October 2014

On Friday Education Secretary, Damian Hinds launched the #SummerOutdoors campaign encouraging children and families to explore the outdoors during the holidays. This kicked off this morning with this tweet from the DfE offering 5 great suggestions for enjoying the outdoors this week.

The Department of Education has released their School Sport and Activity Action Plan, detailing the importance of children leading full, healthy and active lives from an early age and the positive effects that this can have on children’s mental health. 

On 9th July 2019, the DfE released the interim results for the KS2 National Tests.

Attainment in individual subjects

• In reading, 73% of pupils reached the expected standard, down by 2 percentage points from 2018.
• In maths, 79% of pupils reached the expected standard, up by 3 percentage points from 2018.
• In GPS, 78% of pupils reached the expected standard, which remains unchanged from 2018.

St John Vianney is a larger than average Catholic primary school, with two-form entry, based in Blackpool. In March 2018 they were rated ‘Good’ by Ofsted and their outstanding teaching of English and Early Literacy means that they are now one of thirty-two national English Hubs supporting other schools. They use PiRA, PUMA, GAPS and MARK (our free online assessment and reporting tool) three times per year, to support teachers in validating their judgement and identifying learning needs of individual pupils and classes. The assessments are used from Years 1 - 6, to ensure a consistent approach throughout the school.

Catherine Casey gives her top fun tips for parents in supporting their children with spelling.

This year marks the 50^th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing and the first man to walk on the Moon. To help celebrate this, we’ve put together some space-themed lesson ideas and accompanying videos from our sister publisher Franklin Watts and Wayland’s space range for you to share with your pupils. Scroll down to browse and download.

Last week Education secretary Damian Hinds gave a speech at the NSPCC about teaching Online safety in schools. The speech marked the launch of new guidance teaching online safety in schools.

The KS2 2019 grammar, punctuation and spelling test was once again viewed positively by teachers and pupils. When I asked a group of year 6 pupils what they thought of the test immediately afterwards, they said, ‘…it was easy Ms Mayers.’ Of course, we do not know how they performed but at least they felt it was accessible.

Each year many of us (hopefully not just me!) wait in anticipation of the latest national test for Year 6 pupils to see how it compares to previous years. And despite the 2019 Key Stage 2 Test being the fourth set of papers aligned with the ‘new’ mathematics curriculum, we are still keen to drill down, dissect and find out exactly what our Year 6 pupils across the country are being tested on.