Freddie Whittaker | Schools Week

Ofsted publishes curriculum review preliminary findings

Schools are narrowing the primary curriculum by placing “too great a focus” on preparing for SATs, an investigation by Ofsted has found. The watchdog has questioned the intensity of preparation of pupils ahead of exams, and warns some schools are shortening key stage 3 to focus on GCSEs, meaning some pupils never study history, geography […]

Revealed: New sponsors for WCAT’s schools

New sponsors for the 21 schools given up by the troubled Wakefield City Academies Trust have been provisionally named. But the Department for Education says the chains named are only its “preferred sponsors”, and it wants to hear the views of “interested parties” before making its final decision. The list reveals that Outwood Grange Academies […]

Government approves new teacher apprenticeship

The government has officially rubber-stamped proposals for a new apprenticeship for teachers, Schools Week can reveal. The Institute for Apprenticeships has today confirmed that the teacher apprenticeship “standard” – which sets out the training and assessment content of the course – has been approved. It means that the new apprenticeship, developed by a group of […]

Schools are meeting more careers advice benchmarks

Schools are falling short of government-endorsed standards for good careers advice, despite a slight improvement in recent years, new research has found. Of 578 schools asked to rate their performance against eight benchmarks for good careers provision, just 0.5 per cent managed to achieve all eight in 2016-17. More than a fifth of schools did […]

Opportunity area plans – what do schools need to know?

The government has released plans for the first six of its “opportunity areas”. The plans set out how each area will spend £6 million of funding, aimed at improving social mobility. A lot of the plans focus on school improvement, and some famous faces from the schools community have been appointed to chair some of […]

Subject choices are guided by enjoyment and usefulness over difficulty, Ofqual research finds

Subject difficulty is “the lesser of three concerns” for pupils when choosing what to study, a report by the exams regulator Ofqual has found. The research found that pupils focused more on enjoyment and usefulness of subjects, rather than difficulty, when choosing which subjects to take as exams. However, some schools choose not to offer […]

Government delays land valuations — leaving schools to foot the bill

The government has pushed back a planned valuation of academy land and buildings until January, leaving some schools facing the prospect of spending “thousands” on their own surveys to meet accounting requirements. The Education and Skills Funding Agency was due to issue valuations for new academies opened between September 2016 and August 2017 last month. […]

Halfon: ‘Cut pupil premium for schools that don’t promote apprenticeships’

Schools that fail to send pupils into apprenticeships should lose some of their pupil premium funding, the chair of the education select committee has said. Robert Halfon, a former apprenticeships minister, told a fringe event at the Conservative Party conference that the government should consider financial incentives to encourage schools to promote apprenticeships. At the […]

Maths teacher bursaries rise £10,000, but they’ll get less upfront

The maximum bursary on offer to new maths teachers is to increase by £10,000, but the amount mathematicians will receive upfront will decrease, in a bid to encourage them to teach for longer. Under new bursaries for maths teachers unveiled by Justine Greening at the Conservative Party conference on Sunday, some maths graduates will receive […]