Polly Toynbee writes about government plans for child care in today's Guardian - complete article here - and claims that 'a whole new profession is born - the pedagogue, combining nurturing and teaching.' That sent me to find out about the ancient paidagogos. Here's the relevant paragraph from Polly:   more »

Naturally OCR is an interested party in this matter, but its submission responding to the Tomlinson report is worth considering. We certainly need most of students' exam work to be externally assessed. Coursework, and the proposed extended assignment, are just too wide open to cheating - and the boundary between legitimate help from a teacher (let alone a parent) and plain cheating has always been a fuzzy one. Anyway, here's how the Guardian reports OCR's views today:   more »

Just another example to add to my depression about 'real education'. It's from today's Education Guardian. I have no other comment to add.

Newcastle drops physics degrees

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David Starkey used the phrase 'national Altzheimers' in a Radio 5 discussion on our ignorance of history today. Apparently a survey has found that:

LONDON - Nearly half of Britons in a poll said they had never heard of Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in southern Poland that became a symbol of the Holocaust and the attempted genocide of the Jews.   more »