Author: Freddie Whittaker

OCR will be fined £125,000 by Ofqual after partial answers to GCSE computing exam questions were found in textbooks it had endorsed. An investigation found the exam board had failed to “identify and monitor conflicts of interest”, when the authors of some GCSE computing controlled assessments had also written textbooks it endorsed. The textbooks included […]

Fraudsters impersonating headteachers have managed to con schools across the country out of tens of thousands of pounds in the latest scam to target the education system. Figures from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau show that since last September, 48 schools have reported the scam, most of them in December and January. Of those, 12 […]

Special-school pupils face “insurmountable” travelling distances to school and risk being “forced out of the system altogether” as transport services are cut, a think-tank has warned. New research by the Education Policy Institute has found that on average these pupils travel three times further to school than their mainstream counterparts. In rural areas, as many […]

The lowest-paid teachers at sixth-form colleges will get a two-per-cent pay increase under a deal struck between the National Education Union and the Sixth-Form Colleges Association. The SFCA, which represents 90 post-16 institutions across England, has agreed to increase the pay of everyone on points 1 to 6 of the national teacher pay scale and […]

Ofsted has revealed that men in its organisation are paid on average 8.1 per cent more than women. Bonuses at the organisation are also heavily weighted in favour of men, who receive on average £196, or 20.6 per cent more than women. Of Ofsted’s total workforce, 63 per cent are women. This is higher than […]

The government has doubled the amount of money on offer to schools that encourage more pupils to study maths at A-level. The new “advanced maths premium” announced in last year’s autumn budget was originally going to be worth £600 for every pupil studying the subject beyond GCSE. But the Department for Education has today announced that schools […]

The national schools commissioner has written to MPs to “clarify” his comments about visits made by top officials to the troubled Whitehaven Academy, after “discrepancies” were found in his evidence to a powerful parliamentary committee. Sir David Carter told the education select committee on December 5 that Janet Renou, the regional schools commissioner for the […]

Local councils, health services and police forces will have to involve schools in their safeguarding work from now on, the government has announced. Updated statutory guidance on ‘Working together to safeguard children’ will include an expectation that all schools be “given a voice” in the work of those who set local safeguarding policy. However, the […]