Guest lecturer Dr Russell Grigg

Dr Russell Grigg from estyn was our next guest lecturer and he came into talk to us about the role estyn plays within education and what estyn actually is.

Estyn inspects the quality and standards in education and training in Wales. They inspect a whole range of schools including nursery, primary, secondary, independent and special schools. They also inspect higher education facilities and adult community learning. They are also in charge of inspecting standards for those who are in work based learning schemes. Etsyn set the standards in teacher education and also over see all teacher training courses.

There are three main purposes to estyn they are: 1) Accountability through reporting on providers.
2) Promote improvement in education, 3) Inform the development of national policy by the Welsh goverment.

He then went on to explain what an estyn inspection was actually like. One of the key factors that is  looked at is the people within these providers and their relationships together and to record how good these relationships are. He then showed us an actual estyn report and said two keywords that are in every report are achievement and attainment.  He said they are two key words used in every report because achievement shows how well the provider is doing and attainment means how they can sustain this achievement longterm.

There are 4 judgements in each report they are:
1. Excellent
2. Good
3. Adequate
4. Unsatisfactory

Every provider will strive for excellent overall but the majority of providers in Wales are stuck in the adequate group which is not great and shows that there is room for improvement within education standards within Wales.

Ken Jones guest lecturer 9/1/12

Ken Jones is the dean of humanities of Swansea metroplotian univeristy. He came in do give us a lecture on a brief history of recent education change in Wales. He started of his lecture by asking if anyone knew who the current minister for Wales is? embarrassingly no one knew who it was. Ken told us that his name was Leighton Andrews and he replaced Jane Davidson.He went to talk about that there used to be 8 local authorities but since 1999 there are now 22 local authorities in Wales. He felt that this was far to many local authorities as Wales is not a big nation and we have similar amount of local authorities here as they do in England. Ken Jones felt that this was also a problem with education where pre 1999 you only had 8 education directors (one for each authority), 8 deputies and so on. You now have 22 of each position which he questioned the need for so many and I agree with this. Ken then talked about 2006 PISA (programme for international students assesment) testing which he said some of us would of done when we were in school, I could not remember doing any I could be mistaken mind!! He explained what the pisa testing was and it is basically set by the OECD (Organisation for economic co-operation and development) accross 70 countires it is a standard assesment in reading, maths and science and OECD are then able to compare each country against each other to see which country is doing well and who not so well and can rank them accordinally. Wales did not score very highly in the assesment and their response was to up school effectivenes framework (SEF). the SEF is wales's key policy for education reform and it's main aim is to improve better learning outcomes and wellbeing for all children. The Welsh assembley also created professional learning communities which is designed to enhance pupil learning. It is about teachers learning together observing other teachers at work and talking about methods and ideas together and ways to improve themselves. Despite these changes though in the 2010 PISA scores dropped dramatically Wales were ranked 38th for reading, 40th for maths and 30th for science, below average score on each and was the lowest we have ever been and as a result we haved seen ourselves cast adrift from Engalnd, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

I found what Ken Jones had to say very intersting because I did not believe that Wales would be so far behind in each result because of the amount of money that is put into education standards and after the 2006 results the policies put in place to improve clearly have not worked.

Final ICT lesson

In todays ICT  lesson why had a go at designing our own word art. We used a couple of different prgorams the one that I have posted was designed on a web page called graffiticreator.net which allows you to insert a word an lets you play around with the colouring of the words, the size of the words, the background and shading.

Today was also our last ICT lesson with Mandy. I have enjoyed my ICT lessons with Mandy and felt that I have improved my ICT skills and knowledge by a great deal in a short space of time.

Catch up

As you can see this is my first blog in some time. In this time I have a lot to blog about things such as our 1 week work placement that we went on in december. As well as our last lesson in ICT all will be covered in this blog so stop worrying.

We went out on our first work placement in the first week of December. I went to my local primary school Cwmnedd which is in Glynneath. I spent the majority of the week in the year 5 class and hepled out with their PE lessons, helped with reading and maths. I also helped them make a calender which they would take home. I spent the last couple of days in the foundation phase class where I helped the pupils to draw themselves using microsoft paint for their profiles. I also helped pupils with their reading. There was a lot of technology used in the class technology such as interactive white board, pc's in the classroom. I also went with the year 5 class over to the local training centre and into a computer suite where the pupils had to use the internet to research pictures of christmas for their christmas project, which was to create a christmas themed display. We were also given other tasks that were set by our tutors we had to observe things like the set up of the room, what technology is being used and how to different students deal with the same task. So that was my placement week I really enjoyed the experience and would love to get the opportunity to go back there in the future........... if they'll have me back.

In our last ICT lesson we had to come up with different nativity scenarios Luke and me had to do the nativity story through a sports commentary. At first I struggled as I couldn't remember the exact story which I know is bad. But after Luke told me the whole story I felt ready to give the commenatry a go. We decided to try and add a bit of humour into the commenatry (you'd better ask our other classmates if it worked or not). When we finished we then had to record it and put it onto our class wiki and read it out to the class, it was well recieved whether it was because it was a good commenatry or simply out of pity I'm not totally sure.

Well if you manged to read the whole blog I hope you enjoyed it and I haven't bored you to death!!!

My Wiki

In last weeks lesson we had to make up our own wiki in groups. My group had to look at what we feel education will look like in 5 years time. We were given time to research our topic and our group felt that not much will change apart from technology and there may be more use for i phones and laptops etc in class for taking notes and to teach with. we also found a quote which we used from Bill Gates. We are still researching for our wiki as there is a lot to explore.

Reading Week

Last week I had a well earned week off, although it was officially called a reading week. We were given some work to do over the week by our tutors. I had writing task of 600 words on learning styles, this piece of work occupied most of my time. The work was harder than I anticipated because it was the first piece of writing work that I have done in a while but I battled through and in the end I was happy with my work. We were also given an ICT task of creating our own wikipedia site. Our group was given the task of thinking what education would be like in 5 years time which we have made a start on but is currently not complete. We were also given an assignment on 'what is education' which has got to be 2000 words I have made a start but it is not due in for another month so better get back to that.

Sorry if I have bored you in this latest blog but how do you think I felt I was the one who had to do the work!!!!

Reflective Learning blog

We have been given two articles on different theories on reflective learning. we then had to link them to our own philosophy. I think both Gibbs and Kolb's theories are both similar to each other and also to my theory. They both relate to identifying strengths and weaknesses and how to improve on these, as well as how you can improve and what you would do different next time. Gibbs however goes into more details on how he feels feelings are important in learning whereas Kolb doesn't mention feelings. Kolb believes that just having an experience is enough to learn it and that in order to learn you must reflect on that experience to truely understand it.

The second article explains what a reflective learner is and the pros of being a reflective learner and also gives you some handy tips on how to become a reflective learner. It also gives reasons as to why reflective learning is important.