The system was changed after an independent inquiry claimed it was “natural justice” to allow examiners to put grades down as well as up.Two of the exam boards with the largest number of candidates – the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) and Edexcel, the board criticised by the Prime Minister earlier this year for a series of blunders with exam papers – are both criticised in the report for failing to deal quickly enough with urgent appeals from students planning to go on to university. A new fast-tracking system for appeals has been introduced to speed things up.However, the report showed that AQA dealt with 94 per cent of its 2,722 urgent enquiries within the deadline. At Edexcel, 87 per cent of the 966 urgent inquiries were completed within the allocated time.Sir William said it was clear that the two boards’ performance was “not as good as in previous years”, adding: “It is imperative that centres use the priority two [fast track] service promptly for all candidates who need a quick resolution to their enquiry, for example, where a place in higher education depends on achieving particular grades.”. If a teacher were to rewrite the lyrics of the Boomtown Rats’ hit “I Don’t Like Mondays”, it would probably be renamed “I Don’t Like Wednesdays”.

Research published yesterday showed that unruly pupils are at their worst on Wednesday mornings, between morning break and lunchtime.
The finding emerges from a survey of 15,000 teachers carried out by Les Kennedy, a history teacher and executive member of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers. He presented his findings to the union’s annual conference at Scarborough yesterday.Teachers were asked to record the time and details of any incident and the age of the pupils concerned – although not the gender. Mondays and Fridays were the calmest with a reduction in the level of abuse aimed at teachers. Wednesday was by far the worst, with the morning low point for behaviour continuing into the afternoon.Mr Kennedy had two theories for the midweek malaise: first, by the time Wednesday break-time came along, the pupils had been in school for two days with no end in sight to the week; second, he believed it was significant that the worst period came after pupils had filled themselves with fizzy drinks, and all the additives they contain, at break.Wednesday mornings were “not a good time to be teaching anywhere between year nine and year 11 [ages 14 and 16]“, Mr Kennedy said.. The clocks went forward on Sunday But not for the National Union of Teachers. The annual combination of militant minister-baiting and ministerial tough talking played out by the sea again.

And the slow handclaps and jeers in Bournemouth did the teachers’ cause no good whatsoever

The clocks went forward on Sunday But not for the National Union of Teachers. But they needn’t worry: there are always some in the audience to confirm the stereotype.Nor does the issue matter: this year teachers got a good pay increase, with last year’s gripes about retention tackled. Teachers with five years’ experience can earn £28,000 from September, compared with £19,000 five years ago Schools have been better funded than for some decades. Recruitment has been rising too.But the unions still want to turn performance-related pay into incremental rises for all and to impose a rigid 35-hour working week on every school, without losing any of their long holidays. It was hardly surprising that Estelle Morris’s spinners briefed the press in Bournemouth that she would tell the assembled activists that industrial action could only harm teachers’ professional image.

True to form, the NUT’s general secretary, Doug McAvoy, popped up on Saturday’s Today programme on the BBC oozing sweet reasonableness, trying to play down expectations – to little avail.Morris knows that NUT militancy does nothing to hurt her own image as a tough talker who is not pushed around by vested interests – though if the teachers are still grumbling after the last two spending reviews, the Treasury will hardly warm towards further largesse. Teachers’ unions can be teachers’ worst enemies.I was with David Blunkett when he attended his first NUT conference seven years ago. He had just made the outrageous suggestion that failing schools should be turned around or closed (a policy that later rescued more than 750 failing schools). We knew things could be tough at the NUT, but never realised exactly how.In the event, a group of chanting Trotskyists and TV crews gathered at the entrance of the Blackpool Winter Gardens. When they saw the shadow Education Secretary, they chased us into a small office (later called a “cupboard”) where an appalled McAvoy apologised and took about 20 minutes to clear the mob.It became a defining moment for Labour’s education policy, confirming everybody’s prejudices about the NUT while allowing Blunkett to explain his plans for higher school standards more widely than ever. No wonder Gillian Shephard, then the Education Secretary, sought (but failed to get) similar treatment the following year.McAvoy rightly argues that the militants started to lose their influence after 1995. But their visual and vocal presence still confirms every parent’s prejudice, and also does more than any other single event to put potential teachers off joining the profession (something the NUT unconvincingly claims to want).In part the problem is that the conference is held over the Easter weekend, when news is usually thin (this year the Middle East conflict and the death of the Queen Mother make it an exception).