ChangeThinking with SmithMartin

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World Reader and St Jordi’s Day in Barcelona

  We had just met with Zev from the World Reader organisation at a World Literacy Foundation conference in Oxford. Some concepts just make sense form the start and this was our feelings…

Practical wisdom, now more than ever…

We recently revisited the Gel talk, by Professor Barry Schwartz, of Swarthmore College, from the Gel Conference 2009. This presentation is about the need to embrace, or rather re-embrace, the notion expounded by…

Saying it cannot be done…

I was given a book mark yesterday by one of my colleagues. It carried the following inscription. Those who say it cannot be done… Should not interrupt the person doing it.   (Ancient…

The National Archives for School Resources

  I wondered why I had decided to to travel to Kew to spend an afternoon at The National Archives. Not normally for me to be interested in row upon row of carefully…

A Better Beginning:
Easing the Cost of Childcare

An interesting report from The Social Market Foundation explores a new way to support the affordability of formal childcare for working parents. It is based on a similar approach to the student loans…

Funding childcare – Westminster’s new way

Nothing new in the fact that childcare is hard to afford and the cost remains one of the biggest barriers to accessing high quality early years education. The good news is the extension…

Sure Start Children’s Centres
– still at the heart of communities

    Some startling figures emerging about Children’s Centre closures…     In November the government confirmed that 124 Sure Start centres had closed, (Children and Young People Now). In addition, there is…

Daycare Trust Conference
November 2011

Childcare policy and the wider role of the community was the focus of the Daycare Trust annual conference in London on 22 November. A subject one would expect to have been well and…

Learning a language…learning lots more too!

We have always liked the Open Culture web site, which is probably the very best of free learning and education media resources on the internet. We are particularly keen to embed translation into…

World Bank Papers into Puppets – recycling project

Bunker Roy explains an amazing college and concept in Rajasthan, India. An extraordinary school teaches rural women and men — many of them illiterate — to become solar engineers, artisans, dentists and doctors…