Schoolchildren are “close to breaking point” as they struggle to keep up with extra coaching laid on to push them through exams, teachers warn today.
In a poll of more than 500 teachers, over two-thirds admitted forcing pupils to do more practice tests in the face of growing pressure to succeed.
Similar numbers are running after-school classes to prepare pupils, according to the poll by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), with others offering one-on-one coaching.
And in a picture of a profession where some members’ boundaries are fraying under the pressure, several teachers surveyed admitted fiddling exam results and rewriting their pupils’ homework to meet targets.
Thirty-nine per cent of those surveyed said the pressure to do well had “compromised their professionalism”.
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Kevin Fong: ‘Coders increasingly modify our world.’ Graeme Robertson for the Guardian
I remember the excitement of coding during the initial wave of PC technology – the Observer magazine would run weekly adverts for the ZX81, and there was a sense that coding was within reach. Since X-box, it’s harder to see the route to how you would code one of those games yourself, and black box devices like palm pilots and latterly tablets take away that connection to your machine. Jeremy Clarkson described the VW Beetle as a car for people who didn’t like cars: previously unless you could get under the bonnet and change the clutch you weren’t a motorist. Apple did that for computer science – the subconscious statement is that it’s cool to not know, to not tinker. The skill is being lost even as the appetite for it grows. Coders increasingly modify our world, the enormous bandwidth of information available to us, but the practice needs to be exciting enough, have more people doing it and sharing it for it to be mainstream. Computing teachers used to be enthusiasts themselves, but now there is more remove from that excitement. Mac
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The Texas A&M University Division of Research will host a training workshop by the National Council of University Research Administrators (NCURA), It Takes a Village to Manage Awards: Post-Award Issues for Pre-Award and Departmental Administrators, on Friday, April 13 from 10:30a.m. to 2:30p.m., in 101A General Services Complex.
Research administrators are challenged with multiple compliance issues in supporting researchers. Whether it’s assisting with proposal preparation, facilitating the submission process, award negotiation and acceptance, or managing the award through closeout, there are many aspects of research administration compliance that impact administrators. C
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5. Cook County Ethics 101: State’s Attorney Alvarez wants to investigate herself. Lawyers for the family of David Koschman are asking Judge Toomin today (Cook County Criminal Courthouse, 26th and California, courtroom 101, 2:00 pm) to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the circumstances of 21 year old David Koschman’s death, days after being punched in the face by Daley nephew “R. J.” Vanecko in a drunken confrontation in the Rush Street area in the early morning hours of April 25, 2004. Vanecko ran away after the incident and Vanecko’s friends and family persuaded the State’s Attorney’s office that Vanecko, built like a linebacker, threw the only punch in the fight in self-defense, even though the dead man weighed 100 pounds less than Vanecko and was almost a foot shorter [See John Kass’ insightful column of yesterday]. Koschman’s family also wants an outside prosecutor to investigate the way the case was handled by the state’s attorney’s office and the Chicago Police Department. Incredibly, Alvarez argu
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SportingNews has ranked their top ten dual-sport schools in the nation and the Big 12 represented itself well.
Baylor cracked the list as the 10th best school. Oklahoma was ranked ninth and Texas got fifth. Even though they haven’t played in the Big 12 yet, school-to-be West Virginia was ranked sixth.
Here’s what they had to say about the Baylor football and basketball program:
“Football: It’s more than Robert Griffin III. It’s a coach (Art Briles) with a plan and a philosophy–and a commitment to stay at the school and cultivate it. Briles could have left Baylor for a bigger job; instead, Baylor rewarded Briles with a big contract and a proposed new football stadium that has Baylor primed for long-term staying power.
“Basketball: Baylor easily could have given up on Scott Drew, even though he was in an untenable position following Dave Bliss and NCAA probation. Four years of building have led to a program that recruits among the nation’s elite and has been to the Elite Eight in two of the last three seasons.”
To read the full article, click here.
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