Author: Freddie Whittaker

Grammar schools attempting to show they can reform by taking more pupils from low income families could be “put off” by higher levels of teacher turnover, it has been warned. New analysis of school workforce data shows ongoing issues with staff retention and higher proportions of unqualified teachers at schools taking the highest proportion of poor […]

Teach First is to replace its current programme with a two-year postgraduate diploma (PGDE), giving its paid participants two thirds of a master’s degree and leaving them more qualified than those who fork out up to £9,000 to do a university-based Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE). Graduates with the charity currently spend a year doing […]

The education secretary Justine Greening has confirmed education policies based on a “pragmatic look” at grammar schools will be announced “in due course” – but she stopped short of saying new ones will be allowed to open. Responding to an urgent question in Parliament, Greening said the government are reviewing “a range of options” focused […]

Ofqual has confirmed it will adopt a new “fairer” approach to GCSE top grades after its proposed method won the backing of education professionals. The exams regulator announced today that it will proceed with a proposal set out in April which uses a formula to determine the proportion of pupils receiving grade 9s in each subject. The method […]

The government is under pressure to clarify its plans for new grammar schools after a memo photographed in Downing Street appeared to show proposals to work with existing grammar schools to prove they can be “expanded and reformed” ahead of a move to open new ones. The Department for Education has confirmed that the memo signed […]

The House of Commons education committee has spent the morning grilling academics, think tank leaders and faith school bosses about multi-academy trusts. Here is what we learned. 1. Academies don’t necessarily offer autonomy to their schools and teachers Some leading academics agreed this morning that the ‘freedom’ which supporters of the academies programme often talk about […]

Improvements in schools’ results after they become sponsored academies cannot be attributed to the actions of their sponsors, a key piece of research has claimed. The Education Policy Institute (EPI) is demanding the government look again at research before continuing its planned expansion of the academies programme after analysis by the think tank and the […]

Schools should be “positive about masculinity” and not try to “make boys something they are not”, a Conservative MP has claimed. Karl McCartney, the MP for Lincoln, wrote in an article for PoliticsHome that schools and colleges should be inspiring boys, and “helping them to see what they can achieve” to address the educational achievement […]

Councils will team up to investigate large gaps between their pupils’ key stage 2 writing and reading results amid claims inconsistent moderation could be to blame. Government figures released yesterday showed regional differences in the performance of pupils in primary tests. Some areas had unusually high discrepancies between the proportion of pupils achieving the expected […]