Author: Freddie Whittaker

Just six people applied to become the government’s new social mobility tsar by the original deadline, prompting ministers to reopen applications and personally approach potential candidates to ask them to apply, it has emerged. New figures show 15 of the 21 applications for the role of chair of the Social Mobility Commission were submitted after […]

Up to 200 members of staff at the National Education Union will go on strike this Thursday. The GMB and Unite unions, which represents trade union employees, have announced the first day of industrial action after 88 per cent of eligible members voted in favour of strike action. The dispute is over a consultation carried […]

Compulsory relationships and sex education will not be extended to all schools until 2020, it has been confirmed. The requirement for all schools, including academies, to teach relationships education, and for all secondary schools to teach sex education, was supposed to come into force in September 2019. Last month, education secretary Damian Hinds warned the […]

Drew Povey, the headteacher featured in the hit TV series Educating Greater Manchester, has been suspended, according to local news reports. The Manchester Evening News is reporting that Povey, the head at Harrop Fold School, and three other members of staff have been suspended. Lisa Stone, lead member for children’s and young people’s services at Salford […]

The Cumbria Education Trust (CET) has been given leave to take on the troubled Whitehaven Academy in Cumbria, more than seven months after Bright Tribe announced its intention to walk away from the school. In a statement, CET said it has been confirmed as the school’s new sponsor by the education secretary Damian Hinds, after […]

Attempts by the Bright Tribe academy trust to create an “axis of improvement” for schools in rural Cumbria failed because it was prevented from taking on more than one school, it has emerged. Copies of correspondence between Bright Tribe’s founder Michael Dwan and the Department for Education reveal the trust’s dismay at having its bid […]

Bright Tribe founder Michael Dwan withdrew his support from the ailing trust amid frustrations over government scrutiny and concerns that his efforts had gone unrecognised, previously unseen documents have revealed. The trust confirmed this week that Dwan’s charities, the Helping Hands Trust and Adventure Learning Schools, have stepped down as controlling “members” of Bright Tribe […]

The viability of the failed Greater Manchester university technical college was questioned by government officials even before it opened, but ministers still allowed the project to proceed, new documents have revealed. Correspondence seen by Schools Week shows Department for Education bosses believed the state-of-the-art UTC, which cost £9 million to build, would only be viable […]

School funding in England fell by eight per cent in real terms over the past eight years, according to a new analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies which takes account of post-16 and local authority support spending for the first time. Rising pupil numbers, increasing costs and flatlining funding have contributed to the real terms […]