John Dickens | Schools Week

Coronavirus: Ofsted pauses publication of inspection reports

Ofsted has paused the publication of all inspection reports during the coronavirus crisis and promised that it will have “do the right thing” as its mantra going forward. Deputy director for further education and skills Paul Joyce told a webinar on Saturday run by sister title FE Week that the inspectorate had taken the decision […]

DfE reveals how it will provide grades for pupils this summer

The government has confirmed it will use teacher assessments to provide calculated grades for pupils this year. The aim is to provide grades to students before the end of July. They will be “indistinguishable from those provided in other years”, and pupils will have a chance to resit an exam if they don’t think the […]

Governors: New Ofsted inspections ‘rushed’ and reports ‘patronising’

Ofsted’s new framework is diminishing the role of governance in schools, patronising staff and leading to rushed inspections, a new report has claimed. The National Governance Association has today released ‘A view from the board’ – its evaluation of Ofsted’s new inspection framework. While 65 per cent of governors and trustees at over 800 schools […]

T-level assessment organisations call for 12 month delay

The awarding bodies designing the first three T-levels have called on the government to delay their rollout by a year because of the coronavirus pandemic. Pearson, City & Guilds and NCFE have agreed with the Federation of Awarding Bodies that their launch should be combined with wave two and begin in September 2021 instead of […]

Coronavirus: Schools closed and exams cancelled – your questions answered

The government announced yesterday that schools will be closed from Friday afternoon to all but vulnerable pupils and the children of key workers, with exams and performance tables scrapped. We’ve covered the story here. Our readers rightly have lots of questions. It’s a pretty fluid situation, and there are still lots of unknowns, but we’ve […]

Exams have been cancelled – so what happens now?

Robert Half, the American businessman, once said “it’s easy to make good decisions when there are no bad options”. Gavin Williamson is now grappling with the opposite. Because it’s not only easy, but inevitable, that bad decisions are made when there are no good options. In a fast moving crisis, you can’t afford to wait […]

NEU urges government to start closing schools as new coronavirus guidance ‘increases anxiety’

The country’s largest education union wants the government to close some schools after claims new government guidance on containing coronavirus has “increased anxiety and uncertainty”. The National Education Union intends to tell is members who are now considered high risk – pregnant women or those with underlying health issues – to stop attending school from […]

Exclusive: Ofsted pauses all inspection activity

All routine Ofsted inspections will now be put on hold, Schools Week can reveal. The watchdog has halted inspections following prime minister Boris Johnson’s announcement earlier today to scale up coronavirus prevention measures. An Ofsted spokesperson told Schools Week they are “putting a hold on all this week’s routine inspections of schools, social care, early years […]

DfE: Decision to allow pregnant teachers to work from home up to heads

The Department for Education said tonight that school staff who are pregnant should be talking with their school about working from home. Government guidance, published this afternoon, says pregnant women should be particularly stringent to new measures aimed at protecting the most vulnerable groups, including working from home where possible. However there’s some confusion over the […]