[Malcolm Armsteen]

To be frank that thread is so garbled that it's impossible to make coherent sense of it.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

More on Laptopskigate:

[Bones McCoy]

Russian spyware?

Gotta groom those future voters as early as possible.

[Cyclist]

It does make one wonder who the DofE gave the contract to, and where the contracted company got the laptops from?

What is it with this government and dodgy contractors?

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Guaranteed.

[Cyclist]

The creature that insisted schools *will* open in January is now saying he *hopes* they will reopen before Easter.


https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... ore-easter


He's going to follow scientific advice, apparently.

Williamson? Heeding advice? That'll make a fucking change.

[The Red Arrow]

Michael Rosen's article causing a stir on the twitters...like most of his stuff, well worth a read.

Dear Gavin Williamson, could you tell parents what a fronted adverbial is?
Michael Rosen

Families homeschooling in lockdown are discovering the full horror of the primary grammar curriculum – and they’re mystified

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... verbial-is

[Cyclist]

This grade A 'O' level English gainer and life-long devourer of books asks "What the fuck is a 'fronted adverbial'?"

Before clicking on this post I'd never even *heard* of such a thing.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

It's where you start a sentence with an adverb.

Instead of "Gavin shat his pants recklessly" you write "Recklessly, Gavin shat his pants".

Comments from my Facebook where I posted that article:

"The current primary grammar curriculum is silly, regrettably. And that's a rear ended adverb..."

"I suppose it’s nice to know these terms, but I had a grammar school education, with good GCE English passes, and subsequently spent 34-plus years in publishing, in various editorial positions. I seem, as a result, to have attained a deeper knowledge and understanding of grammar and usage than most subeditors in mainstream print and broadcast media. Yet I still would have difficulty explaining fronted adverbials and the like."

"I have a degree in the development and usage of English, and I'd never heard of it. The way that topics are introduced into the National Curriculum encourages intellectual showing off and willy waving - music topics for which there are no recordings, obscure history and so on. No educationist input..."

"I used to run creative writing groups for kids up to age 16. We always asked teachers to send us the crazy kids, not the ones who wrote what teacher wanted them to write. The ones with ideas.
This just sucks the joy out of self-expression and writing."

[Tubby Isaacs]

My primary school had a headmaster who used to hammer us with tests on similes, collective nouns and whatever other "I love 1950" stuff he felt like. He never mentioned "fronted adverbials". I then went to a private school. Nobody mentioned them there either.

[Tubby Isaacs]

More levelling up. They got forced into the Pupil Premium by the Lib Dems originally (not that the principle was new). Wouldn't be surprised if we saw more of this with their big majority.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Has Gavin Williamson proposed this yet? There may be a few, er, issues.

[The Red Arrow]

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Rough calculation, with on-costs, you could hire one newly qualified primary teacher (cheap) for about 10 weeks.

Basic pay = £25k pa
Recruitment = £3-5k
NI etc = £3k

So £31k for a year. 31/6 = 5 roughly. 1/5 of a year (taking into account holiday entitlement) = approx 10 weeks.

Given approx 300 pupils per primary, and a teaching week of 25 hours, that would give each pupil

(10*25)/300 = 50 minutes per child.

[satnav]

While Williamson was keen to talk up the extra £400M he is putting into catch up he some how forgot to explain that the government cut the money spent on pupil premium was cut by £250m. Given that much of the pupil premium money has often been spent on catch up schemes he has really on put £150m into catch up which is peanuts compared to the number of pupils who need support to catch up.