Billy Camden | Schools Week

Apply now for summer school funding

The Department for Education is inviting applications for the latest round of pupil premium summer school funding, with evidence suggesting they have a beneficial effect on academic attainment. Secondary schools can receive £250 per pupil to run a one-week summer school for new pupils, due to start in September, or £500 for two weeks. Funding […]

Sacking primary heads over times tables doesn’t add up

A proposed Conservative policy that primary head teachers be sacked if their pupils do not know their times-tables has come under attack from unions and a legal expert. Writing in The Sunday Times, education secretary Nicky Morgan said she would be introducing tests at the end of primary school to test times-tables, long division and […]

Pension costs cut into PM’s pledge to safeguard budgets

Schools are facing squeezed finances, despite David Cameron’s pledge this week to safeguard the schools budget. Speaking on Monday at Kingsmead School in Enfield, north London, the prime minister pledged to protect state school pupil funding if the Conservatives remained in power. It was one of his party’s five education commitments (see box below). However, […]

The graph that should stop Cameron’s plan

– Data challenges Tory pledge to ‘takeover’ mediocre schools – Overlap in pupils’ performance between Ofsted grades The prime minister’s assertion that schools labelled as “requiring improvement” by Ofsted are “mediocre” and “coasting” is not backed by the government’s own data, Schools Week can reveal. In a major education speech on Monday, David Cameron said […]

Private school defends against Cameron claim

A private school singled out by Prime Minister David Cameron in a speech this week has defended its record for sending pupils to top universities. Mr Cameron compared the success of the private Millfield School in Street, Somerset, in securing Oxbridge places with the relatively new London Academy of Excellence (LAE) free school in Newham, […]

Aborted Croydon free school costs taxpayers £82,000

Four Conservative councillors behind plans to open a free school in south London that were scrapped at a cost to the taxpayer of more than £82,000 have applied to have their business struck off. The Advance School was set to open in Croydon in September last year, but the proposers pulled the plug, saying they […]

Sharing resources: Sorry Mr President, we thought of it first

President Obama may have committed to promoting the use of open educational resources (OER), but Leicester got there first. The local authority has announced that it is the first in the UK to allow its 84 community and voluntary-controlled schools to create and share OER by releasing the learning materials they make under an open […]

Ofsted fine-tunes inspection framework

Teaching unions have given a cautious welcome to Ofsted’s latest reforms that include new criteria across all inspections. From September, schools will be assessed on the same four areas as early learning and further education and skills providers. The new criteria under which inspectors will make judgments are the effectiveness of leadership and management, which […]

Young carers online community launched

Carers Trust, a UK carers’ charity, have launched a new website and online community for its young visitors. The website will aim to provide friendship and support online for carers under 18 and will be called Babble. The online space will allow users to find others in a similar position, chat to each other, share […]