Well we got to see Alastair Campbell in teaching mode last night, leading Jamie's Dream School kids straight from indifference (the word most of them chose to describe politics was "boring") to violent unrest. A row over whether there should be youth groups exclusively for gay and lesbian teenagers led to a physical confrontation and took one girl to the brink of expulsion. Still, as Campbell trumpeted, they are all "political animals" now.
Guardian critic Tim Dowling is most interested in the progress of last week's biggest dud:
"The central question of the second week was whether historian Dr David Starkey could be rehabilitated as a teacher, or if indeed he should be. His "you're so fat" comment to one of his students last week was so perfectly ill-advised that it seemed he could be sacked. In a crisis meeting with Jamie and the head, Starkey seemed to have little understanding of his mistake.
He insisted it was the boy, Conor, who threw the first insult, even though we all saw different (Jamie didn't take issue with this, though, which made me wonder if last week's episode had been edited to make Starkey come off even worse). He then called Conor "an arrogant, self-satisfied, porcine boy," adding, "which means pig-like." Patronising git.
But Starkey's pomposity could not long sustain itself in the school's atmosphere of enforced mateyness. The kids keep forgetting he's got a PhD and call him Mr Starkey. Colleague Jazzy B calls him "Dave" and Jamie refers to him as "a busy boy". Student Angelique greeted him in the hallway on his return to school and simply said, "Mint, innee?" He was indeed a new man, newly minted, both inspired and inspiring. If he sticks at it he might eventually learn something."
Allison Pearson, writing in the Telegraph, takes a dim view of the Dream Scholars:
Every single pupil in Jamie's school has ruined lessons in the past for better behaved classmates, but there is no shame, only shrill self-pity. 'We had a new headmaster I didn't agree with and I was excluded five times,' explains Jenny. Five times! As [Katharine] Birbalsingh points out, for a child to be excluded these days, he or she needs to have burnt down the school at least once. To be excluded five times makes you the offspring of Clytemnestra and Reggie Kray."
Education news from the Guardian
• The world's leading thinkers regard the UK as having better universities than any other country apart from the US, according to a league table published by the Times Higher Education magazine. While the US has 45 institutions in the top 100, the UK has 12. Japan comes in third.
The top three are Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cambridge. Only academics who have published more than 50 research papers and worked in universities for more than 16 years are asked to take part in the survey.
• We have two interesting blogs online commenting on yesterday's special educational needs green paper. The first is by Ellen Power, aka @Guerrillamum, who is the parent of two children with special needs, and the second is by Darren Jackson, the principal of a college in Wales for young people on the autistic spectrum. Both point out that there are lots of good ideas in the paper - but the bottom line is cash. And at the moment, there's no sign of that.
• The government faces pressure to assess the risk of asbestos in schools following a landmark legal victory for the family of a woman who died after "low-level" exposure as a secondary school pupil. The supreme court has upheld a £240,000 compensation claim by Dianne Willmore, 49, in the first case of a former pupil successfully suing a local authority for negligent exposure.
Education news from around the web
• A £2m "ring of steel" is being thrown around Nick Clegg amid claims that the deputy prime minister is at risk of kidnap by critics in his own constituency, the Mail reports. Police are putting up a 6ft fence around Sheffield city hall to protect the Liberal Democrat leader at his party's spring conference. Perhaps it's just a large play pen…
• Richard Garner in the Independent reckons Michael Gove could get a rough ride when he addresses his first big headteachers' conference tomorrow - based on his interview with John Fairhurst, president of the ASCL.
• Two executives who were separately involved in two of the highest-profile university management disputes in recent years have joined London Metropolitan University, the Times Higher reports. Paul Bowler, former deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Gloucestershire, has been appointed London Met's deputy chief executive, while Peter McCaffery, former vice-chancellor of the University of Cumbria, is to become its deputy vice-chancellor.
• The number of international students studying abroad is continuing to rise sharply, with provisional figures from Unesco's Institute for Statistics revealing an annual increase of 12%. The final figures for 2009, to be published in May, are expected to show the number of international students rising to 3.43 million from 2.96 million, the BBC reports.
The Daily Mail is still obsessing about "explicit sex education" in primary schools. Today it runs an opinion piece by Professor Brenda Almond, who says: "Teaching five-year-olds about sex will only make them want to try it."
"What is the unsurprising consequence of teaching children about sex at a younger and younger age? They go and try it out at a younger and younger age, leading to more pregnancies among very young teenagers and higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases.
In short, precisely the opposite of what the policymakers - and the governments that appointed them - set out to achieve."
• The Teacher Support Network has begun a three-year collaboration with Birkbeck College, University of London, exploring how headteacher behaviour affects teacher wellbeing.
• The national centre for languages (CILT) is opening the doors of its graduate teacher programme in September to native speakers of Italian and Mandarin Chinese in addition to those who speak French, German and Spanish. It's a one-year, full-time teacher training programme for first-language speakers of these five languages who want to teach in secondary schools in England or Wales.
Media skills seminar for education leaders
This one-day seminar on 22 March is organised by the Guardian and the NAHT.
Whether it's sharing good news or handling a crisis, headteachers and senior school management teams need to be able to handle the media in all of its forms. This seminar is for new and aspiring heads, established school leaders who wish to update their knowledge, and chairs of governing bodies who may find themselves in the media limelight. Speakers will cover print and TV, and give up-to-the-minute advice on the internet and social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
Caricature masterclass by a Guardian cartoonist
Sharpen your pencils - the Prince's Drawing School is running a weekend masterclass for adults, led by Nicola Jennings, on Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 March from 10am to 4pm.
The weekend will begin with a brief history of caricature, followed by a look at the proportions of the face. Students will learn to observe and analyse facial expressions and movements, highlighting appropriate characteristics to describe personality. Here's the booking form.
Insight into journalism seminar for teachers
A unique opportunity for teachers to spend a day at the Guardian, find out how a national news media organisation works and get ideas and resources that can be used in the classroom.
Multimedia 31 March Writing for a news website, web editing, blogging, the use of social media, video production; podcasting.
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