Author: Nicky Phillips

Conservative education ministers all held their seats last week after the party stormed into Westminster. Education secretary Nicky Morgan led the Tory charge and obliterated weeks of polls suggesting that Conservatives and Labour were neck-and-neck. Labour targeted Ms Morgan’s marginal Loughborough seat, but she won with a relatively comfortable 17.7 per cent majority, picking up […]

Students can show what they know about “scratching” and “turntableism” as one exam board embraces DJ-ing skills as an option in its new GCSE music exam. AQA has remixed its syllabus to offer pupils the chance to shout out their DJ credentials. As part of the performance section of the new exam specification, pupils can […]

The top team at the Department for Education emerged from David Cameron’s reshuffle relatively unscathed, signalling a continued commitment to education’s direction of travel over the past five years. The minor shake-up may not surprise the schools sector, as Mr Cameron backed Nicky Morgan for the top job before the election. Those who worked hard […]

The failed Durham Free School cost the taxpayer almost £1 million, a Freedom of Information request has shown. The 94-pupil secondary school, which was forced to close by the education secretary on March 27, was open for less than two academic years. Nicky Morgan (pictured) ended the school’s funding in February after an Ofsted report […]

The National Association for Primary Education is calling on the government for better ways of measuring primary school performance after a poll showed that most pupils taking SATs in year 6 felt so pressured that they were too nervous to eat. NAPE spokesman John Coe said the results of the poll by Kelloggs of more […]

A mini reshuffle of Labour’s shadow team following the party’s election defeat has not affected its education line-up. Acting Labour leader Harriet Harman, who became party leader following Ed Miliband’s resignation on Friday, made minor changes to the shadow cabinet following the defeat of key politicians. But she announced on Monday that Tristram Hunt would […]

A new programme claims to predict the grade a school would score in an Ofsted inspection . . . in just 20 seconds. Data experts have developed an algorithm that crunches thousands of figures used by the government to measures a school’s performance and converts it into their likely Ofsted grade. Developers say the programme […]

– Four of five councils labelled “ineffective” by Ofsted remain under Labour control – Anti-academy campaigners suggest system of directly elected school commissioners Politicians controlling local authorities branded as failing by Ofsted increased their hold after local elections last week. Four of five councils labelled as ineffective after school improvement inspections by the education watchdog […]