Author: Jess Staufenberg

A Norwich-based multi-academy trust has been hit with a second financial notice to improve after failing to meet key conditions of the first notice. The Engage Multi-Academy Trust, which runs nine schools, was issued a FNtI in March this year after being monitored by the Education and Skills Funding Agency because of its weak financial […]

A “no frills” private school charging parents £100 a week is being mooted for London – with one of its key architects claiming it could close down state schools. The school, which would offer a traditional education but cut down on additional costs such as extra-curricular activities, is in the early stages of planning but […]

Amanda Spielman, chief inspector of Ofsted, has denied many of the findings of a critical report that says her inspectorate does not do enough to support rather than penalise schools. She said a new report on accountability systems, spearheaded by school teachers’ union NAHT, would have been accurate “five years ago”, but now does not fairly […]

The OECD has published its annual education at a glance report, which compares various education statistics between its 36 member countries. Here are the main points relating to the UK… 1. UK has the youngest primary school teachers The teaching workforce in the UK is one of the youngest among all OECD countries, having become younger since 2005, according […]

Religious education should be renamed “religion and worldviews” to make it more relevant, a new report has urged. Under proposals set out in a report from the Commission on Religious Education, schools would be held to account by Ofsted for their legal requirement to offer the subject, and required to publish information about how they meet […]

Workload pressures have been cited as one of the reasons behind a dramatic drop in the number of trainee teachers responding to an important government survey – meant to measure their actual workload levels. A report by Ipsos Mori for the Department for Education (DfE) found new teachers are ‘survey fatigued’ after receiving a deluge […]

The government has published its annual survey of newly qualified teachers, and for the first time includes their experience of workload. The survey, completed by 1,639 NQTs who qualified between December 2015 and November 2016, found that almost 30 per cent found their workload was bigger than they’d been expecting. And while half were encouraged […]

A private education firm set up by a former Ofsted boss, and with almost 40 schools in England, has been bought by a Swiss firm in a £2 billion deal. Cognita, a UK-based chain which runs 38 private schools in England, and almost 70 around the world, has been sold by owners Bregal Investments and […]

Four in five school leaders claim they are having to stretch their budgets to cover the health and care needs of pupils with special educational requirements – without receiving the relevant extra funding, a union survey has found. Eighty-three per cent of 637 respondents told school leaders’ union the NAHT they weren’t receiving any funding […]