaps in sex offender legislation that allows abusers to go abroad

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:07 +0100

It describes how some British sex offenders have gone to great lengths to set up orphanages or schools in poor countries in order to abuse children – and money to support these orphanages was raised in the UK.

Dozens of British nationals have been arrested or convicted abroad in the last five years for the sexual abuse of children.

Sexual exploitation: signs to look out for

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:07 +0100

Schools are often the first agency to recognise that a young person may be at risk of sexual exploitation through prostitution and the parents of these young people may approach school for help. Sometimes it is the school that approaches parents to find out why their child’s attendance has dropped, or to discuss behaviour that is causing concern. The parent may be at the beginning stages of recognising that something is desperately wrong, or may be at the end of their tether, not knowing where to turn.

Learning to be open: shaping more emotionally literate schools

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:06 +0100

Emotional literacy is a philosophy of leadership. It holds that organisations are most likely to improve when careful attention is given to the quality of communication and relationships; when people at every level know they can speak honestly about what they think and feel, and that what they say will be heard and acted upon.

Encouraging research for publication

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:06 +0100

Educational research is frequently practised on teachers rather than with teachers. All professions rely upon reflective practice and research if they are to advance, yet in teaching we seem to absolve responsibility for research activity. Research is generally associated with academic institutions.

Planning for participation

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:06 +0100

Rhymes, songs and singing games are valuable tools to enhance learning across the whole curriculum, and to support children’s social and emotional development, but that is only part of the story. We also have a duty to plan sessions that will enable the children in our care to develop their musical skills.

It goes without saying that music sessions should be fun, but for planning to be really effective, there are three basic principals to keep in mind:

Internet and mobile technology security

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:04 +0100

The internet can be enormously beneficial for children. Its huge richness and diversity is part of the attraction. But as the mass media have sadly reminded us, all too often there are hazards associated with internet use. A failure to take reasonable steps to make oneself aware of these hazards, or a failure to take reasonable steps to minimise or avoid them, could put children at risk and therefore expose an individual teacher and the school to potential legal liabilities.

Assessment: An overview

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:04 +0100

Assessment plays a key role in how teachers teach and how students learn. There are different types of assessment and not all are about results and exams. The best forms of assessment will combine data analysis with ways of getting to know pupils and understand their educational needs more fully: at an individual, subject, class, school and Ofsted level.

Promoting communication

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:02 +0100

Communication is the foundation for all children’s learning and social development. The ability to use speech and language to convey thoughts, opinions and ideas to others is a uniquely human skill. The majority of children develop communication skills with little or no additional help. However, for one million children in the UK – around one in 10 – some aspect of the communication process breaks down.

The great how-and-when-to-teach-reading debate

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:02 +0100

Professor Kathy Sylva, a leading researcher into pre-school education, caused quite a stir last summer (2005) when she told a Social Market Foundation think-tank that four-year-olds should not start reading in reception classes. Professor Sylva felt that teachers of reception classes would be better employed teaching their charges social and behavioural skills. She argued that children would be better equipped to master the complex skills required for reading if they have first learned to concentrate and listen.

Radio and the early years

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:02 +0100

The alarming decline in the communication skills of children in recent years seems paradoxically linked to the rise and rise of our screen and keyboard culture. The faster our children can connect with each other electronically the less they seem able to communicate one-to-one.

Managing the transition from pre-school to the foundation stage

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:59 +0100

The girl walks down the street holding her mother’s hand. She has a bubbly, excited feeling in her stomach; she wants to run home but does not want to miss what is ahead of her. She cannot speak because she is so scared and anxious. She walks through the gates with her mother and is met by a skirt, a tartan skirt. She hears her mother say ‘She’s a little bit nervous, will she be all right?’ The next thing the girl knows is that the skirt has become a face with a smile, whispering in her ear:

Making music matter

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:58 +0100

NS: What kind of music education is best suited to early years settings?

LD: In early years, I don’t believe you can separate music from dance. To be really effective it has to be a physical thing, using the whole body. Keeping a steady pulse isn’t just a matter of clapping your hands together, you need to feel it in your heart.

NS: But aren’t a lot of parents eager for their children to start learning an instrument as early as possible.

Parlez-vous Francais in your nursery?

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:58 +0100

Introducing foreign languages at the earliest possible age is regarded as highly desirable. The earlier children are exposed to foreign languages, the easier it is for them to assimilate that language. More and more nurseries are considering offering foreign language tuition.

It is not an easy option. Simply using someone with a holiday knowledge of a foreign language is not enough. Teaching a foreign language needs some specialist skills – pronunciation needs to be correct, likewise accurate usage of verbs and grammar.

Training your staff

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:57 +0100

Just as a young child learns from everything they see and do, so staff can learn from their everyday environment with minimal financial implications but big rewards in developing their capabilities and competencies.

Peer coaching

When quality counts

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:57 +0100

Parents, carers and nurseries share the same goal – to ensure children are receiving the best possible care and early education. When you are aiming to improve the service you offer to children and families, a quality assurance scheme is a good way to develop a culture of continuous improvement.

Preparing for peace: the expert's view

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:56 +0100

In 1945, following WWII, the remit of the new United Nations Organisation was ‘to protect future generations from the scourge of war’. Nevertheless, since then the world has endured at least 245 wars. Today, military strategists recognise two types of war:

Life-long communication problems?

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:56 +0100

Linguistic competencies have a crucial impact on how successfully young people develop at school, how they fare in further education and how they cope in finding work. Here, we consider what can happen to young people if their speech and language problems persist into their teenage years.

The nature of communication impairments

Should teachers of citizenship be certified?

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:56 +0100

The training gap

Making personal development quantifiable

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:56 +0100

Ofsted’s insistence that schools should not ‘shirk’ the need to evaluate learners’ personal development and wellbeing, ‘however hard these may be to quantify’, has provoked anxiety as well as perplexity. ‘Should we do that?’, ask some. ‘Is it possible?’, ask others.

Justifiable wariness

Making education for all a reality