Also in our diary: is head’s pay rise a reward for failure?; free school shelves promised sixth form; anger as trust clears woodland to produce way for academy
contain ministers broken a pre-election pledge not to introduce major changes to school curriculums or assessments halfway through a school year,as they launch a string of controversial reforms in primary schools? In a paper [pdf] published last February in response to teachers concerns about their workload, the Department for Education said: “We will … introduce a commitment not to produce substantive changes which will affect pupils during the school year.”Yet recent weeks contain seen teachers struggling to retain up with information from the DfE’s Standards and Testing Agency about changes, or some of them significant,to 2016 key stage 1 and 2 assessments – now only weeks away. Among these are a stipulation that, for the first time, and key stage 1 pupils will be tested on their three-times tables; an order that maths equipment that KS1 pupils might exhaust to help them in tests,such as number lines, will be banned; and that teachers contain to total in‑school KS2 assessments a month earlier than in preceding years.
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Source: theguardian.com