Billy Camden | Schools Week

Pearson Teaching Awards honours the country’s top educators

The country’s most outstanding teachers were given the red carpet treatment as they celebrated winning a Pearson Teaching Award yesterday. Dubbed the “Oscars for Teachers”, staff at 11 schools across the UK descended to London’s Royal Opera House for the glitzy awards ceremony hosted by TV historian Dan Snow. They were presented with Gold Plato’s […]

Refugee club hopes to expand

An independent day school in Berkshire is hoping that its refugee homework club will go nationwide. Since 2012 The Abbey School has worked with The Reading Refugee Support Group to run the club twice a week. It allows children from local refugee families to receive one-to-one support from the school’s fifth and sixth-form pupils. About […]

A chance to test their metal

Secondary school pupils have been challenged to design an aluminium product for the future. The Aluminium D&T Challenge, run by recycling charity Alupro, sets tasks based on real-life briefs faced by designers, engineers and manufacturers in three categories — transport, building and packaging. The winners of each category will win a desktop 3D printer worth […]

British astronaut boosts science programme

The countdown is on to the launch of a six-month space mission that will film physics and chemistry experiments impossible to conduct on Earth. Tim Peake will become the first British European Space Agency astronaut to live and work on the International Space Station (ISS) when he blasts off this December. His mission is part […]

Getting the numbers right

A scheme launched in London to improve pupils’ numeracy skills is to be expanded to other regions. The Number Partners programme, delivered by independent charity Tower Hamlets Education Business Partnership, has been operating in east London and on a small scale in other regions such as Leicestershire and Bristol since 2004. The scheme supports seven […]

Edition 43 editor’s comment

Imagine if there were a quarter of a million people working with the most vulnerable children in our school system and yet receiving some of the lowest pay, working on insecure contracts that don’t include holiday pay and facing incredibly low pensions. We don’t have to imagine. This is the situation for many teaching assistants […]

Emma Knights, chief executive, National Governors’ Association

Emma Knights is a sharp operator who believes organisations are “collectively wiser than one individual”. And when you meet the chief executive of the National Governors’ Association (NGA), it quickly becomes obvious that she chooses her words with great care. So it’s not surprising that the former secretary of state for education, Michael Gove, came […]

Developing a photographic memory

A psychology teacher has narrowly missed out on being crowned the UK Memory Champion. James Paterson, who teaches at LVS Ascot, an independent school in Berkshire, is now ranked number two in the UK and regains his Welsh Memory Champion title after winning silver at the final held in London. He set a new UK […]

Professor Andrew Brown, Clare Bradbury and Rob Lakin

Professor Andrew Brown has been appointed interim director of the Institute of Education (IOE) following Professor Chris Husbands’ move to Sheffield Hallam University as vice chancellor. Professor Brown, 59, who takes over from January 1 next year until a permanent replacement is found, says he wants to “maintain the institute’s prestigious identity” and “oversee that […]