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14 April 2026

Author: Expert Contributor

The essential school guide to GDPR

The general data protection regulations (GDPR) aren’t just for schools; they apply to every European organisation that handles personal data. The aim of the new law is to return control to individuals by allowing them to request deletion or disclosure of their data: and the onus is on organisations to provide evidence of their data […]

Five ways the DfE has damaged teacher recruitment

Teacher training has always been too important to dabble with, as the implications of not getting the very best teachers in front of children in schools will affect the future of our country and society, explains Professor David Spendlove We should all be seriously concerned about the Department for Education’s two recent communications on initial […]

How much should MAT CEOs be paid?

MAT CEO pay is in the public eye again and, given how high it is, it’s right that trustees should think hard about how they work it out, writes Gillian Allcroft It is the season to scrutinise academy trusts’ accounts and, as ever, the hot topics are related-party transactions and executive pay. There are no […]

Five solutions for teacher retention and development

The numbers quitting teaching are becoming a full-blown crisis. David Weston presents five solutions that might stem the tide As a basis for a strategy to attract and keep teachers in our schools, Professor Dylan Wiliam’s approach, “love the ones you’re with”, is bang on. We certainly need some overarching strategy to deal with, what […]

How can we better support EAL pupils?

EAL pupils are not a remotely homogeneous group, and we’re foolish to treat them as such, writes Jo Hutchinson One of the top stories from the recent 2017 GCSE results was the extraordinary rise of children with English as an Additional Language (EAL) over the last 15 years. Here, it was reported that on average, such […]

16 to 18-year-olds need funding too!

If 16-to-18 participation is “compulsory” then it should be funded at the same level as other compulsory phases, argues John Widdowson Ten years ago, Alan Johnson MP, then Secretary of State for Education and Science, announced that all young people should be obliged to remain in education, an apprenticeship or employment with training until their […]

Trustees beware: know your legal duties!

If there is a single part of the academy system that needs our urgent attention, it is trusteeship, argues Leora Cruddas There is still much that is misunderstood about the differences between governing a local authority-maintained school, governing a single academy trust and governing a multi-academy trust. At its most extreme, this lack of understanding […]

Free schools can’t be judged as a homogenous group

Tom Richmond is wrong on one thing, argues Thomas Byrne. There already are numerous free school successes – and more than a few that have gone wrong It’s true that it’s too early to tell whether the free schools programme has lived up to its champions’ claims; the former DfE advisor Tom Richmond was correct […]

Free schools: do their outcomes justify the cost?

There’s not enough evidence yet to see whether free schools have worked, says Tom Richmond, but what we do now know is quite how expensive the project has been When Toby Young, the director of the New Schools Network, said last summer that free schools were “the most successful education policy of the post-war period”, […]