John Dickens | Schools Week

Secondary school attainment gap still ‘stubbornly large’, social mobility study finds

The attainment gap between poor and wealthy children has remained “stubbornly large” in secondary schools despite billions in targeted funding, an analysis of social mobility progress over two decades has found. A report by the Social Mobility Commission today has warned that government efforts to improve social mobility have failed to deliver enough progress in […]

Top DfE civil servant appointed as new East of England RSC

Sue Baldwin, a director at the Department for Education, has been appointed as the new regional schools commissioner for the East of England and North-East London. Baldwin will move over from her current director of school efficiency role at the DfE on August 1. Baldwin is currently responsible for the implementation of school funding reforms, […]

Police arrests over stolen maths A-level exam papers

Police have arrested two men in connection with an investigation into a stolen Maths A-level exam paper offered for sale online. Detectives from the Met police launched an investigation after being informed by exam board Pearson on Friday that an exam paper for its Edexcel C4 A-level maths was being sold online. A Met police […]

MATs dodge recruitment challenges by parachuting teachers into needy schools

Multi-academy trusts are dodging the recruitment crisis by parachuting teachers into schools that would normally struggle to hire, a new study has found. The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) has today published its latest multi-academy trust (MAT) teacher retention research. The study, based on School Workforce Census data from 2010-15, found that movement of […]

Al-Madinah free school rebrands, but can’t shake financial troubles

A Derby free school trust labelled “chaotic and dysfunctional” has now rebranded, but is still dealing with the financial fallout from being forced to close its secondary year groups. The government parachuted new trustees into Al-Madinah, an all-through free school, in 2014, following a damning Ofsted inspection and an investigation that revealed weak financial management. […]

Teachers’ bravery praised as schools unite after Grenfell trauma

The “guts and bravery” of school leaders have been hailed in the aftermath of the Grenfell blaze, as neighbouring schools opened their classrooms up for pupils left homeless and without a school after the fire. More than 70 people are presumed dead after a huge fire at the a 24-storey housing block in west London […]

The latest workforce data shows government should care much more about teacher retention

With a workload problem that has been identified but not addressed, and funding pressures that are biting, are the effects starting to show in teacher workforce figures? On the face of it, this isn’t the case. Figures published this morning show that overall teacher numbers are up marginally, from 456,900 full-time equivalents (FTEs) in 2015 […]

Teachers leaving faster than ever – and 10 other school workforce findings

The Department for Education has published the 2016 School Workforce Census figures this morning. Schools Week has the key findings: 1. Lowest teacher entry rate in five years The rate of qualified teachers entering the profession is at its lowest since 2011 (read more on that here). In 2016, 10.1 per cent of […]

Poor teenagers more likely to drop university ambitions, study finds

Poor teenagers who are not planning to go to university but who do well in their GCSEs are far less likely to change their mind than their richer peers, a major new study has found. The research, published in the Oxford Review of Education today, also found that the poorest 14- to 17-year-olds were twice […]