Channel 4’s recent series about immigrants learning English – Why Don’t You Speak English? – made me think about the barriers my own mother faced when my family moved to this country, almost 30 years ago, and the impact her English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) courses had on us. My parents and I moved [...]
The publication, by Ofsted, of Unseen children: access and achievement 20 years on seeks to re-shape the entire English education system so that the spread in regional performance is narrowed and its ‘long tail of underachievement’ is shortened. For the first time, Ofsted identifies and puts centre-stage, a group of ‘unseen’ children from poor families [...]
This week is Fathers’ Story Week, celebrating the power and importance of fathers and male carers reading with their children. We know that children whose dads share books with them do better at school. We also know that fathers and male carers in families who value learning can hugely improve their children’s life chances. The [...]
Like many of the readers of this blog, I’m a parent and, like most parents, I worry about the future of my child. As someone who has worked around social media and e-safety for some years, one of my biggest concerns is preparing my daughter for a world where her life is online, not just [...]
I have recently returned from a flying visit to Morocco, to attend the Third World Forum on Lifelong Learning. My role was to lead a symposium on Women and Girls’ Literacy, and the role of family literacy. I began with the horrifying and startling statistics about women’s literacy and girl’s access to education – that 54% [...]
