The Whizz

The testing system in England is in danger of damaging children’s education, according to a recent report from the Children, Schools and Families parliamentary select committee.

As the BBC reports, 25 million papers are taken in an annual orgy of testing that, the committee argues, risks placing too much emphasis on too few types of test and on teaching to the test.

More damningly, the report states:

…that the single-level tests’ “one-way ratchet” system will lead to an “artificial” improvement in results, in which pupils will be “certified to have achieved a level of knowledge and understanding which they do not in truth possess”.

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The parents’ evening is going out of fashion, according to an article in The Guardian, yesterday.

Polly Curtis reports:

Rather than an evening a term queueing for a five-minute chat with teachers, parents want more frequent access, or to monitor their children’s progress online, according to research commissioned by the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

The DCSF report, summarised here, suggests that parents’ working lives are getting in the way of engagement with their students’ education, especially homework.

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Whizz Education is on Facebook!

The social networking website that threatened to take over the world in 2007 now features a Whizz Education company site where you can become a fan, view Whizz videos, check out Whizz company pics and chat away about Maths-Whizz Tutoring and Maths-Whizz Teachers’ Resource with other fans until the cows come home.

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Eagle-eyed Whizz Blog readers - what other kind are there - will have noticed the snazzy Whizz Scientific Calculator lurking in the sidebar to the right of the main blog page.

The Whizz Scientific Calculator is as it appears in our Key Stage 3 animated exercises in our Teachers’ Resource and our online Tutoring service; it features power functions, logarithms, trigonometry buttons and fraction conversion and all that jazz. Do your homework, work out your tax, write rude number-words or calculate the budget deficit (though you may need a larger screen for the last one).

Visit the Whizz Calculator Widgetbox page to put the Whizz calculator in your blog, on your website or even in your Facebook page or Google homepage. Click the ‘Get Widget’  button, select where you want to put your own Whizz Calculator, and copy the code as appropriate.

You can also add the Whiz calculator to your iGoogle page instantly with this link.

Abstract concepts are better for teaching maths than real-world ones, according to a study reported on in a recent New York Times article. What does this mean for teaching maths and what does it mean for Maths-Whizz?

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Whizz Education is on the Tube (YouTube, that is)! 

 We’ve created a new Whizz Education YouTube channel to help spread the word about Maths-Whizz - both in schools and at home, offline and on-.

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‘The Whizz’ blog has managed to get free access to the huge online Encyclopedia Britannica!

The service, called Britannica WebShare, enables us at Whizz, Maths-Whizz customers, and Whizz blog readers alike to access full Encyclopedia Britannica articles that we link to, on just about any subject, from Shakespeare (who died on this day) to the Shah Jahan (who built the Taj Mahal).

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The number crunchers have been beavering away at the Maths-Whizz statistics and have come up with an answer to the most pressing question of our time - which day is best for using Maths-Whizz Online Tutoring?

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Beastie is looking a little pale. Add a little colour to his life with our free downloads!

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You can now buy Whizz clothes, bags, badges and even bears!

Cafepress, the hugely successful personalised clothing store, now has a dedicated Whizz shop.

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