Newsround

What’s been in the news just lately?

• Nuffield-funded research from the University of Newcastle shows parents and carers who regularly read with small children are giving them a language advantage of eight months. Led by James Law, Professor of Speech and Language Sciences:

While we already knew reading with young children is beneficial to their development and later academic performance, the eight month advantage this review identified was striking. Eight months is a big difference in language skills when you are looking at children aged under five.

• Despite the numerous intellectual contributions made by women, Bian et al (2019) find evidence of bias against them in contexts that emphasise intellectual ability.
• Pupils who received Mathematical Reasoning programme made the equivalent of one additional month’s progress in maths, on average, compared to children who did not.
• Author and illustrator John Burningham died. He once said, “Children are not less intelligent, they’re just less experienced”. A sad loss but a wonderful legacy. See my post here.
• The BBC has learned that thousands of children in England with special educational needs are waiting too long for an education, health and care plan (EHC). Teachers will not be in the least bit surprised by this.
• The Guardian reports that schoolchildren across Britain may be offered sleep lessons to help tackle the problem of insomnia among young people. See my blog Sleep On It about the importance of timetabling and sleep.
• The think tank Onward says that up to a quarter of students in England are doing degrees that will not give them sufficient earnings to justify the cost of their loans.
• According to the research carried out on behalf of the government’s Get Into Teaching campaign two in four people say they possess the traits needed to be a successful teacher but are put off by workload, low pay and attacks on professionalism. The DfE can only think of 5 but here are my 156 Reasons to get into teaching.