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By guest blogger, Allyson Taylor

I am Scottish, I have been for the last 33 years, and although I live in England now my accent will always give away my Scottish heritage. I have enjoyed the traditions of Halloween over the years and have never questioned who, what or why they are the way they are. I can hear you all now thinking, ‘why would you not wonder where the traditions came from?’ I guess I never saw them as sinister or unacceptable, just good harmless fun, so never really questioned it. But then I started to look up what it meant to write this article and was surprised that I had never been taught this before, especially as it was my Celtic ancestors that introduced these traditions to the UK.

The saints and sinners amongst you will know that Halloween, or All Hallows’ Eve as it used to be known, is the night before All Saints’ Day. It stems from the ancient celebrations of the Celtic New Year and marks the beginning of winter. In Gaelic this was known as Samhain (pronounced ‘sow’inn). For the Pagans amongst you this, we are lead to believe, marks the start (or turn) of the year. 31 October being the last day of summer. After Harvest is taken in the fires are extinguished and re-lit. Well, here’s the thing. For decades I have never heard about the ancient beginnings of this time of year. Sure, the obligatory ghouls and ghosts were drawn at school, and scary stories told to each other in the playground, but it was never really clear where these traditions came from. The trick-or-treaters or ‘guisers’ as they were known in my part of the country arrived at the door dressed as fairies, spirits and in latter years Harry Potter! They told hideously bad jokes and sang out of tune and offered their flashing goodie baskets for me to fill with sweet treats. But I doubt they know that they are indulging in Pagan rituals, and I wonder if the parents actually know any of this too? Thinking back; nor was there any mention that the first bonfire nights were to celebrate Samhain. And that it had been the druids that had built huge bonfires that had a sacred significance to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic Gods. Obviously as time marched on the sacred bonfires were replaced with uses that were more sinister – poor Guy Fawkes!

So there it is. A potted history of the festival of Samhain, Or should I say Halloween. Happy guising!

UPDATE 4/11/08: This has been picked up by Teachers TV in their coverage of the credit crunch. I would stress that I don’t believe 30,000 teaching jobs are going to be lost; just that teachers will not be changing jobs so readily.

So you’ve seen the news of banks going down, and you’re sitting smugly thinking teaching is just the safe haven to ride out a financial storm. The more malevolent may be even be cheering as jobless bankers stream from the tall towers of London and New York that were impenetrable financial fortresses until late (but notice it’s never the £1m bonus types that are carrying their cardboard boxes into a taxi!) Teaching seems a world away from the credit crisis, but the inevitable real-economy consequences of all this mess will still affect teachers.

The myth that needs to be exploded is that bankers live in a little bubble: in fact, banking is critical to the flow of money around the economy. As the economy slows, so will the taxes or fees that ultimately pay your salary. If you remain to be convinced, try our beginners guide to the credit crunch, or read the Telegraph article on the after effects.

The short-term effects depend on whether you work for the state or for a private school. State funding and job numbers will obviously remain steady, and a public sector job always has more appeal in hard times. In fact, during the mild 1991 recession teachers leaving the profession in the UK dropped from 14% a year to 8% as teachers clung onto their jobs. A similar drop today would mean that 30,000 fewer teaching posts would become available. It took until 1994 – 3 years – until teachers moved on again (or just retired). So if you have been expecting to climb the ladder quickly, this could hit you.

If you work for a private school then the prognosis is worse. Common wisdom is that the worse affected are prep-schools; the stage before children have started taking ‘critical’ exams. Parents who need to make big cuts to their spending will opt to pull their little darlings out of a private school before the age of 11 but not once they are more embedded in the private system in their teens. Of course most parents will try other money-savers first, but if the recession is long and hard (as this could well be) then school fees are an obvious cut to be made. The worst affected schools will be those who relied heavily on banking bonuses for school fees, but demand for places will probably reduce everywhere. In these times of uncertainly, independent schools certainly won’t be hiring as fast.

In the long-term, teachers in the state sector could well share some hardship as well. The reality is that Western governments across the board have taken on huge extra debts to shore up the banking system. Some of this should get paid back to taxpayers, but not for many years … and not for sure. In the UK, and possibly the US, healthcare spending is going to increase under any new government. So that leaves education as a soft-target for spending cuts. It will happen slowly, but don’t expect any lavish education spending from governments that are going to be counting the pennies for a long while to come.

We have rapidly expanded our range of science resources over the last few months, and we are now having to be stricter about what gets accepted.

There are still a few areas where more is needed. We would be particularly grateful for material that covers:

• Safe operating of lab equipment (bunsen burners etc)
• Microscopes and images of microscope slides
• Infection diseases (and TB especially)
• Arteries, nerves and other basic anatomy (for A-level)
• Any videos of exciting chemistry experiements

Some of you have asked what are minimum standards are for accepted files. On top of the basic formatting guidelines we have a really simple rule of thumb:

All our files are supposed to save our members AT LEAST an hour of time. If the presentation or worksheet wouldn’t take more than an hour to put together then it is not worth paying for, or uploading to the site.

In essence, if you have put a long time into making your files, sourcing images etc, then they are exactly the sort of contributions we will accept. Keep them coming!

We have a good starting range of historical material, but there is so much scope for more graphical, textual and video sources to bring the subject to life. We are particularly interested in hearing from motivated historians with their own resources to contribute.

At the moment, our top requested resources for history are:

1. Dr Barnado
2. Lord Shaftesbury
3. Victorians
4. Egypt
5. Isambard Kingdom Brunel

If you have something on these subjects, there is a bonus 10 credits for every accepted file that you contribute.

Teachable will be going to the Historical Association Primary Conference in Leeds on Saturday 1st November, so we might see some of you there. Otherwise, we also have a position open for an experienced history teacher to advise us on how to expand the offering we have on Teachable.

We’re all facing a financial meltdown. You can’t open a paper or listen to a news report that doesn’t describe the panic over the economic downturn in our country, with banks needing to be bailed out with billions of pounds because the markets are in chaos. The supermarkets have price wars every week, house prices have dropped and there are ‘for sale’ signs on houses and businesses alike, in every town in the country.

But for one college in Stoke-on-Trent the economic downturn didn’t stop them from preparing to go on a 4 star, £18,000 trip to Marbella for their teacher training course. Or so they thought. I am sure you have heard the story about the proposed trip to the Adalucia Plaza Hotel in Marbella for 80 teachers from Edensor Technology College being grounded when parents got wind of it and complained. The Headteacher from Edensor Technology College, Richard Mercer, commented on the trip saying the function of the trip ‘was to produce materials that would be of benefit to the youngsters’. Finally, sanity prevailed when he cancelled the trip at the 11th hour but maybe he should have looked closer to home for great teaching materials and saved himself the grief!

Budget flights might be cheap, but Teachable’s autumn training courses are FREE and our direct-to-your computer resources now start from just £15 for a pack of 10. Beat that, Easyjet!