Freddie Whittaker | Schools Week

Making Good Progress: the future of Assessment for Learning, by Daisy Christodoulou

A phrase much heard among impressive heads of history that I have worked with is ”kicking rubbish data upstairs to SLT”. This is not unprofessionalism; it is the desperate necessity of those determined to preserve academic integrity and to help students properly. It is a sign of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party that is school […]

Uber system will make supply teachers cheaper

New technology is changing the public sector workforce for the better, says Louis Coiffait. There may even come a day when an app will find that last-minute supply teacher… Reform this week publishes a report on the public sector workforce, Work in Progress. It describes how the workforce is changing, but also how these changes […]

Schools will not be forced to promote National Citizen Service – but it will still get £424m a year

An extra-curricular project that schools were told they had to promote in assemblies is in financial disarray yet will still be given a budget of £420 million a year by 2020. However, the plans to force schools to promote the National Citizen Service (NCS) for 16 and 17- year-olds have been abandoned. Established in 2011, […]

Michael Gove: UTCs have failed

Michael Gove, the former education secretary and a key architect of the government’s fast-unravelling university technical colleges (UTCs) programme has admitted the experiment has failed. The politician, now on the back benches following an ill-fated run for the Conservative Party leadership last year, said a “lack of academic rigour” was to blame for the downfall […]

School support staff ‘increasingly’ teaching lessons, union warns

Schools are increasingly deploying support staff to teach lessons, a survey by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers has found. A survey of school staff found that 78 per cent felt they did identical work to that normally carried out by supply teachers, an increase of 22 per cent since last year, when 64 per […]

Performance-related pay criticised by thousands of teachers

Thousands of teachers have criticised the government’s performance-related pay system, with many claiming it has denied them access to even the smallest pay rise. A joint survey of 13,000 teachers by the National Union of Teachers and Association of Teachers and Lecturers found that 21 per cent were denied pay progression in 2016, up from […]

ASCL leadership election: Geoff Barton wins landslide victory

Geoff Barton, the popular headteacher and anti-establishment challenger in the race to be the new leader of the Association of School and College Leaders, has won a landslide election victory. Barton, a fierce critic of government policy, received 2,716 votes from members of the traditionally moderate union, more than four times as many votes as his opponent […]

Government considers PISA tests for 5 year olds

The government is considering taking part in a pilot of tablet-based tests for some of the youngest children in England’s primary schools. Department for Education officials are understood to have expressed an interest in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) international early learning and child well-being study (IELS) next year. A final decision […]

Ministers consider new ‘national selection test’ to replace 11-plus

Ministers are considering a new “national selection test” to replace the 11-plus, with a ‘selective education team’ led by Nick Timothy established to drive through grammar proposals. Minutes of a meeting between ministers and the Grammar School Heads’ Association (GSHA) also reveal that the government expects new grammar schools to recruit the top 10 per cent […]