Tes Education Resources: An Open Expression of Concern

This post has been agreed by several teachers and is shared across several blog sites.

In the last couple of years, we have openly expressed concern at the approaches taken by Tes Education Resources to plagiarism and copyright violation, theft of resources, and the selling of resources that violate copyright. This is not a blogpost intended to cast disapproval on those who sell resources. It is a simply an open expression of concern at the approach taken by Tes Education Resources, when these incidents are uncovered. We also wish to make clear that this is not about an individual or anybody working for Tes Education Resources. We believe that this is a systemic problem that should not fall on one person to solve.

We feel that the following issues need to be properly addressed by Tes Education Resources:

·         The fact that people upload and sell plagiarised resources, which have been clearly copied from free shares on Twitter, Facebook, and sometimes from colleagues.

·         The fact that although Tes Education Resources offer ‘goodwill’ gestures to those who give public challenge, and offer compensation when they recognise plagiarism, the onus is on the victim of theft to report and prove the theft.

·         The fact that customers are being advised to buy resources to check the content if they suspect a theft has occurred, and then claim the money back.

These issues need addressing because:

Plagiarism can constitute copyright violation, which is covered by legislation in both UK and EU law, as well as being a feature of international treaties and agreements. We believe that this is not being taken seriously by Tes Education Resources, who provide a platform for the sale of resources which have been taken, copied, and presented as original resources by the thief. Tes Education Resources describe themselves as ‘one of the world’s largest peer-to-peer platforms for teachers to trade and share digital teaching resources’ (Tes Education Resources Ltd: Annual Report and Financial Statements – Directors’ Report 2017). We feel that a company of this scale, regardless of financial status, should not be placing the onus on individuals to identify instances of copyright violation.

A goodwill gesture is something given on a case-by-case basis. It means that those with the time and tenacity to challenge instances of copyright infringement are being offered compensation, but there are victims who are unaware of the issue, or perhaps who do not have the time and resources to prove the provenance of the resource. We believe that the Tes Education Resources could and should ensure there is parity here.

Tes Education Resources have conceded that only 5% of their resource downloads are purchased. The rest are free downloads. We appreciate this valuable resource, but feel that the 5% are being prioritised over the 95%. It is understood that the 5% is the download, rather than the upload, figure – but the point still stands – 95% of people downloading from Tes Education Resources are downloading free resources.

We also believe that asking people to buy resources to check for copyright issues, in order to then claim a refund, is an unfair and illogical request.  Perhaps most pertinent is the fact that all of these issues are contributing to our workload. The Tes recognise this too. In fact, they have an entire section of their website dedicated to this issue – you can read this here: https://www.tes.com/news/hub/workload. In refusing to adapt their practice, either by demonetising the site or by taking further steps to prevent these incidents, teachers are being forced to spend time searching the site for their own resources. When teachers locate stolen resources, the expectation that they buy their own work and prove its provenance is onerous and frustrating.

What Tes Education Resources Can Do:

–          Have a long-term aim to demonetise the site and subsidise it, to enable an entirely free sharing platform for those working in education.

In the meantime:

–          Improve checks on resources to identify plagiarism and/or copyright infringement.

–          Allow for full download with retrospective payment, rather than asking people to buy resources simply to check for copyright infringement.

–          Enable reviews of paid content without purchasing – so that copyright infringement which is clearly evident in the preview pane can be challenged in a review.

What you can do:

–          Avoid downloading from Tes Education Resources until the long-term aim (above) is fulfilled.

–          Use your Social Media account to inform your followers that you are doing this.

–          Share your resources through Dropbox and any other suitable medium.

Sunbucks, Heimekem and the College of Teaching

I enjoy half term. It’s a time to relax and treat myself to some of the guilty pleasures I often don’t have time for during term time. It’s nice to enjoy a frothy latte from my favourite coffee shop, Sunbucks…

And I do like a beer or two. There’s nothing like the sound of a cold can of Heimekem opening…

And if I get the chance, I kick back and play on my PolyStation games console…

Of course, these products are all Chinese so aren’t actually available in this country. But these sorts of products are ubiquitous in China. In fact, this liberal attitude to brand imitation means that, “on average, 20 percent of all consumer products in the Chinese market are counterfeit“.

This copycat method seems a very easy route to market in places where regulations aren’t particularly stringent. But they piggyback on a brand that’s worked hard to establish itself and offer an inferior product in its place.

Such practice is very difficult in this country, due to market regulations which rightly protect businesses and brands. But it doesn’t, and shouldn’t, stop businesses seeing the success of others and entering the same market to compete with them. This can actually make for a healthy marketplace.

But should the same be said for teacher-led organisations aimed at improving research literacy in education? How many of these do we need?

On 18th March 2013, Tom Bennett had a Twitter exchange with Ben Goldacre, decrying the relationship between research and practice in schools. Goldacre had a simple response – do something about it yourself, Tom:

@tombennett71 @joe__kirby @ethinking @samfr @oldandrewuk set up an organisation, get a logo, a website, no money, organise an unconference

— Ben Goldacre (@bengoldacre) March 18, 2013

Within 6 months, Tom Bennett, along with Hélene Galdin-O’Shea  had put together a conference. Held on 7th September 2013, researchED was an event that aimed to bridge research and practice in the profession. Since then, Tom and Hélène have put together increasingly popular national conferences each year, plus regional conferences, and subject- and sector-specific conferences. And, what’s more, they’ve taken taken researchED to an international audience, hosting conferences in New York, Sydney, Gothenburg and Washington, with plans to take it elsewhere already well underway. They have established these relationships with international researchers and educators, whilst continuing to focus on there core activity of bridging research and practice in the UK education sector.

So it was a surprise when I read yesterday that the College of Teaching’s “core activity” will be to do this. To do exactly what researchED is doing.

The core activity of the emerging @CollOfTeaching will be to bridge research & practice. Roles now advertised. Join us!

— Alison Peacock (@AlisonMPeacock) October 28, 2016

A few things strike me about this.

Firstly, the College of Teaching has been years in the making. The people involved in the project are always at pains to emphasise the efforts of the many professionals it has taken over the past few years to get to where it is today. There have been multiple consultations, meetings and focus groups. There have been iterations and reiterations of forms of leadership, from Trustees to Chairs to a CEO. There is a pledge of £5 million on the table from the DfE to help fund this, after an attempt to crowdsource funding from the profession failed. There is a website that has been “under construction” for as long as I can remember. It has taken years and huge numbers of people for the College of Teaching to get to where it is today, and we are now told they are merely trying to copy a model that already exists. A model that was set up by Tom and Hélène and a handful of volunteers in just a few months. A truly teacher-led model.

This strikes me as following the model seen in China: see what others have done successfully and just copy that. But is this fair on researchED, given that the College of Teaching have DfE backing and up to £5 million in funding? Is this similar to Tesco being able to shut down the local butcher?

Indeed, if this is what the College of Teaching is offering, why doesn’t the DfE hand the £5 million to researchED instead? It is already established in the area that the College of Teaching is trying to establish itself in.

Secondly, is this what we need the College of Teaching to be? What about, as Michael Merrick suggested here, someone to stand up for teachers and to protect them from workload issues and to improve their working lives? I’m pretty sure that is how many see the College of Teaching. They don’t need another researchED. They already have one of those.

https://twitter.com/michael_merrick/status/792092494104260608

At the moment, it seems like the College of Teaching is an organisation trying to decide what it should be. It’s an organisation in search of a purpose. Which is an odd thing. Surely a government-funded organisation should be set up because it fulfils a need? This is an organisation that has more needs than the profession whose needs it should be fulfilling. It needs to know what it is for. It needs teachers to back it. It needs money to keep it going. It needs membership numbers to sustain it. It needs to copy and cash in on researchED’s success.

It needs to justify itself. This latest announcement that its “core activity will be to bridge research and practice” really doesn’t give it the justification it seeks.

Anyone, it’s still half term. Time to have a break, have a Kicker.

5 things Einstein didn’t say (that you might hear during CPD or assemblies) by @JamesTheo

Starter for Five

Name: James Theobald
Twitter name: @JamesTheo
Sector: Secondary
Subject taught (if applicable): English
Position: Teacher
What is your advice about? 5 things Einstein didn’t say (that you might hear during CPD or assemblies)

1. “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
2. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
3. “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”
4. “I don’t need to know everything, I just need to know where to find it when I need it.”
5. “Please stop Google searching quotes by me to use for your presentation. I probably didn’t say what the internet tells you I said.”

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How to Play Trombone: A Guide to this Blog

On teacher decision making:

• On the problem with intuition: The rise of grok (or how I learned to embrace my ignorance)
• On taking our time to think approaches through: Lessons learned from Football League Division Two 1982-83 #1: The dilatory approach
• On the sunk cost fallacy in education: Neck deep in the big muddy (the dangers of sunk costs and windmills)
• On how language can encourage behaviours: How riding the herd mentality may have helped my GCSE classes
• On accepting challenge and changing one’s mind: The key to good CPD? Inconsistency
• On opportunity cost: Why is opportunity cost so important? Bo knows.
• On judging outcomes over what we see in the moment: Stop looking for the new Brain Gym. Start looking for the new Monkey Crouch

On policy and broader issues in education:

• On edu-myths: Undiscovering the Mountains of Kong
• On truthiness in education: The truthiness of it all (and why three men make a tiger)
• On edu-myths (again) and how research can help: Killing off the Brontosaurus, again: how can research reach further?
• On narratives of progressive education: We are number two but we try harder: the underdog narrative of progressivism
• On the cult of acronyms: The absolute curses of retention and organisation: needlessly yawing mnemonics
• On treating novices as experts: You Can Do Anything!
• On the denigration of knowledge: Knowledge is obsolete! Unburden yourself here…
• On the charm of Sir Ken Robinson: The impression that I get: Sir Ken at #EducationFest
• On the cult of activity-based planning: Activities: the devil will find work for idle hands to do
• On successful people denigrating education: JT Airlines – We’re a Great Way to Fall
• On the Secret Teacher: In defence of the Secret Teacher
• On the perpetuation of bad ideas: The Jellyfish Effect: why bad ideas hang around
• On the trad/prog debate: I Was a Teenage Progressive: A Defence of the Debate and The Reconciliation of The Debate (Is it possible? Is it desirable?)
• On the retention crisis: Is the DfE employing the Chewbacca defence over the retention crisis?
• On selling resources: Why I think selling resources to teachers is wrong
• On Ofsted reform: Inspector who? What to make of Ofsted’s latest regeneration

On schools:

• On the problem of trying to establish cross-curricular commonalities: Towards a confusion of tongues (why a common language isn’t always helpful)
• On a problem with target-setting: How to eat 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes (and why setting targets may hold back progress*)
• On replacing levels with… levels: Have you tried *NEW* Diamond Shreddies? (Life after ‘life after levels’)
• On the hero-teacher narrative: I am not your spirit guide: the intoxicating narratives of teaching
• On so-called higher order thinking: Bloom’s: the slipperiness of soft skills doesn’t make them higher order
• On leadership: The difference between managing and leading
• On workload: Workload: “And finally, monsieur, a wafer-thin mint…”
• On classroom anxiety: The Magic Roundabout: why anxiety shouldn’t stop us learning
• On diversions in the curriculum: The map is not the territory: embracing desire paths in the curriculum
• On the impact of change on teachers: Teachers as stick insects: the constant re-evolution of education
• On ‘observing learning’: Blights of the round table: the damage of poor proxies for learning
• On the pressures of teaching: The bearable discomfort of being… a teacher
• On losing sight when leading: I forget why I’m here: event boundaries in teaching and leading
• On the ever-expanding purpose of schools: Schools: the egg-laying, wool and milk-giving sow
• On the end of term: The Final Comedown: Nothing prepares me for the end of term

On the subject of English:

• On the importance of reading the canon: Elitism? Be careful how you use that word
• On what to read: How to choose study texts in English: Part One and Part Two
• On English textbooks: Are these the best English subject textbooks you’ve ever seen?
• On showing off how hard we work: Conspicuous work: do we compound the workload issue ourselves?
• On teaching 19th century fiction: The new English Language GCSE: introducing 19th century fiction
• On speaking and listening: What is the point of Speaking and Listening? #BlogSyncEnglish
• On teaching evaluation: Evaluation: it’s a piece of cake

My attempts to be funny with satirical stories and stuff

• The Mumpsimus in the Room (a short story)
• An art history of school inspections
• EduTwitter: The Christmas armistice of 2014
• A Christmas Carol | Marking was dead time-consuming: to begin with.
• The 21st Century Job (A Fictional Story)
• Nobody expects a British Education
• The Knowledge
• It’s a Wonderful Battery Life
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the College of Teaching

Starter for Five advice:

• Essential Books for English Teachers
• How to teach a book
• Five Common Wrongs for English Teachers to Avoid

Book reviews

• ‘What if everything you knew about education was wrong’ by David Didau

Some resources

• The Elements of Language (a periodic table of sorts)
• Want to share knowledge organisers?
• Literary terms display

Five Common Wrongs for English Teachers to Avoid by @JamesTheo

Starter for Five

Name: James Theobald
Twitter name: @JamesTheo
Sector: Secondary
Subject taught (if applicable): English
Position: Teacher
What is your advice about? Five Common Wrongs for English Teachers to Avoid

1. Teaching pupils that a comma is used to mark a pause or to take a breath. Hearing, this, is, enough, to, make, me, hyperventilate.
2. Using the word ‘connective’ to describe a part of speech. It’s a made-up term used to lump words together into arbitrary groups.
3. Using the phrase ‘wow word’ to mean ‘sophisticated language’. Unless, of course, you are trying to teach the concept of irony.
4. Teaching that simple and complex sentences are about length. A well-written simple sentence can often be a long, lingering, meandering piece of carefully crafted epic beauty.
5. Doing something else when there’s an opportunity to read. If you are studying Shakespeare, the best thing pupils can do is to read some Shakespeare.

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How to teach a book by @JamesTheo

Starter for Five

Name: James Theobald
Twitter name: @JamesTheo
Sector: Secondary
Subject taught (if applicable): English
Position: English Teacher
What is your advice about? How to teach a book

1. Firstly, be a History teacher: spend lots of time teaching social, historical, cultural and biographical contexts. Give pupils something to hang their ideas on when reading.
2. Next, tap into your inner Maths teacher: identify the patterns – the recurring themes, motifs and symbols. Draw attention to them throughout reading.
3. Be a Psychology teacher: focus on characters and their intentions. Treat them as studies in humanity. What can pupils learn about the world from them?
4. Be a teacher of Philosophy: identify the questions the text provokes. Pitch these as ways into chapters/sections or as essay questions in response to the text.
5. Most importantly, be an English teacher: make sure pupils read lots (including reading outside of the text); plan for pupils to write about what…

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Essential Books for English Teachers by @JamesTheo

Starter for Five

Name: James Theobald
Twitter name: @JamesTheo
Sector: Secondary
Subject taught (if applicable): English
Position: Teacher
What is your advice about? Essential books for English teachers

1: ‘The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase’ by Mark Forsyth.

2: ‘Gwynne’s Grammar’ by N.M. Gwynne.

3: ‘Shakespeare’s Restless World: An Unexpected History in Twenty Objects’ by Neil MacGregor.

4: ‘You Talkin’ To Me? Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama’ by Sam Leith.

5: ‘A Little History of Literature’ by John Sutherland.

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