Alix Robertson | Schools Week

London headteacher suspended after fraud arrest

The headteacher of a Catholic boys’ school in London has been suspended after he was arrested on suspicion of fraud. Tom Mannion, 74, was arrested at St Aloysius’ College in Archway last week, but parents were reportedly only informed yesterday, according to the Islington Gazette. St Aloysius’ College, a local authority-maintained Roman Catholic boys school, […]

Baker Clause: MATs failing to meet new rules

Only two of the 10 largest multi-academy trusts in England have fully complied with their new legal duty to allow training organisations the chance to speak to pupils about technical qualifications and apprenticeships. The so-called Baker Clause came into force on January 2, and requires all schools to publish a policy statement on their websites. […]

Pupil progress declines at UTCs

Pupils studying at university technical colleges are making less progress than they did a year ago. Data published by the government today shows the average Progress 8 score of disadvantaged UTC pupils fell from -0.92 in 2016 to -1.19 in 2017, while the average progress score of non-disadvantaged pupils also fell, from -0.66 to -0.90. […]

Key Stage 4 performance measures: the key points

The number of schools below the floor standard has increased by 83, or 29 per cent according to revised GCSE data released by the Department for Education today. In 2017 365 schools, or 12 per cent of those eligible, were below the floor standard, compared to 282, or 9.3 per cent of those eligible is […]

EEF predicts ‘little or no headway’ in closing attainment gap by 2021

Schools are expected to make “little or no headway” in closing the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their better-off classmates over the next few years, the Education Endowment Fund has warned. Based on last year’s key stage 2 results, the charity predicts that the gap between the Attainment 8 scores of the poorest pupils […]

Cash-strapped specialist teacher training hubs struggle to recruit

Specialist teacher training hubs set up to tackle teacher shortages in languages, physics and maths are struggling to sign up recruits. One centre has even begun to target downsizing businesses in the hope that laid-off employees might switch to teaching. The national mathematics and physics school-centred initial teacher-training (NMAPS) programme, led by Wycombe High School […]

Unions: Schools need more help with handling complaints

The unions want schools to have more help to deal with complaints, after the government ended a useful customer satisfaction survey that ran for just three years. The Department for Education’s ‘Complaints about schools’ survey ran from 2012 to 2015, and examined how the department was dealing with problems when a local response had not […]

Careers and Enterprise Company doubles down on employer-mentor diversity

The Careers and Enterprise Company is taking a second shot at recruiting a more diverse range of employer-mentors for young people, after its first attempt left many industries “still significantly underrepresented”. Its #UnexpectedMentor campaign launched in October 2017, to attract a new set of employer-mentors who represented the whole population. But despite investing £4 million […]

Public accounts committee chair slams ‘exorbitantly expensive’ PFI contracts

The chair of the parliamentary public accounts committee Meg Hillier has spoken out against costly private finance initiative contracts and warned that the scheme’s relaunch as PF2 is little more than a rebrand. “Many local bodies are now shackled to inflexible PFI contracts that are exorbitantly expensive to change,” she said, reflecting the situation faced […]