Author: John Dickens

The country’s best-paid primary headteacher has been suspended from his post as executive headteacher of the Gipsy Hill Federation of schools in Lambeth. Sir Craig Tunstall, awarded a knighthood for his services to education in 2014, was paid £330,394 last year – making him one of the country’s best-paid school leaders. The federation runs eight […]

Teachers at high-performing schools mark the work of their lowest-performing pupils more harshly in their SATs assessments, suggests a new study of primary marking. Meanwhile, the writing of high-flying 11-year-olds who attend the lowest-performing primaries are marked “too conservatively”, which could mean that bright pupils get lower marks than they deserve. The findings are part […]

Ministers are refusing to release finance investigations into two high-profile academy trusts – one a government “top-performing” chain and the other now defunct. The Department for Education has refused under the Freedom of Information Act to publish financial management and governance reviews into the Wakefield City Academies Trust (WCAT) and the Lilac Sky Schools Academy […]

Children are travelling up to 40 miles to school as the government’s benefits squeeze pushes families outside the capital. Keven Bartle, headteacher of Canons High School in Harrow, north London, said more pupils faced long journeys or were leaving his school because their families could not keep up with soaring London rents as job security […]

Regional schools commissioners are writing to coasting schools to identify specific support, leading critics to suggest they are now operating as reinvented local authorities. Nearly 800 schools “failing to ensure pupils reach their potential” have been identified as “coasting” under government measures introduced earlier this year. The schools send outlines of their improvement plans to […]

Academy trusts handed cash over a year ago to transform failing schools in the north have yet to take over a single school. Figures obtained by Schools Week show 65 trusts were given a combined £9.5 million to boost standards in northern regions. But documents seen exclusively by the paper reveal more than a third […]