Jess Staufenberg | Schools Week

Private school furlough claim not ‘in spirit of scheme’

The country’s biggest academy trust furloughed staff across its private schools for the Christmas holiday, a tactic one law firm advises is “unlikely to be within the spirit of the scheme”. United Learning, which has 74 academies and 14 private schools, applied for public funds to pay teacher salaries from December 12 to January 4, […]

Special school staff ‘should get vaccine priority’

Public health experts have backed calls for the government to consider vaccinating special school staff in the first priority phase. Ministers are already under pressure to vaccinate all teachers before half-term, with a petition due to be debated in parliament and Matt Hancock, the health secretary, saying they have a “very strong case” for priority […]

Vaccinate teachers during closures so schools can re-open ASAP, says Halfon

Teachers should be vaccinated during the period of school closures to ensure they open again as soon as possible, the chair of the influential education select committee has urged. Robert Halfon has said the government “should use the time over this period during school closures up to the half-term to vaccinate teachers” so that pupils […]

‘I was on posters, I ended up in a magazine. It was bizarre’

Jess Staufenberg talks to one of the country’s youngest ever headteachers who then stayed put for almost 13 years You get the feeling, talking to Liz Robinson, that were it not for her personal values she might have become a top-level Department for Education adviser or chief executive of an enormous multi-academy trust (only a […]

No one has done much with the children’s minister post since Edward Timpson, say heads. Can the current incumbent finally tackle some of education’s trickiest issues? The job description for the under-secretary of state for children and families looks rather like someone more senior took all the most intractable issues in education and handed them […]

Profile: Kate Green

Three months into the job of shadow education secretary, Kate Green reveals she is a ‘policy geek’ who is most naturally at home advocating for others… In many ways, the boots Kate Green must fill as shadow education secretary are big ones. Both her immediate predecessors have powerful personal stories about social mobility that appealed […]

Do maths schools have proof of concept yet?

With numerous more maths schools in the pipeline, what have the two open since 2014 been up to? Jess Staufenberg finds out As you exit the city’s train station, Exeter College looms large on the horizon. The award-winning, multi-storey, Ofsted ‘outstanding’ college is where Boris Johnson made his speech last week about boosting further education. […]

Schools in the biggest training hub in the north-west for the new relationships and sex education curriculum speak to Jess Staufenberg about getting it right – and avoiding bad speakers So what’s a positive relationship?” Several hands shoot up from the sea of year 7s during their Friday afternoon PSHE lesson. “One that’s give and […]

JL Dutaut meets an influential academic trying to reconcile himself to the fractures in his life and society at large Memoirs of educational academics are a pretty rare thing. If not altogether anonymous, bar the inevitable popularisers and marketeers, educational academics tend to remain in the background of their work. What do we know, really, […]