Hey there Teacher Tappers!
Hello Summer Term 2! The last term is crammed full of all the really important and really lovely bits of the year. KS2 assessments will be finished off as will the GCSE and A-levels, and primary schools will wave goodbye to their year sixes, as will secondary schools with their year 11s and 13s.
And, according to your answers 13% of you will be moving schools or changing roles in September! So lots of staffroom goodbyes too.
Prize draws 🎟️
Of course another key calendar date on summer term 2 is Sports Day! And we are pleased to congratulate our winner of the Sports Day Prize Draw – Ella, in Rayleigh, Essex! 🎈🎉🥳 Look out for photos coming soon – the prize money is going to be spent on a new PA system for their sports day and future events. We are really pleased that the winnings will be spent on amplifying the voice of teachers…by an app that aims to amplify the voice of teachers!
Our new prize draw for June is going to be a little different…watch the app for more details coming soon!
Voting at 16
In General Election news, the Labour Party have said that if they are elected, they plan to lower the voting age to 16.
We also asked this in 2019 – 55% of you agreed with it then, and 53% of you do now! However, rather than swapping to strongly disagreeing or disagreeing, more have said they neither agree nor disagree.
Are you talking about the election in your classrooms? How politically engaged are the young people in your school? Let us know what you think either on socials 🛜 on through the app 📲.
National Service
A surprising policy that was announced last week was the proposal for 18 year olds to do national service. This would come either as a year-long full time military placement, or a once a month weekend volunteering commitment.
This wasn’t particularly popular among you, just 15% of you agreed with the proposal! Looking by different demographics too, not much changed!
Until we filtered by the percentage of FSM children. And then we saw some differences…
This is possibly because of the connections between the military and fee-paying schools (for example, in 2019 half of the British Army officer cadets were privately educated and there was higher representation of Combined Cadets Forces in fee-paying schools vs state-funded schools).
Perhaps the number of ‘agree’ votes in the private sector could be due to those of you who see military volunteer work being done well and think more would benefit from it? Let us know what you think…💭
Finally, as an experiment, we crossed the responses for the above two policies to find those who strongly agree that the voting age should be dropped to 16 were also likely to be those who strongly disagreed about national service. And at the other end of the scale, those who strongly disagreed about lowering the voting age were also the mostly likely to strongly agree to National Service.
Social media use for teens
Ofcom, the media regulator, has released a report that says unless social media firms tighten up what teens do and don’t see online, then they will ban social media for under 18s altogether. 📵🔞🚫
22% of you think that the benefits of social media for 13-17 year olds outweigh the downsides – roughly similar to what you thought in 2021!
However, many of you have become stronger in your opposition to social medial. Those who strongly disagreed rose by five percentage points in the past two-and-a-half years
If we did limit social media use, which platforms do you think should be banned? TikTok and Snapchat come out as the clear ‘winners’ in the race. We checked and there isn’t much different when we split by phase – what is noteworthy is that the percentage saying ‘none’ is slightly higher in secondary (21% vs 17%).
Over in The Netherlands on the Dutch Teacher Tapp teachers answered the same question – but gave very different responses. Although the top three were the same (TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram) however results were generally much lower with far more replying ‘none’ (25%).
Would a ban for the under 16s be the right age to target⛔️? Would you rather see a ban for social media use from a younger age – after all, do we know when IS the right time to let young people total freedom online? Let us know what you think over socials or on the app…💬
Sats and maladministration
If you’re reading this in June, then as you read these words there is likely a KS2 SATs marker slaving away over a maths, reading or GPS paper. Think of them, and send positive thoughts! 😩
However, before that marking takes place – the Sats have to be, well, sat. And we always ask about the reports of maladministration that both primary and secondary teachers hear about.
This year we saw a tiny increase compared to last year with a three percentage point rise in the number of teachers saying they have, or have been encouraged to partake in maladministration of the Sats. This includes things like providing a student with a reader or scribe under the pretence of ‘normal classroom practice’.
In secondary we have a similar story, with a four percentage point increase in the number of secondary teachers reporting that their students had made comments to suggest that maladministration had taken place during their assessments.
New sex education and gender guidance
Just before the general election was called, the government announced a new consultation on relationship and sex education (RSE) guidance that included directions to wait to teach certain topics until pupils reached specific ages, and directed schools to teach gender reassignment rather than gender ideology.
We asked a series of questions to find out what you thought, and here is what we found:
RSE guidance
77% haven’t yet read the guidance.
4% appreciate the clarity the new guidance on RSE brings, with 10% saying they would rather carry on using their school’s current guidance, and 6% ask for more guidance – for instance, example policies.
Just over one-in-ten say the new guidance would not meet their pupils’ needs – a concern that was slightly higher among secondary teachers (14% vs 11%).
Opinions were split on the age limits in the guidance: around one-in-five say that they disagree with the new guidance to wait to teach topics at specific ages, and say the school should make this decision, 15% agreed with the ages, and 15% agreed that there should be age limits – but not with the ones proposed. A huge 48% said that they didn’t know.
Gender guidance
The guidance update to instruct teachers to teach gender reassignment rather than gender ideology split opinions. A quarter strongly disagreed, around a quarter disagreed, and a quarter neither agreed nor disagreed. The final quarter was split between agree (14%) and strongly agree (10%).
In February, the government had released new guidance for gender questioning children. At the time, we asked for your thoughts, and you told us that the majority had not read the guidance (66%) and of those who had, 62% felt is was more divisive than helpful, and 14% welcomed it saying they appreciated the clarification it provided.
Three months later, slightly lower number saying they have not read the guidance (57%) and of those who have read it, similar numbers say that it is more divisive than helpful (63%), and slightly more say they welcome the clarification (16%).
The top education influencer
When we asked you to name an edu influencer, the responses varied from teachers you knew in your own schools, to our own Laura McInerney, to ‘no one’!
Names that appeared many times include Adam Boxer (490 times), Jennifer Webb (150 times), Ms Foster (80 times), Craig Barton (170 times).
But the name that appeared more than any other was Mr P ICT whose name appeared a whopping 1500 times! 😲
Top events
This week’s top event is…ResearchEd and their in-person National Conference 2024
If you do go along, be sure to come and say hi to us on our Teacher Tapp stand – we will be there with our bingo machine and new merch! Check the app to see all the new events on offer.
Ups and Downs
On the rise 📈
Headteachers disagreeing that linear exams are preferable to modular When the curriculum reformed and the new style of exams without controlled assessments came in around 2018, 36% of headteachers and senior leaders said they slightly, somewhat or strongly disagreed that linear were better than modular exams. Today, that number has risen to 43%.
Heading down 📉
Teachers planning to stay put We asked what would make you want to stay at your school for another year – in June 2022 63% weren’t thinking of leaving next year, but this June that figure dropped to 55%.
Daily Reads
Our most read daily read this week was the blog: Sophie B’s English paper SAT analysis.
If you would like to read the rest you can find them here 👇
