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Could Teachable’s resources could replace teachers entirely one day? That’s what I’ve been asked over the last few months, and I can see where they’re coming from. We do have lots of excellent resources for pupils to work through in their own time, and some with very self-contained information (see Balancing Forces or How Fast is Tennis for examples). Where is the need for a teacher?

Well, I believe that the teacher’s role even more important in modern classrooms. No quality resource is able to engage, stimulate and correct in the same way with an incompetent teacher as with an excellent teacher. It is the person at the front of the classroom that inspires children to learn, and makes sure that everyone gets something out of the class.

Today, two reports were published which show what an increasing focus in the UK on testing, rather than teaching techniques, is doing to classroom standards. Professor Peter Tymms, in his report on Perspectives on Education: Primary Science points out that

‘Despite the pass rates, research suggests few students acquire a proper understanding of the science curriculum.

The purpose of science in primary schools should be to foster a sense of curiosity and positive attitudes in the young child. We suspect that the current national approach to science in primary schools is not impacting on children’s scientific thought and curiosity.’

In science especially, but in other subjects as well, teaching the concepts is more important that listing the facts for rote learning. It is the creative and patient teacher who communicates these concepts, not the textbook or video.

On a lighter note, I also read a good tongue-in-cheek comment on a Guardian article about a school employing sixth-formers to help out in classrooms. This is what you get if you take penny-pinching ad absudium:

‘Notes towards modest proposals for reducing the tedious burden of education, education, education upon the public purse.

Teachers: horribly expensive (you have to pay a fortune for staff when they have all those damn qualifications), politically difficult, and rather bolshy. OK so they are fully qualified but do we really need qualified people? Look at those reality programmes on TV. Surely anyone can do anything if you give them a go? Maybe this whole qualification thing is just a stitch-up? Do we really need intelligent, qualified people in the loop? Can there really be any better qualification for anything than the university of life?

Classroom assistants: Much, much cheaper. Happy to be there, happy to help. Lovely people. Not always the brightest stars in the universe and can be a bit dubious on issues such as politics, religion and race, but jolly amenable.

Sixth Formers: Always short of a few quid, so even cheaper and no worries about accidentally employing sex offenders as they’ll be too young to have done anything to get them on the register yet. Dirt cheap.

Caretakers: Always on hand and happy not to be clearing up after the little horrors. Always best to double check their CV by phone though in case the local rozzers’ BBC Micro crashed on the out-of-county perv checks.

Parents: Always complaining about what gets taught and how, so why not get your revenge and have them teach. An hour trying to keep control is usually enough for them: after giving untold sermons on what teachers should be doing, they flee back home complaining about behaviour standards. I agree. I blame the parents.

Still, if we could implement ‘distributed teaching’, send the parents a few FAQs and leave them to it. The wealthy ones can employ tutors if they want. The rest will have to make-do with Wikipedia, Freeview and the net. Given that they copy most of their homework from online sources already, it shouldn’t make much difference. Much cheaper though. Massively reduced education costs. Think of the value of the land for resale. The kids with drive can hit the net and learn for themselves and the rest can be cheap cannon fodder for the job market.’

I hope you all feel confident now that teachers will still be in-demand as far as we can see.

We’ve been reading a lot of articles in the TimesEd these last weeks about how teachers’ work-loads haven’t really reduced, in spite of regulations in England trying to limit working hours. The results from a survey of 3,453 UK teachers suggests that over the past five years:

• Under 4% thought the workforce agreement had reduced their workload substantially
• 38% through their workload had reduced slightly
• Half thought there was no difference
• And the rest actually thought their workload had increased

In fact, judging by the response to the article, the problem is even more severe than that. As one teacher puts it:

In my present job we have an entire afternoon’s PPA time AND an entire hour set aside for subject co-ordination. You’d think this would help… How wrong I was. I have more time, and now I have more to do … I have always longed for the day when I could use plans developed in one year for the next year, but constant innovations and curriculum changes have always prevented this from happening. I have had to do new plans each year… These were unchanged ideas re-jigged on to plans that stretched to 3 sides of A4. So I still have to do the bulk of my planning on Sunday…. The basic rule of thumb seems to be more time, more work.

Government meddling and bureaucracy aside, the more-than-obvious point made in the article was that ‘somebody has got to do the work’. Although classroom assistants and extra central admin staff can pick up some of the burden, tasks like marking and lesson preparation have to be done by the class teacher. But that is where Teachable is trying to help.

We haven’t come up with a way to halve marking time YET, but we can halve your preparation time by providing all the material you need on one easy to use site. The question is: is there more we can do? What else would save you time?

Last week was the annual British Association Festival of Science in Liverpool. Among the cutting-edge science on display there were some great ideas to inspire your science lessons. Here is a quick round-up:

• Physics of Football – as the new football season gets underway, this is a take on how spin allows David Beckham to direct the ball, while no spin help Christiano Ronaldo give goalkeepers the slip.
• Evolution demonstrated in humans – even though homo sapiens has only been around for under 50,000 years, we are still evolving. A good example is the gene for a protein that allows us to digest milk: this has recently evolved and so is present in some communities and not others.
• Linking breaking points to Twin Towers collapse – After you’ve run through the usual breaking-point tests using steel wire, why not ask the class what was different about the Twin Towers. Of course, the steel there was designed for the weight of the building, and the metal didn’t actually melt. Apparently, it all to do with how steel behaves when heated – it becomes very malleable and ductile.

Finally, there was an interesting talk by a Professor Reiss, the Director of Education at the Royal Society. He is an ordained minister in the Church of England, and has a PhD from Cambridge University in evolutionary biology and population genetics. While he obviously believes in the validity of the theory of evolution and its place in science classes, he observed, after teaching biology for 20 years, that pupils with strong religious beliefs were just alienated by scientific arguments about Evolution. He contends that a better way to engage them is to ask them to explain how the theory of evolution COULD explain the development of species, and allow them to express their own opinions about how it does work.