Humanities 2020 – NAPE 029
National Association for Primary Education are pleased to support:
Join us in our campaign to restore the humanities – History, Geography, RE and Citizenship to their rightful place in the primary curriculum.
We believe the humanities play a key part in a broad and balanced school curriculum. They have a crucial role in helping children to:
- explore the purpose & meaning of their lives,
- build their sense of identity & self-worth and
- develop the values that will help them to become active, inclusive and thoughtful citizens.
Starting secondary school – NAPE 028
One of the biggest concerns for Year 6 children now that SATs are out of the way is moving on to their next school. They will have often found themselves treated as responsible members of their current school, Leaders in many different areas, but for many it will be back to square one and certainly a big drop down the pecking order. Transition programmes and visits to the new school will help some of these worries to be confronted, but they are likely to bring new challenges which become bigger in their imaginations. Many of their concerns are addressed in the latest addition to the BBC Bitesize website here: www.bbc.co.uk/startingsecondaryschool
A lively friendly place to ask all those questions which are burning to be raised.
To find out more about National Association for Primary Education (NAPE)
Please visit www.nape.org.uk
Website relaunch – NAPE 027
THE WAY WE WORK FOR PRIMARY EDUCATION
The National Association for Primary Education (NAPE) brings together everyone who has a concern for the learning of children from birth to 13 years. Members and affiliated schools work to improve education through the Early, Primary and Middle Years.
This week I take you through the relaunch of the NAPE website and what you can expect to find.
- Join online via PayPal
- Read our journal Primary First
- Links to the NAPE podcast
- I-SPY book series available to buy from £2 per book
- The Development of Handwriting Skills by Christopher Jarman
- Blog posts & social media feeds
- Christian Schiller – In His Own Words
- Our position papers & media releases
Take a look now at www.nape.org.uk
Robert Young General Secretary – NAPE 026
In the latest episode of ‘Meet the National Council’ I interview Robert Young General Secretary and Interim Chair of National Association for Primary Education.
Robert Young
General Secretary
Robert has been active in NAPE since 1986 when NAPE SE London was established as a university based branch and was elected as its first chair, remaining in post until 2013. His professional background is in initial teacher education, having been involved in higher education since 1973, retiring from full-time work in 2007. Since then he has continued to support the University of Greenwich as a part-time link-tutor in schools and doing some external examining for other universities. Semi-retirement has also enabled him to develop his interest in school governance, both as a chair of governors in a Greenwich primary school and as a national leader for governance.
For more information about National Association for Primary Education please visit
Reading for Pleasure with Prof. Teresa Cremin – NAPE 025
National Association for Primary Education in collaboration with the School of Education, Oxford Brookes University, present the Annual Schiller Lecture
READING FOR PLEASURE : developing readers for life
Prof. TERESA CREMIN
The lecture will explore the cognitive, social and emotional benefits of reading and in particular will focus on how, when teachers share their reading lives and books in common with children, new and closer relationships develop reader to reader and human to human.
The Annual Christian Schiller Lecture commemorates the work of an enlightened and inspirational figure in primary education, who was especially influential in the post-War years through to his death in 1976. It is fitting that this year the lecture is to be given by Prof. Teresa Cremin, one of the most articulate and distinguished figures in primary education, whose commitment to the creative dimension in education is very much in line with Schiller’s values. Teresa has written and edited nearly 30 books, including the forthcoming Experiencing Reading for Pleasure in the Digital Age (Sage, 2019); previous examples include Writer Identity and the Teaching and Learning of Writing, Teaching English Creatively ; Researching Literacy Lives; and Building Communities of Engaged Readers. All are welcome to this event.
You can find out more about Teresa Cremin and Reading for Pleasure on the Open University website
http://www.open.ac.uk/people/tmc242#tab1
https://researchrichpedagogies.org/research/team/reading-for-pleasure
National Association for Primary Education
CHRISTIAN SCHILLER CBE, MC, MA
Christian Schiller was born on the 20th September 1895. He went to a prep school and then to Gresham’s School where he was head boy. Military service in the First World War followed and he was wounded in action.
After the war he read mathematics at Cambridge and then studied with Percy Nunn at the London Day Training College before beginning his teaching career. In 1924 he was appointed HMI and then followed a long period of work with the schools in Liverpool where his
contact with poor children and their families was a deeply formative experience. He became District Inspector and later filled this role in Worcestershire.
In 1946 he became Staff Inspector for Primary Education and his influence, often in partnership with his friend Robin Tanner, HMI and etcher, was strongly felt as elementary schools developed into primary schools with a distinctive child centred approach which drew on children’s innate creativity and which recognised the powerful learning which comes from direct experience.
On his retirement in 1955 he began a new career as he created a one year course at the University of London Institute of Education for teachers and heads seconded from their schools. Each course was kept small, no more than 12 people who spent their year visiting schools and in discussion led by Schiller who often remained largely silent until he revealed his vision and optimism about the future in a brief summing up. There were no examinations or required coursework yet, as this writer will testify, everyone worked extremely hard. The course was hugely influential and most of his former students have gone on to hold senior leadership positions in education.
Christian Schiller died on the 11th February 1976. The following year the first memorial lecture was presented in London and the annual lectures, now organised by the National Association for Primary Education, continue to the present day. We are pleased to be able to celebrate the work of this great man who contributed so much to the principles and practice of primary education. To those who say look at us, obsessed with children being coached to pass tests, schools competing rather than co-operating, I reply , look more deeply , beyond today’s political froth. Schiller’s work continues and one day, will prevail.
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‘Christian Schiller in his own words’ was published by the Association in 1979. The book is available price £5.00 from the NAPE national office.