Adventures in Education and Abroad
Monday 18 February 2013
Postscriptum
As you will have noticed I haven't used this blog for a while. If you would like to find out what I am currently working on, have a look at www.filmliteracyphd.co.uk!
Hopefully see you there!
Tuesday 11 May 2010
Election and TES news
Hello from London once more!
If anybody is reading from outside the UK: Our general elections happened last week and basically resulted in a big mess where the winning party (the conservatives for the first time in 13 years) did not get enough votes to ‘dominate’ the parliament and provide us with a prime minister. The other party (Labour), which had been in power since the dawn of time, did only get a few less votes and now where is talk about them teaming up with the third party, the liberal democrats. All three parties have quite different views on how to run the UK and it is most entertaining to watch them try to sort themselves out. Most likely there is going to be another election, but for now, every day there are more news which tip the scale in different directions. Today, the old labour prime minister resigned (possibly to sacrifice himself in order to enable better conversations with the liberal democrats) and today the new prime minister, the leader of the conservatives, basically set an ultimate for the lib-dems.
One thing that really annoys me is that although the conservatives promised more state funded free schools, or new academies as they call them (see earlier blogpost), in a conversation with the TES Mr Gove, the possible next secretary of education, basically said that they would need to adapt to the exact same tests ‘with rigorous accountability’. Now, he might not have understood that the whole concept of free schools is to be except from state tests (with the possible exception of maths, one foreign and the native language in the Scandinavian model). Although I agree that the ‘teaching to the test’ would be slightly more creative in his 'new academy idea, it remains that the state dictates what children will need to know at a certain point in their lives and it disregards it whether they are ready for it or not and/or how quickly they will acquire the knowledge.
Two and a half weeks until the end of my placement… Very mixed feelings.
Friday 7 May 2010
Con-Lib?
Tuesday 4 May 2010
Live, love, laugh
Sunday 25 April 2010
Edinburgh and the volcano
Saturday 24 April 2010
Let the sunshine in
Once more I am on the train to London, not quite feeling productive enough to get on with some Cam*Era work and definitely not depressed enough to get on with some lesson planning, so here we go: An update on the travelling and education that is happening in my life at the moment. :-)
But first for some film! As you might remember from January, the National Student Film Association now has a new committee and my journey this morning will lead me to the National Theatre and our first (and possibly only) committee meeting for this year. New committee members are coming from as far as Scotland to discuss what we can do for film students in the UK and I really hope to make their journey worth as much as possible. Of course the past has shown that even with lots of talking, very little can get done, but I keep my fingers crossed! Screentest was, after all, a great success and there is definitely great potential to make the NSFA something outstanding. I have the feeling that one of the most discussed points today is going to be money and the question where we are going to get it from, what it will pay for if we get it and if the NSFA should ever be considered as an organization which pays its committee. Not that I am desperate to get money for what I love doing anyway, but again experience has shown that money definitely increases people’s commitment. Discuss.
Cam*Era preparation are also going fairly well. Although we have so far only received a disappointing number of films, the weekend itself is shaping up to be amazing with great speakers, Corpus Christi and the Picture House cinema as venues and alumni returning to the uni as judges for our awards. Lots of website changes are just under way and we are launching a major advertising campaign this week to get more people to submit. So, if you are reading this and have not yet joined our facebook group, waste another minute of your precious sunny Saturday by going on facebook and inviting all your friends. Please. Done? Thank you!
But on to something less fun but maybe just as exciting. Elections. What, I hear you shout? Exciting? Rather annoying. Yes and no. This is the first year that I am actually aware of the all the general election circus that is going on in the UK and of course my major points of concern are Education: Primary, Secondary, FE and HE. The former is the only one I am not involved in directly at the moment but as the Sats boycotts are on the brick of being on the way (or not?!), it still feeds into the everyday discussion in the staff room and beyond (be thankful if I have not tried to engage you into an outraged dialogue yet!). For anybody who does not live in the UK: SATs are generalized standard tests and all UK children have to take in Year 6, the end of their primary school time. If you have read my blog in the last year you will know that I dont like tests but that, of course, the matter is not as simple as that. The interesting bit at the moment is that of course every party has different policies on it (The Tories want to move it to Year 7, The LibDems want to get rid of it and Labour is not sure).