Jess Staufenberg | Schools Week

Female civil servants in DfE paid 6% less than men

Women working in the Department for Education (DfE) are paid on average 6 per cent less than their male colleagues, new figures released this morning show. But more female civil servants are in senior roles compared to last year, and they get the same bonus pay as men when being rewarded for their efforts at […]

Spielman warns sixth form colleges about drop in Ofsted grades

Sixth-form colleges have received worse Ofsted grades this year, meaning that fewer than were first expected will now be permitted to create academy trusts. The drop was brought up by Amanda Spielman, the chief inspector of Ofsted, who told delegates at the Sixth Form Colleges Association conference last Wednesday that while sixth-form colleges were the […]

Spielman says inspectors will look ‘more closely’ at schools’ curriculums

The curriculum has been lost “as a needle in a haystack” within Ofsted inspections despite being the “real meat” of a good education, the chief inspector of Ofsted has said. Amanda Spielman, speaking to delegates at the Festival of Education this morning, said too many schools are teaching to mark schemes, SATs and GCSEs rather […]

Private religious schools flout equality laws – but remain open

Religious private schools that have repeatedly failed their legal equality duties have nevertheless been allowed to remain open – often with leaders still in key positions, Schools Week can reveal. The latest batch of inspection reports from Ofsted list two such schools ignored rules set out in the 2010 Equality Act and failed to mention […]

Revealed: The ‘sausage-machine schools’ pushing new teachers out the profession

More than 100 “sausage-machine schools” which recruit and lose high numbers of newly-qualified teachers in a “cycle of grinding down new recruits” are pushing teachers out of the profession, a new study has found. About 130 “sausage-machine schools”, which are characterised by an unusually high number of NQTs being recruited and replaced each year, have […]

DfE ‘must drop’ inspection funding agreement with faith groups

The government should “get rid” of an agreement that allows religious groups to receive millions of pounds to inspect their schools and give the money to Ofsted instead. Faith groups were handed almost £5 million by the Department for Education (DfE) over the past six years to carry out inspections of the religious education in […]

Andrew Moffat, assistant head, Parkfield Community School

Andrew Moffat, an assistant headteacher at one of the largest primary schools in Birmingham, appears unstoppable: he is navigating a school bus down a street, dodging ladies in saris walking in the road, humming snatches of a Eurovision song, and answering a clipboard of questions I have clutched in sweaty hands. “We are finding the […]

Calls for IT qualification to be saved as computing take-up stalls

A key group behind the government’s computing reforms has urged ministers to reinstate a “reformed” IT GCSE after new figures revealed computer science entries have “stagnated”. Figures published last week by Ofqual showed entries into the computer science GCSE, introduced in 2014, rose from 61,220 in 2016, to 67,800 this year. The British Computing Society […]

NUT staff at London school to strike outside DfE

Teachers and parents are set to strike on a picket line outside the Department for Education’s (DfE) London offices this morning in protest at more than a million pounds of “draconian” funding cuts to their school. Staff belonging to the National Union of Teachers (NUT) at Forest Hill School in Lewisham, south-east London, will be […]