Alix Robertson | Schools Week

Parental backlash forces academy trust to abandon school closure

England’s largest academy chain has abandoned plans to close a town’s only secondary school after a backlash from parents. Sandown Bay Academy, one of just eight secondary schools on the Isle of Wight, will now either be taken on by a new sponsor or merge with the local Bay Church of England Primary School to become an […]

One in 10 Kent schools don’t have a headteacher

A tenth of Kent schools have been forced to begin the new academic year without a headteacher in place, as a result of a shortage that local leaders say demands “significant attention”. In fact, 45 of the county’s 425 schools have started back this month without a head, up from 40 at the same point […]

Top universities reluctant to sponsor struggling schools

The UK’s most prestigious universities are turning down chances to sponsor struggling schools through the government’s academies programme, research by the British Educational Research Association has shown. Just four of the 13 universities that became lead sponsors for formerly struggling schools in 2015-16 are classed as “high-status” institutions, according to factors such as research activity, […]

Mixed-ability classes barely exist in schools, researchers find

Teaching pupils in mixed-ability groups is so unpopular that researchers struggled to find enough examples to complete a recent study into the practice. They found that factors driving schools to avoid such classes included the “fear that parents may respond negatively and results will be endangered”, according to a new paper from the British Educational […]

St Olave’s u-turn on pupil exclusions

A grammar school ejecting pupils in the middle of their A-levels has backtracked on its severe exclusions policy, saying all pupils affected can return to the school to finish their studies. St Olave’s grammar school in Orpington was revealed by The Guardian last month to be forcing out pupils who were not achieving the highest […]

Pioneering London academy absorbed by Harris Federation

One of the country’s first ever academies has been taken over by a major London academy chain, after it fell into special measures. The Garrard Academy, formerly known as the ‘Business Academy Bexley’, was opened in 2003 by the then-prime minister Tony Blair, who hailed it as the “future” of state education. But financial woes […]

Councils demand powers to expand academies as pupil bulge hits secondary schools

Almost half of English council areas will face a shortfall in secondary school places within five years unless they are given more powers to tackle a population bulge, the Local Government Association has warned. LGA analysis of Department for Education data predicts that 66 of 135 local authority areas will experience a shortfall by 2022-23, […]

The four key trends in the 2017 KS2 primary test results

Provisional results of the primary school key stage 2 SATs tests broken down at local authority and regional level have been released by the Department for Education this morning. Here are the key points from today’s new data. 1. London scoops the top results again London dominates local authority areas in terms of pupils who […]

DfE launches £100k tender to independently review complaints against Ofsted

The Department for Education has this week started the hunt for an organisation to review complaints made against Ofsted. The three year contract is valued at £100,000 and will run from January 1, 2018 to December 31, 2020, something an Ofsted spokesperson told Schools Week is “a routine retendering by the DfE for providing Ofsted’s existing […]