Billy Camden | Schools Week

Men, Women, BME: How Schools Week stacks up on equal representation

Organising an all-male panel can get you pilloried in education. Just ask Jonathan Simons, director of research at Policy Exchange, who last year organised an event on character education in which all the speakers were men. The social media howls were loud. (Don’t worry, he has vowed never to do it again). Schools Week has […]

Ofsted’s summer term: the verdicts

As another term and the school year draws to a close, Sophie Scott looks at what Ofsted has been up to since Easter Overall grade distribution It is the end of a busy year for Ofsted inspectors with almost 4,700 inspections carried out across schools in England since the start of the academic year. As […]

Reporting on students’ religious views will squash classroom debate

The new powers of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act asks teachers to report on their students’ religious views as a matter of national security. This will squash open debate, free speech and political dissent, making schools fearful places for many pupils, says David Lundie Academics and community leaders roundly criticised the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act […]

Fraudsters’ scams cost schools thousands

Schools have been scammed out of thousands of pounds after their phone systems were hacked and calls diverted to pricey premium-rate numbers. Schools Week can reveal that schools in at least two different regions of England called in police to investigate up to five-figure phone bills last year. The scam was among scores of frauds […]

Top tips on LGBT-inclusive sex education

LGBT young people too often miss out on vital information and support at school. Inclusive sex and relationships education (SRE) can help to remedy their isolation All young people should have access to high quality, age-appropriate sex and relationships education (SRE) in school. But all too often this isn’t the case and LGBT young people […]

Academy head apologises for Progress 8 ‘worry’

The headteacher of a Cambridgeshire school has apologised to parents after Schools Week revealed it was changing the year 10 GCSE curriculum to make it “Progress 8 compliant”. Last month Ely College’s new headteacher Evelyn Forde wrote to parents and carers to cancel a week’s work experience for 14 and 15-year-olds as they were not […]

Lydiate Learning Trust in Liverpool seeks to cut staff

An academy trust is consulting staff over redundancies just six months after taking over one of the eight schools offloaded by the Academies Enterprise Trust (AET). The Lydiate Learning Trust took over Childwall Sports and Science Academy, in Liverpool, from England’s largest academy chain in January. AET had to offload eight of its schools for […]

Why teachers may find it more difficult to strike

Consultation on the Trades Union Reform Bill opened this week, giving the government time to calculate where public opinion lies and whether it really does have the support to push ahead It’s worth remembering that this is not the launch of the actual bill, it’s simply the opening of a consultation (which ends on September […]

Schools must publish gender pay gap statistics

Academy trusts and schools will be required to publish the pay gap between men and women if they employ more than 250 workers the government revealed this week. On Tuesday, prime minister David Cameron announced that all businesses with more than 250 employees will have to publish the difference in average pay between male and […]