The European Assemby has this week been discussing intolerance in Europe with a special focus on Christians. Parliamentarians argue that ‘European governments should promote a culture of tolerance and living together based on the acceptance of religious pluralism’. Read more
Those who have agitated for subject knowledge, rather than skills, to be the focus of the national curriculum, may have been pleased to hear Nicky Morgan say that the government’s education reforms have at their heart ‘a determination to place knowledge back at the core of what pupils learn in school’. But is her pursuit of knowledge diluted by her obsession with British values? Read more
Moving to secondary school is one of the most perilous times in a child’s education. Writing in The Telegraph, Liam Nolan asks whether staying in the same school from age 5 to 18 provides children with the best chance in life. Read more
A Birmingham Primary school Head has this week called for a campaign to change attitudes to domestic violence, after discovering that some of her pupils as young as 5 thought that domestic violence, verbal and non-verbal abuse of their mothers was normal. Read more
As Guildford in Surrey announces that it can no longer guarantee a school place for all children, Estelle Morris reflects on the mess created by the breakdown in relations between central government and local authorities. Schools, she argues, need to be part of a community and should not stand alone. Read more
RE:ONLINE recently caught up with Tom Bennett and discussed some of the key issues facing RE. Tom is well known in the RE world: an RE teacher at Raine’s Foundation School in East London, TES behaviour expert and blogger and a keen Twitter user. Read Part 1 of his interview
Writing on his blog site this week, Loic Menzies draws parallels between the former requirement for schools to secure community cohesion with the current British values agenda. Similarities are striking and amount, he suggests, to playing politics with the inspection process. Read more
Addressing the National Jewish Education Conference for Primary School Teachers last week, Rabbi Nessanel Lieberman, himself a Head and registered inspector, described Ofsted’s aims as a ‘hodge-podge of left-wing ideals’ that were designed to clamp down on institutions ‘that don’t conform to their ideology’. He gave examples of the outworking of this from recent Jewish school inspections. Read more