Author: Jess Staufenberg

A Church of England academy in Lincolnshire faces having its funding withdrawn and being rebrokered to a new sponsor after Ofsted warned of “unacceptably low” standards. The Lincoln Anglican academy trust has been issued with a termination warning notice for its school the William Lovell Church of England academy by the Department for Education. It […]

Governor boards for reviewing exclusions should be scrapped and replaced with independent “tribunals” of experts, the leading organisation for governance has told ministers. Governors can feel the pressure not to overturn the headteacher’s decision, particularly where they know staff are stressed and feel they cannot cope with a pupil, according to Emma Knights (pictured), chief […]

A no-nonsense academy trust boss has called for a shake-up of how SATs tests are administered – with secondary teachers being parachuted in to oversee tests in primaries – to stem the rise in cheating probes. Sir John Townsley (pictured), chief executive of The Gorse Academies Trust which runs 11 schools in Leeds, believes every […]

A “low-cost” private school pays its teachers on a profit-linked scale, allowing it to slash wages if it does not recruit enough pupils. Beech House School in Rochdale, which charges £6,000 a year for 2 to 16-year-olds, links its teacher pay with pupil numbers. Salaries rise or fall depending on its popularity, Schools Week has […]

A headteacher is training as a SENCO in the evenings because her school can no longer afford to employ a separate member of staff in the role. Others heads are also doubling up as lunchtime supervisors and kitchen staff as school finances are squeezed tighter. Special educational needs experts have warned the conflation of the […]

The role of local governing bodies in schools is not to hold trustees to account as they exist to execute the board’s overall vision, an academies expert has claimed. Leora Cruddas (pictured), chief executive of pro-academy group Freedom and Autonomy for Schools, said governors on local bodies for individual schools in an academy trust are […]

A private firm is offering schools an £800-per-pupil deal where external staff are parachuted in to teach year 11s a GCSE-equivalent qualification in two weeks. Private company PET-Xi – which promises to deliver “intensive, results-based interventions” – wrote to heads advertising its business and enterprise qualification counts in the “third bucket” of progress measures, assuring […]

The government is looking for an academy trust to run the country’s first ‘secure school’, Schools Week can reveal. Two years after the idea for ‘secure schools’ for young offenders was first mooted, the Ministry of Justice has committed £5 million to a site in Kent. The Medway secure training centre (pictured), which is currently […]

Ofsted has batted away claims it favoured ‘knowledge-rich’ schools popular with ministers in its research on good curriculum design. Last month the inspectorate published a study into the curriculum of 23 schools, which informed a commentary from chief inspector Amanda Spielman on good and bad curriculum in schools. She also pledged the curriculum would be […]