TAs are key to quality teaching says schools minister

Increasing the number of teaching assistants in classes is key to improving education, says schools minister Jim Knight.

Interviewed on BBC radio 5 Live, Knight said "If we’re going to improve behaviour, and that’s the beginning of good learning with people feeling safe and confident to speak up in their classes, we’ve got to continue to improve the ratio of adults to children in class."

The minister mentioned teaching assistants and their importance several times during the brief interview on Friday morning. He said teaching had become the second favourite career choice for graduates, partly because people knew that the introduction of many more teaching assistants into schools had reduced teachers' workload.

Jim Knight announced last September that a national pay body for school support staff would start work this year, and be in full operation by next September. But plans to recruit an independent chair for the new body have been delayed.

Children do better at school if parents are sociable

Children whose parents are sociable do better at school, research has found.

Parents’ social lives were compared against children’s attainment at school as part of the research at the University of Sheffield.

Factors such as the number of friends parents had, how often they attended social gatherings and whether they were members of groups such sports clubs and residents’ associations were taken into account.

Children were tested in literacy, numeracy and verbal skills and it was found performed better when their parents were more sociable.

The results were found to be independent of social class.

Money for dance classes

Dance opportunities for children have been boosted with £5.5million of government funding.

It aims to get children dancing, not only for fitness and fun but to find the next generation of talented dancers.

The money will allow for specialist dance centres to be set up and dance specialists to visit schools.

School buildings "not good enough"

Inadequate buildings and facilities are causing problem in many schools, according to a survey.

Among the most common complaints were poor ventilation, not enough drinking water, cleanliness, inadequate disabled access, damp and noise.

Both pupil and staff toilets came in for criticism, with just less than one in three respondents rating their facilities as poor or abysmal.

Staffrooms were on the whole judged to be largely satisfactory or better, although about one in six said they were poor or abysmal.

The survey was carried out by the trade union Association of Teachers and Lecturers. Lack of rooms was a big problem in the majority of schools, with more than three out of four saying there were insufficient smaller rooms for mentoring or tutoring.

And more than four out of ten said classrooms were not a suitable size for the number of pupils taught.

Almost six out of ten said that there was no readily accessible sick room available at all times.

"Brain training" trial for Scottish children

Primary school pupils in Scotland will start each school day by playing Nintendo to see if it improves their learning capacity.

More than 900 pupils in 32 schools will take part in the project, playing a brain training game on the games console for 20 minutes daily.

In a smaller pilot study it was discovered that the reading tests, problem-solving exercise and memory puzzles had a positive impact on schoolwork.

Pupils’ behaviour and concentration improved, and they completed test work faster and with better results.

Learning and Teaching Scotland, which is organising the project, used the computer package More Brain Training from Dr Kawashima.

Schools breaking law on admissions

Primary schools are breaking the law on admissions policies, the government says.

A “significant minority” are breaching new rules designed to make admissions fairer. Some required parents to sign an agreement to make regular financial contributions, and one London primary school admitted asking parents for a £50 “application fee”.

Some interviewed children, or asked parents about their marital status and financial circumstances. Schools were also not giving children in local authority care (“looked after” children) the priority they are obliged to by law.

All schools in a sample of three authorities – Manchester, Northamptonshire and the London borough of Barnet - were checked to see if they were complying with the admissions law.

Schools Minister Jim Knight said it was "shocking" this was still going on.

Call for homework to be scrapped

Homework at primary school should be scrapped, a leading teachers’ union has said.

Giving homework to the under-11s can cause them to resent school and cause family conflict, according to the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL).

Pressure to complete homework can make pupils unhappy and can end up being counterproductive the union said.

Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of ATL said that homework can put a high level of stress on pupils, particularly those form disadvantaged backgrounds.

“I think it sets up a cycle of resistance to school because they don't have access to the cultural and emotional and learning support which middle class children can get,” she said.

The issue is due to be debated at the ATL annual conference next week.

According to government regulations, homework is not compulsory, although it is recommended to support classroom learning.

The ATL have now called for a royal commission to be established to investigate why so many children are unhappy at school.

Schools "taking place of family"

Primary children are having to be taught basic manners and communication skills, headteachers have warned.

Schools are increasingly taking the place of the family in teaching children social skills.

"In terms of good manners and appropriate behaviour, primary schools have to teach children how to use a knife and fork and sit at a table,” said general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, John Dunford.

"In relation to the family, one of the most important factors has been the loss of the family meal, which has reduced family conversation so that schools have more to do in teaching children to communicate,” he said.

Speaking at the Association’s annual conference Dr Dunford said that school’s “can’t an shouldn’t replace the role of parents” and that the job of schools had become more difficult than ever.

School teaching 40 languages

A primary school in Redbridge, east London, is celebrating its ethnic diversity by teaching its pupils more than 40 different languages.

Between the 850 pupils at Newbury Park Primary School 40 languages are spoken. and each month children learn phrases in one selected language.

Languages spoken include Swahili, Tamil and Nepali.

As well as boosting pupils’ language skills and knowledge of other cultures, the scheme has attracted international interest, with visits from Finnish and Danish schools and a twinning project with a school in Barcelona.

Pupil absence down but truancy up

Truancy in English primary schools is at its highest rate for ten years.

Latest figures show that for every 100 school days, just over half a day is missed due to unauthorised absence. In secondary schools, twice as many days are lost to truancy.

Each primary school pupil misses an average of eight school days per year. The most common reason is illness, followed by family holidays. Overall, attendance at primary and secondary schools has improved as the number of authorised absences has fallen to its lowest level for ten years.

Children who are absent for a fifth of the time, or more, are classed as Persistent Absentees (PA). In primary schools , one in fifty pupils is a PA and they account for more than a quarter of unauthorised absence.

Pupil Absence in Schools in England

Girls outshining boys on computers too

Girls have better computer skills than boys, according to research conducted by Tesco Computers for Schools.

Girls were more likely than boys to be able to successfully complete tasks such as finding what they needed using a search engine, or creating a document.

Only six per cent of girls said they lacked confidence using computers, compared to 10 per cent of boys.

However, both boys and girls were more tech-savvy than their parents, 57 per cent of whom relied on their children for advice on using the computer and internet.

Poor memory blights one in ten children

A bad memory could be causing underachievement for almost half a million primary school children,say researchers.

A team from Durham University found that in 10 per cent of the 3,000 children they studied, poor working memory was responsible for seriously affecting their learning.

In many cases, teachers described these children as being inattentive or less intelligent.

A working memory is the ability to hold information in your head and manipulate it.

It would be used regularly at school, for example when adding numbers together in your head, or when writing down sentences already said by a teacher.

The problem is thought to be genetic, and can affect long-term academic success.

As a result of the study researchers have produced a checklist which can be used by teachers to identify whether children are experiencing memory problems.

Sure Start kids "better behaved"

Children living in areas with Sure Start Children’s Centres behave better and more independently, according to an independent report.

Parents in those areas were found to have provided a better home learning environment for their children, preparing them to make the most of their talents and do well at school.

However, the report’s authors say that the positive effects found were ‘modest’.

Government ministers have now announced plans to extend Sure Start, which now has almost 2,500 centres that work with nearly 2 million families.

Additional funding will allow for more outreach workers in disadvantaged areas.

New ways to reach minority communities will also be explored.

The ongoing national evaluation report into Sure Start is being conducted by the Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Social Issues at Birbeck, University of London.

Another review into the same families and children will take place in two year’s time.