John Dickens | Schools Week

£100k per council would abolish holiday hunger, MPs claim

A cross-parliamentary group of MPs have said handing every local authority just over £100,000 a year would end holiday hunger. A report by the all-party parliamentary group on hunger, published today, stated that three million children risk going hungry in the school holidays. But the group said the government could end the issue by diverting […]

DfE to underwrite salary for free school ‘heads in waiting’ – and could even employ them in department

The Department for Education has published a pledge to support the founding of new free schools by underwriting the salary of new principals while they help set it up. In a letter sent to trusts, published today, the government said it would underwrite the salary of principal designates to give them the “security they need […]

Ofqual ditches plans to regulate ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ subjects

Exams regulator Ofqual is no longer seeking to harmonise the number of pupils achieving top grades across different subjects – admitting it is too difficult to do. The regulator launched a consultation into the difficulty of GCSE and A-level subjects in December 2015 to address the issue of comparability across examined subjects. One of the […]

RSC Tim Coulson resigns to head Samuel Ward Academy Trust

Regional schools commissioner Tim Coulson is stepping down from the role to head up a multi-academy trust – leaving just three originals RSCs still in post. Coulson, commissioner for the East of England and north-east London, will become the new chief executive of the Samuel Ward Academy Trust in west Suffolk. He’s the fourth RSC […]

Phonics boosts reading accuracy, study finds

Phonics has a “dramatic impact” on the accuracy of reading aloud and comprehension, researchers have claimed. A study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General today, tested whether learning to read by sounding out words (as done in phonics) is more effective than focusing on whole-word meanings. Researchers from the Royal Holloway, University of […]

Academy chain shortage in the north, while south prospers

There aren’t enough good academy sponsors ready to take over the number of failing schools in Lancashire and West Yorkshire, a new analysis of regional school commissioner (RSC) data has found. Other RSC regions in northern England are also just about managing to deliver enough sponsors, the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) found. However […]

PISA wellbeing tables 2017: UK pupils among unhappiest in the world

Pupils in UK schools are among the unhappiest in the world, a major new study that has compared countries on their pupils’ wellbeing has revealed. The Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has published the findings of its first wellbeing study involving 540,000 15-year-olds across 72 countries. It found around one in six pupils […]

Corbyn accuses May of ‘broken promises’ over school funding

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accused the government of “broken promises” over school funding in the first Prime Minister’s Questions since yesterday’s announcement of a snap election in June. Corbyn said parents taking their children back to school this term are receiving letters from heads “begging for funds” so they can buy books and fund squeezed […]

Pupils are less confident in countries with selective schools, OECD finds

Pupils have lower expectations and feel less confident in education systems with selective schools, a new international report into wellbeing has found. Countries where the majority of youngsters do not attend a similar kind of comprehensive school, either because they are separated by academic selection or because they attend “different kinds” of schools, see pupil’s […]