High Praise from the Higher Education Academy  NOVEMBER 2009

The new Creative Teaching and Learning Resource Book has received high praise from Margaret Simms of ProCEEd in a recent review published on The HEA website. Margaret Simms describes the book as  having "so much practical and creative information oozing from the book" and she goes on to recommend the text for primary and secondary teachers.  In her article she draws attention to Storymaker, a creative writing game contained within the book, and she describes the work overall as being "practical and resourceful", and says that "intended outcomes are clear and timings of application useful fo embedding in to lesson plans.  The Ingenuity of positioning each strategy within the National Curriculum thinking skills is a further feature of this book. 


Creative Teaching and Learning Toolkit judged in Top Ten| FEBRUARY 2008

HEADTEACHER UPDATE Journal has placed The Creative Teaching and Learning Toolkit into the top ten of books for newly qualified teahers and headteachers to have on their shelf.  Describing this list as the 'Best of the Bunch', Lisa Donegan has based her selcetion on reader feedback and sales of the books.  Brin and I are delighted that the creative teaching concepts are being so well received and it further corroborates the belief we have from our classroom experiences in this approach to learning.

Teachers inspired to find a creative way forward in their schools | MARCH 2008

OVER 250 TEACHERS and school leaders attended the hugely popular Creativity in the Curriculum conference on 27 February, a prestigious national event organised by Optimus Education and chaired by Brin Best. The conference, held in the wonderful setting of London's Cafe Royal, provided delegates with the opportunity to hear from leading speakers in the field of creativity in education, as well as learning from good practice case studies from the around the country.

A highlight of the day was an address from Barry Sheerman MP, chair of the government's Education Select Committee. Barry, a friend of creativity in schools, spoke passionately about the need for creativity to enrich the curriculum for all. He outlined some of the recent work of the Committee to ensure that creativity has a prominent place in the new National Curriculum.

As well as chairing the event, Brin Best presented a workshop on Funding a Creative Curriculum. He explained that over £1 billion in external funds are now available to schools each year, as well as outlining how a clear strategy can help schools to access their fair share of this funding.

Authors short-listed for national award | FEBRUARY 2008

WE ARE DELIGHTED to announce that The Creative Teaching & Learning Toolkit has been short-listed for a 2008 Education Resources Award. This prestigious award is the UK's highest accolade for education resources, and is judged by a panel of headteachers and teachers.

This is the third time the authors have been short-listed for an award of this kind, and we would like to all those schools that provided testimonials to support our entry.

In 2005 our work on the Teachers' Pocketbooks series was honored with the series being named the winning entry in the secondary books category of the Education Resources Awards.

Government to investigate ways of measuring creativity | FEBRUARY 2008

THE GOVERNMENT IS to consider how creativity can be measured in schools in a move that will alarm some teachers and school leaders. Hot on the heels of the exciting anouncement that creativity is to be incoporated into the revised key stage 3 curriculum from September 2008, the latest move suggests that the government may not be prepared to fully embrace the spirit of creativity in schools.

The government wishes to explore ways of measuring creativity to ensure children are profficient in areas that are not appraised by the current tests, for example imaginative thinking. Teachers may be asked to use consider how students use their creative skills in all subject areas.

In a response to a Commons select committee report on Creative Partnerships Ministers said: 'Existing measures of progress, which focus on the attainment of key stages, are unlikely to capture small but steady improvements, or progress in areas such as self-confidence, teamworking and risk-taking.'

The latest move is sure to ignite the debate over whether we can measure everything that is valuable in schools. It will also focus schools' attention on the need to develop their own robust approaches to the teaching of creativity, to ensure they are well placed to offer their own advice to government in this key aspect of the curriculum.