InvolverMany new teachers, as well as experiences ones, are confused about the difference between PSHE and Citizenship and where the school council fits in, and how to make the best out of their valuable curriculum time. I found this presentation which should clarify things a bit and it’s information we should really all have, it can be found on the server at S:\Information and Research\PSHE and citizenship
Matt
Just reading a little bit from HH talking about the fact that the Diplomas that are being introduced for 14-19 year olds are apparently the responsibility of the DIUS (Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills), not the DCSF. The DCSF has repsonsibility for everything up to the age of 13, but then after that there is a great deal of shared responsibility. It seems to me that all of our current work is still focussed on the DCSF, I think we need to see if there is scope to engage with DIUS. If we want to do anything with 14-19 institutions (e.g., sixth-form colleges, FE colleges) we really have to work through DIUS as they are not under the DCSF at all (I think). Whilst this is of course frustrating and confusing it could also open up more lines of funding and more areas of work to explore.
It seems the Government is reworking BSF, as I understand it the pupil-involvement in this scheme is till weak. I think now might be a time to try to talk to the DCSF about beefing it up. Any ideas on how we should go about that?
Full story here.
An amusing and vitriolic article from Charlie Brooker about Brain Gym and teaching pseudoscience in schools. As he and some of the commentors point out doing some exercise and physical movement is good for breaking up lessons, increasing attention and so on, but telling kids it’s because it increases ‘electromagnetic energy’ is just irresponsible.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/07/education
Massive brand new school nobody from host school knew about the last session, so there was no-one from the host school there, 15 boys and two girls from another school. Engaged enough from the demonstration but it was lacking in atmosphere, only 17 in a big hall. graffiti wall went OK. First two sessions were really buzzing. Not a lot of communication within the school. Link person wasn’t a teacher – member of admin staff and didn’t know how to get in touch with the right people. Meanwhile the teachers that did come (“only knew about it 20 minutes ago”) were saying they would really have liked to have brought the school council. Girls got into it and came up with some good ideas and went through the project planner successfully. os/mj
We did the first session. Link teacher very involved; school council teacher very keen and wanted to get the councillors down but couldn’t get them out of lessons – interested in Network membership. Wanted to take project planners back to the citizenship classes. Only had a half an hour session and anticipated 75 pupils (only around 53 in the end) so decided to set the room up cabaret style. Everything had to be set up in advance; Graffiti wall on one wall but had to stick it on one side panel of the kitchen. What was really good was that even though we were limited for time and only had three council members in the session, there was enough interest and enthusiasm from the kids that the session went quite well. The headteacher sat in with one of the groups, the contact teacher was around nearly the whole time, and a couple of other teachers were sitting in and watching, saying how useful the project planner would be in their citizenship classes and asked for lots of extras. Late morning sessions were about an hour long and we ran the graffiti wall again and we were able to go through the project planner briefly. os/mj