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English state secondary schools are not doing enough to stretch their most able students.
An Ofsted report says that these gifted pupils are not keeping up with their counterparts in independent and grammar schools.
Sean Harford, Ofsted's national director of schools, said that children are not realising their early promise, but heads'; leader Russell Hobby said it that it was neither sensible nor accurate to accuse schools of failing and that there had been so many changes imposed on secondary schools that the system itself is getting in the way of success.
Inspectors looked at how well pupils who had been high-flyers at primary school made the transition into secondary school. While inspectors found pockets of excellence, too many of these children are not being challenged sufficiently - and thousands of highly performing primary pupils are not realising their early promise when they move to secondary school.
Research shows that England compares poorly with other countries in its provision for the highly able and our brightest students are failing to make the most of their talents.
A Department for Education spokeswoman said: 'We know that the best schools do stretch their pupils. They are the ones with a no-excuses culture that inspires every student to do their best.
'That is why we are replacing the discredited system which rewarded schools where the largest numbers of pupils scraped a C grade at GCSE.
'Instead we are moving to a new system which encourages high-achievers to get the highest grades possible while also recognising schools which push those who find exams harder.'
8 March 2015
Our March newsletter is now available.
2 March 2015
The human brain is not very good when it comes to calculating the probabilty of something happening - or not happening. This is why pay-day loans can catch people out and why we are likely to invoke the supernatural when there is no need to do so.
This article gives some examples and explains why we have a tendency to believing things that are not true.
25 February 2015
We are making some changes in the way we position and charge for adverts.
Instead of positioning and charging by page, adverts are charged by their position in the advertising column. Premium ads appear at the top of the column and on every page. Please go to mwls.com/advertise for more information.
19 February 2015
I finally got a reply from Apple about the unannounced increase in developer fees:
On the first of January, 2015, the European Union approved changes to VAT legislation impacting the applicable VAT rate for the sale of digital goods, which includes Developer Program purchases. For this reason the value-added tax (VAT) rates for Developer Program purchases were changed for all territories in the European Union and they are based on the country in which a customer is resident.
The annual fee by this calculation should be £72 rather than the £79 charged but at least it goes some way to explaining the increase. By contrast, Google developers are charged a one-off fee of $25.
5 February 2015
Our latest newsletter has just been published.
2 February 2015
Did you know that many US companies charge UK and European customers much more than their US counterparts?
We often pay for the same goods and services at a rate of one pound to the dollar. That is, we pay about £10 when a US customer pays the equivalent of about £6.50.
I was planning to join the Apple Developers' programme so that I could develop free applications for the people who visit my website until I discovered that I had to pay £60 a year before I could test applications on my own phone.
I thought that there was no point in paying this until I had some applications to test. Recently, I went back to sign up only to discover that the price had been increased to £79! US developers only pay $99 (£65) - not as bad as the exchange rate mentioned above but still unacceptable. (By the way, if you have signed up for Apple's iTunes Match for £24.99 a year, you'll be interested to learn that US customers pay $24.99).
I contacted Apple support about this and despite the fact that they aim to respond to queries within one business day, I have had no reply but I did have an email reminding me that I hadn't completed the purchase of my developer licence. So, I contacted them again using the email address in the reminder and quoting the original ticket number, but I have still had no response - only another reminder to pay up!
It looks as if I won't be developing iOS apps for the Apple store but I will develop web apps - the only disadvantage being that you have to be connected to the internet to use them. I can develop, test and distribute OSX applications without putting them on the Apple store and I'm currently looking at developing Android apps which can be developed, tested and distributed without joining a developer program.
29 January 2015
Reflects the latest changes in Amazon's fees.
They have changed because VAT now has to be charged at the seller's home country rate instead od the Luxembourg rate of 15%.
View the latest version
22 January 2015
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