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Groups of schools can bid for share of £5m funding, Careers and Enterprise Company confirms

Groups of schools and academy trusts can bid for funding to improve careers advice in their areas, the government’s new Careers and Enterprise Company has confirmed. Following the announcement of a £5m fund which will be distributed in the form of grants to various organisations, the Company has confirmed that any “network, coalition or multi-academy trust” made […]

Term-time holidays could make pupils miss long division, warns minister

More flexibility on term-time holidays could result in pupils missing lessons on long division or Newton’s Third Law, Nick Gibb has warned. Responding to a debate on term time holidays secured as a result of a 120,000-name petition calling for an allowance of up to two weeks during term time each year in which holidays […]

Four things we learned from education questions

Nicky Morgan and her ministerial team just faced questions in the House of Commons. Here’s what we learned from their responses…   1. There is no teacher shortage In response to a question from Labour’s Stephen Timms about government figures regularly used by the party to raise concerns about teacher numbers, schools minister Nick Gibb said […]

Schools ignoring official advice on uniforms

Schools are still insisting parents buy uniforms from exclusively appointed suppliers, despite government advice and a letter from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) urging against it. Schools Week asked the 20 largest multi-academy trusts (MATs) to provide details on their uniform policies but almost all remained silent. However, online searches revealed that some academies […]

Secrets of the best GCSE improvers in 2015

Collaboration, collaboration, collaboration. This is the message from local authorities in which GCSE results improved this summer. Last year, Schools Week reported how just six local authorities (LAs) bucked the downward trend. There was more stability this year with about a third of authorities managing to better their results. Provisional figures released by the Department […]

Psychologist warns teachers not to use ‘bullycide’ videos

Stories about suicide should not be used in school anti-bullying campaigns because they risk giving a message to children that “there is a way out”, warns a leading psychologist. Dr Helene Guldberg, the founder of the online current affairs magazine Spiked and author of Reclaiming Childhood: Freedom and Play in an Age of Fear, told […]

GCSE results dip in sponsor-led academies

GCSE results have dropped over the past two years in more than two in three established sponsor-led academies. Analysis of provisional GCSE performance data released last week shows scores have fallen in more than 70 per cent of sponsor-led academies that posted GCSE results in 2013, despite the national average increasing by 0.2 per cent. […]