Better lessons would improve behaviour, says Ofsted

'Unruly behaviour in some of the worst secondary schools in England could be improved if teachers gave more varied and interesting lessons, according to the standards watchdog.

'In secondary schools where bad behaviour was an isolated issue, the cause was often pupils' frustration with the poor quality of teaching they received, said an Ofsted report published today... The National Union of Teachers immediately hit back, saying: "It is difficult to understand how Ofsted has come to this conclusion when it does not measure the quality of teaching during inspections. This smacks of a return to the bad old days of assertions by the then chief inspector which he could not substantiate."'

Hmm... teachers, teaching or curriculum? More worrying, surely is that the people who measure whether our schools are up to snuff don't actually measure the quality of teaching.

Perhaps it's time the whole post primary education system was sorted out by educators, not by politicians, and that the teaching unions finally accept that not every teacher is a perfect paragon of teaching. Oh and here's the scary one for all of you - we should start asking the students to evaluate the teaching they are provided with.

Teachers want ban on cyber-bully pupils

'Teachers are demanding action to stop pupils humiliating them through offensive video clips and abuse posted online. Their unions say service providers should do more to police websites amid growing concern over "cyber bullying"....'

Well yes I'm not surprised though again it's not really the technology that's at fault, but the behaviour of the pupils. Whilst internet use at school might be carefully filtered and sanitised if this leads to a lack of engagement with pupils around these topics how can we complain when they go home and use the technology in this behaviour?

There needs to be far more engagement with the pupils and that means that teachers need to understand how pupils use technology - and it's totally different to the way adults work. For children and teens technology is all about communication (eg IM and Chat) and social networking (Bebo, Myspace, Piczo) two areas most often filtered in school. If teachers don't understand how pupils interact with technology, then how can they hope to provide good advice, role models and teach what not to do and why not.

'YouTube has examples from several countries of teachers being held up to ridicule. A male teacher was shown with his trousers down. In a recent case in north-east England, a pupil posted a picture of a woman teacher transposed on to pornographic material.'

One has to ask how the former was filmed and why the latter wasn't blocked by filters, but obviously anyone can create publish anything on the internet. We need to ensure that such incidents are tackled with pre-emptive education and proactive action, such as asking pupils to sign clearly worded acceptable use policies. Filtering it wont make it go away - it just hides it under the carpet.