Alix Robertson | Schools Week

40 MPs join protest over looming £4m in cuts to funding for deaf pupils

Campaigners held a protest outside parliament this week and met with the children’s minister to warn of the impact of £4 million in planned cuts to support for deaf children in schools. Research by the National Deaf Children’s Society has found that nearly a third of England’s local authorities are intending to slash support as […]

Ofqual mulls grading change for language and science A-levels

Ofqual is considering a change to the grading of A levels in modern languages and the sciences, if it finds the subjects are more severely marked than others. Speaking at Ofqual’s summer symposium in London today, Richard Garrett, director of policy and strategic relationships, explained that the regulator is exploring ‘inter-subject comparability’, or whether it […]

Who were the winners of The Careers & Enterprise Company Annual Awards 2018?

This week the Careers & Enterprise Company (CEC) celebrated the work of schools, colleges, businesses, and careers professionals with its annual awards ceremony for 2018. Over 200 nominations were accepted for the nine categories and the winners were chosen by panel of independent expert judges. “Across the country schools and colleges are making progress towards world class […]

IoE: Post-2010 school reforms have created system of ‘winners and losers’

England’s schools are divided between “winners and losers”, with higher-status institutions benefiting from new opportunities and resources while others battle with undersubscription and disproportionate numbers of disadvantaged pupils, new research has found. The UCL Institute of Education’s state of the nation report found that two-thirds of headteachers believe inequalities between schools have widened a result […]

OCR will be fined £175,000 for its Romeo and Juliet mix-up

Ofqual intends to fine exam board OCR £175,000 for a glaring error made in a GCSE paper in May last year. The OCR GCSE English literature paper confusingly referred to the Romeo and Juliet character Tybalt’s hatred of the Capulets, his own family, rather than the Montagues, their rivals. Ofqual formally issued OCR with a notice […]

Church academy warned over finances

A Church of England academy in Pontefract has been served with a financial notice to improve, after failing to balance its books. St Giles Church of England Academy, which is a single-academy trust, received an “intervention visit” from the Education and Skills Funding Agency in May, to investigate concerns about its financial statements for 2016-17. The […]

GMB: Ark’s wealthy donors should bail out their struggling school

Wealthy supporters of one of England’s largest academy trusts should dip into their own pockets to help a struggling school avert 38 job losses, a union has said. The GMB union – which represents school support staff – has urged Ark Schools to call off redundancy proposals at Burlington Danes Academy in Shepherds Bush in London. […]

How to run a good teacher mentoring programme

Does your school offer mentoring to staff? What difference does it make? A panel at this year’s Festival of Education chaired by Catt Scutt, the director of education and research at the Chartered College of Teaching, discussed how to set up an effective mentoring scheme, and whether it could be the “key” to improving teaching […]

Healthy schools initiative has ‘come to a halt’

Delays to the launch of the government’s proposed healthy schools rating scheme have left schools “in the lurch”, according to children’s health charities. The scheme was first mooted in the government’s childhood obesity action plan in 2016, and had been supposed to be up and running in schools by last September. But ministers say delivery […]