Author: James Carr

An Ofsted inspector with 20 years of service was sacked after conducting an independent review which concluded that a school at the centre of a rebrokering battle was making “good progress”. The dismissal highlights a “grey area” within the watchdog’s rules for its part-time consultants and the work they do outside their duties with the […]

Ministers are seizing control of the restrictive measures schools can implement to fight the spread of Covid under a rehashed contingency framework released today. The Department for Education has released a contingency framework for education settings which sets out how the government will manage the exceptional circumstances in which further restrictions were required on education. […]

A government decision to axe millions of pounds of funding for teacher diversity schemes has been branded “disgraceful”. Since 2014, the Department for Education’s equality and diversity fund has supported schools to develop solutions to help teachers of protected characteristics progress into leadership. Under the Equality Act 2010, these protected characteristics are; age, disability, gender, […]

A school leaders’ union has revealed it is “assessing the legal status” of the autumn year 2 phonics check in a bid to spare teachers “additional and unnecessary burden”. In an update to its members, NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman revealed the union’s fight against the controversial return of the tests was far from over. […]

The Department for Education has admitted the boost in teacher recruitment prompted by Covid-19 is expected to be “short-lived”, despite having slashed training bursaries and grants for next year. Ruth Talbot, deputy director of the DfE’s teaching workforce directorate, made the comments at the National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers (NASBTT) annual conference today. A […]

The government is advising schools to identify any 4G wireless routers not being used and to “reallocate them to children and young people with the greatest need”. The updated guidance published today by the Department for Education follows the number of laptops schools had been allocated by the government being slashed by 80 per cent […]

Academy trusts are being questioned over their protocols for managing Covid cases as part of an “urgent commission” for the education secretary, as the Department for Education (DfE) scrambles to understand a hike in children missing school. New figures have revealed the number of pupils at home self-isolating last week had nearly doubled within the […]