Author: Freddie Whittaker

Nicky Morgan has revealed she often had to “fend off ideas” from Downing Street during her time as education secretary, and called for her successor to be given “space” to develop policy. In an exclusive interview with Schools Week, Morgan spoke for the first time about the pressure placed on her by the prime minister’s […]

MPs will attempt to scrap a law that forces schools to collect data on pupils’ nationality and country of birth unless they receive reassurances from the government over potential misuse of the data, Schools Week can reveal. Opposition politicians are preparing to use parliamentary procedure to try to repeal the legal move that implemented the […]

The Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw has criticised four London schools following a fight involving some of their pupils. Wilshaw said the schools should have known about plans for a fight between pupils in September and sent staff to break it up. In a letter to the heads of the four schools involved, he said […]

Comprehensives can have a ‘grammar-school ethos’, Sir Michael Wilshaw has claimed as he launched his latest attack on plans to expand selection. The Ofsted boss told the Freedom and Autonomy for Schools National Association (FASNA) conference this morning that grammar schools were not the answer to the nation’s problems, but said there was no reason […]

A former union president and the chair of one of the country’s largest and fastest-growing academy trusts have been appointed to advise the schools commissioner Martin Post. Post, the regional commissioner for north west London and south central England, has announced that Tony Draper, Peter Little and Seamus Oates will join his advisory headteacher board. […]

The schools minister Nick Gibb and several leading academics have been summoned to an ‘evidence check’ hearing on the government’s proposals for new grammar schools. The education select committee will grill Gibb and five other key witnesses at the session next Tuesday (November 8). An announcement last month that the government wants to see an expansion […]

Pupils’ nationality and country of birth data will not be included in the national pupil database (NPD) following a backlash from schools and parents, Lord Nash has said. In a bid to address privacy concerns around the use of the data, the school system minister has announced that the Department for Education will now hold […]