Frank Chalk A poll of 3000 teachers run by the parenting club website bounty.com revealed that roughly half of teachers make assumptions about children based upon their first names. Their judgements are shown below and are pretty accurate. Naughty Boys                                Naughty Girls  [ Read More ]

Frank Chalk Boris Johnson asked last week why we can’t manage to create an internet business like Facebook. He suggested that young people lacked the necessary single-minded ambition and also blamed our society’s reluctance to praise success. So why not? 1) He is correct in blaming lack of ambition in many young people. State education does not allow failure and teachers  [ Read More ]

Frank Chalk Once again Ofsted plumbs new depths of lunacy, announcing today that the word ‘satisfactory‘ will no longer be allowed as a grade. It’s always worrying when organisations ban words- I can still remember the Professional Association of Teachers debating whether to forbid use of the word ‘failure’ and replace it with ‘deferred success’.  [ Read More ]

Frank Chalk The Government recently announced a £1 billion package to help reduce unemployment in the 16-24 age range, which is generally seen as a consequence of the recession. Whilst the economy was growing strongly between 2001 and 2007, what do you think happened to the unemployment figure for this age group?It rose by 200  [ Read More ]

Frank Chalk Some friends of mine whose child starts school this September, recalled the moment they decided to opt out of state education. They have instead chosen to spend a large amount of money that they can’t really afford and will involve them making some real sacrifices. They were being given a tour round a  [ Read More ]

Frank Chalk The Government has just announced that vocational qualifications are no longer going to be counted in the League Tables. This is terrible news. Without Hair and Beauty, Travel and Tourism and Generally mucking About, how on Earth are schools like mine going to fool decent, honest parents into believing that we are just  [ Read More ]