MsM-English 🇺🇦

Teaching 22 years, inner city school

[MsM-English 🇺🇦 @309Cma2]

@BambosMP @RachelReevesMP I agree that it's a Labour budget which is good for children living in poverty, but why is the Home Office Policy so incredibly right-wing when it comes to other children? It's so depressing and has turned me right off this Labour Government. https://t.co/4LLsOvEIcA

[Good Law Project @GoodLawProject]

"They're just thinking about profits" 💰 💸 🤑

We walked around Devon with a bottle of dirty water, asking locals their thoughts on water companies dumping sewage into our rivers and seas. These are the reactions... 👀

[MsM-English 🇺🇦 @309Cma2]

Yes! Absolutely in agreement with this

[Adam Boxer @adamboxer1]

The last question to the panel was "what would you like the new government to do on curriculum and assessment?"

My answer:

If we are talking about curriculum and assessment, the biggest thing for me is a reduction. There's too much content across the board, and we need to strip back. We also need to stop assessment backwash, where exam mark schemes become a part of the curriculum and determine what students do and don't learn.

But that's if we're talking curriculum and assessment. If we're talking education in general - if @bphillipsonMP picked up the phone to me and said "what's the biggest thing in education" I would say something else:

Broadly, the education system itself in this country is working. Training is getting better, standards are improving, professionalism and professional knowledge is increasing and slowly, slowly, outcomes across the board are heading in the right direction. Curriculum and assessment need some changes, fixes, and tweaks, but in a broad sense they work.

What isn't working is everything else: we can't access CAMHS and we don't get hold of social workers. We have a two child limit and a benefits cap that keeps children hungry and in poverty. We have income cliff-edges that mean children whose parents can't afford meals are also not eligible for free school meals. We don't have Sure Start, we don't have youth centres. The SEND infrastructure is byzantine, underfunded and on the verge of collapse. The very fabric of the social security net is tattered and frayed, and vulnerable young children are falling through the gaps. Parents have lost faith in the system, and are losing their trust in schools and teachers.

Despite this, schools are heroically battling the odds to provide students with a high-quality, robust and meaningful education. But when everything outside our gates is in such disrepair there's a limit to what we can do.

So yes, there are things within education that need fixing. But the main thing - the biggest thing - is everything else. The best thing you can do for us is to fix that.

[MsM-English 🇺🇦 @309Cma2]

@Mathew_Lynch44 I got weird plot shit.

[MsM-English 🇺🇦 @309Cma2]

@MissShakesparke Thank you - we've started the cluster with our Year 10s so these will be so helpful

[Barbara Bleiman 🎓 Education is Conversation @BarbaraBleiman]

Note those stepping up to praise him. I can never forgive Gove for his divisive anti-blob rhetoric which has shaped the discourse for more than a decade, for the damage to GCSE English, for Ebacc & damage to creative subjects & multiple other gross distortions of the edu system

[Debbie Cameron @wordspinster]

Depressing that Labour intends to call its publicly run train service Great British Rail. "Great" sounds like it's trying to appeal to the anti-modern, jingoistic likes of N.Farage or J Rees Mogg, plus it sets the new service up for endless jokes about it not being great

[MsM-English 🇺🇦 @309Cma2]

Perimenopausal women have such great humour. I'm giggling my through the replies, recognising so many of the 'new games' we can play at.

[JE @JanetEmson]

I don’t know why people complain about perimenopause. It’s a fun way to play new games such as - Why am I swearing at inanimate objects? Is it my period again or am I haemorrhaging? and my personal favourite - Will my ankles painfully giveaway unexpectedly sometime today?

[Trevor Beattie @trevorbmbagency]

This is good. It’s very very good. And I say that as a scruffy, penniless working class herbert from Balsall Heath in Birmingham who made good. And made a movie about Nureyev. And fulfilled a lifelong dream of flying to bloody Space. And Votes Labour. �

[John Amaechi OBE @JohnAmaechi]

1/6 Always remember the tyranny of authoritarian language.

That way powerful people change the way they describe the same concept, but with starkly juxtaposed language for different populations🧵

[MsM-English 🇺🇦 @309Cma2]

@matthewmoor3 @lamb_heart_tea This is great. And thank you for sharing!

[George Monbiot @GeorgeMonbiot]

The UK government's criminalisation of rough sleeping, now passing through Parliament in the Criminal Justice Bill, is overseen by a Prime Minister who owns four luxury homes for his own use. One of them, in Kensington, is reserved for accommodating family guests.🧵

[Carl Bovis @CarlBovisNature]

As it's Friday, I'm asking all my followers to please retweet this photo to help my little bird account to beat the algorithm and be seen!🙏
To make it worth sharing, here's a Puffin with a beakful! 😀
Thank you so much! 🙏♥️😊🐦
#FridayRetweetPlease

[Carl Bovis @CarlBovisNature]

As it's Friday, I'm asking all my followers to please retweet this photo to help my little bird account to beat the algorithm and be seen!🙏
To make it worth sharing, here's a cute Robin having a bath! 😍
Thank you so much!😊🐦
#FridayRetweetPlease

[MsM-English 🇺🇦 @309Cma2]

@SPryke2 @Team_English1 I did! I'm really looking forward to reading it.

[MsM-English 🇺🇦 @309Cma2]

Brilliant books!

[CyclingMikey the Unspeakable @MikeyCycling]

Say that to Nazan Fennell. Her daughter Hope was run over by a lorry driver who had been texting at the lights moments before. It's why he didn't see her, despite all the other drivers seeing her.

Stationary phone drivers are still dangerous for many reasons:

1) The people using their phones when stationary are often the same people using them when moving. Being caught whilst stationary is a co-incidence, not a defence. It's easier for me to catch them when stopped, but so many were also seen using their phones when moving.
2) They are entirely unaware of people crossing the road around them. See here where a phone driver almost hits someone in the queue
https://t.co/7KswRerKHo
See this other tweet where a 5 year old child is almost hit by a phone driver who was stationary:
https://t.co/7IuYWXQcjM
3) They are entirely unaware of filtering cyclists and motorcyclists, despite the Highway Code requiring us to be aware of this.
4) Phone distraction lasts for a good time after you put the phone away. Even if you're only using the phone in each traffic queue at each junction (which is highly unlikely), then you're constantly topping up your mental distraction and are basically as disabled as a drunk driver.
5) Phone driving is worse than drink driving for distraction rates, and that's why it's part of the #Fatal4 behaviours that police target heavily.
6) Here's a police officer telling you that he has been on the scene for 3 fatal RTCs involving drivers who were stationary whilst using their phones, and then moved off and caused a collision: https://t.co/zt30WFH4wT
7) Policing phone drivers will help them stop other traffic offences too - it's vanishingly rare that someone only breaks a single traffic law like mobile phone use.

I'm really not interested in this nonsense of "it's not dangerous when stationary, because it clearly is and it's clearly still very appropriate to catch these drivers.

[Andy @__codexterous]

📚XMAS BOOK GIVEAWAY!📚

In true Twitter fashion, I'm giving away a free copy of my book, Experiencing English Literature.

To enter, just retweet this post!

I'll select someone at random and get it posted ready for some Xmas reading.

[winner to be announced 13 Dec]

[Carl Bovis @CarlBovisNature]

As it's Friday, I'm asking all my followers to please retweet this photo of Vigilant Vinny the Blue Tit, to help my little bird account to beat the algorithm and be seen.🙏😊
Thank you so much!🐦
#FridayRetweetPlease ♥️