Freddie Whittaker | Schools Week

Council to refer WCAT to police over finance concerns

The leader of Wakefield Council is to refer the Wakefield City Academies Trust to the police over alleged financial irregularities, after the authority voted to demand that £1.5 million in reserves taken from three of its schools is returned by the government. Councillor Peter Box told a meeting of the authority earlier this week that […]

Schools will be forced to promote technical education from January

A law that will force schools to let colleges, apprenticeship providers and University Technical Colleges talk to pupils about their study options will come into force in January, according to guidance published this morning by the Department for Education. The rule also requires schools to have a plan for how they will arrange the visits, […]

Budget 2017: What’s in it for schools?

The chancellor Philip Hammond has delivered his budget speech in parliament, announcing a series of measures aimed at improving access to maths and computing in schools. New investment in schools will include £177 million on maths and around £85 million on computing. He said schools would benefit from… Expansion of the Teaching for Mastery maths programme to […]

Budget 2017: Schools to get £600 for extra A-level maths pupils

Schools and colleges will get £600 for every extra pupil who studies maths at A-level under a proposal due to be set out in tomorrow’s budget. The chancellor of the exchequer, Philip Hammond, will announce the £177 million incentive tomorrow as part of a raft of new measures for schools. The Treasury said the money […]

Schools not up to the job of finding places for excluded pupils, warns academic

Most schools are not in the “best position” to find alternative provision for their excluded pupils, a leading academic has warned. David Berridge, a professor of child and family welfare at the University of Bristol, told MPs today that it was difficult for individual schools to know about the “range of resources” available and avoid […]

Girls better at working together than boys, PISA study finds

Girls outperform boys when it comes to working together in school, according to a PISA study, which identified an above-average gender gap in the UK. PISA’s collaborative problem-solving study involved 125,000 15-year-olds in 52 countries, including 32 of the 35 members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The research, conducted in 2015, found […]

Grammar school establishes ‘unsafe space’ for sexism and gender discussions

The grammar school in Kent that was criticised last year for inviting alt-right media personality Milo Yiannopoulos to address its pupils has created an “unsafe space” where its older students can discuss issues relating to sexism and gender without being “criticised for the wrong use of language”. Simon Langton Grammar School, near Canterbury, has created […]

Government faces legal action on pupil nationality data

A campaign group is raising money to take the Department for Education to the High Court over its decision to collect data on school pupils’ nationality and country of birth. The human rights charity Liberty will represent Against Borders for Children, which will focus on whether the policy infringes the rights of pupils. The groups also […]

Budget 2017: £100m National Centre for Computing to train 8,000 new teachers

The government will train 8,000 extra computer science teachers at a new £100 million National Centre for Computing, Philip Hammond is expected to announce this week. In Wednesday’s budget, the chancellor will set out his vision for a “hi-tech Britain”, and acknowledge the need to train more teachers in computer science. The shortage of computing teachers […]