Nicky Phillips | Schools Week

DfE releases details of latest free school applications

Click here for graphs The Department of Education (DfE) has released details of the most recent wave of 148 free school applications, despite fighting to withhold the information on seven previous occasions. The wave eight list of free schools applying to open in 2015 and beyond was provided to the British Humanist Association (BHA) in […]

NCTL surprises select committee on ITT plans

More teacher training places in hard-to-recruit subjects are to be given to universities, the chief executive of the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) announced on Wednesday. In what appeared to be news to the education select committee, Charlie Taylor (pictured) told MPs that the NCTL was introducing this flexibility as a way to […]

Government shuns reports’ advice

The government has rejected recommendations made in the aftermath of the Trojan horse scandal that school governors be restricted on the number of boards they can serve on. Reports from education commissioner Peter Clarke and former headteacher Ian Kershaw on extremism in schools in Birmingham recommended governors be restricted on the number of schools they […]

Class size cap: it already exists, say Conservatives

A Labour party pledge to cap class sizes in infant years has “collapsed” – because it is already in force. Yesterday, party leader Ed Miliband announced he would “introduce” a 30-pupil cap which had been “scrapped” by the coalition government. But a Conservative spokesperson said: “Ed Miliband’s education policy has now collapsed – primary school […]

Admissions must change, Durand told

Durand Academy in south London has been told it has to stop giving preferential primary school places to children who have attended its nursery school. The school was reported to the Office of the Schools Adjudicator by a member of the public querying the compliancy of its admissions protocol. The third criteria in its oversubscription […]

Conference calls for education to go to the top of the class

Teachers and leaders joined union representatives at a day-long event in London at the weekend to discuss the future of education as the campaigns for the general election begin to heat up A conference of about 100 teachers and union members last weekend called for education to be brought to the top of the agenda […]

Baseline test providers face a punishing deadline

Each of the six providers approved by the Standards and Testing Agency to deliver the new reception baseline tests must recruit about 30 primary schools a day between now and the end of April or they will lose their government approval. The baseline assessments will be carried out on five-year-olds within the first six weeks […]

Association criticises ‘misleading’ research on boarding schools

French research claims that boarding schools are disruptive and do not guarantee better results for disadvantaged children have been called “narrow” and “potentially misleading” by the Boarding Schools Association (BSA). A research survey conducted by Dr Clément de Chaisemartin and a team from the Paris School of Economics concluded that sending disadvantaged children to an […]

Labour pledges to protect education – but won’t say who gets what (yet)

Labour this week promised to protect the overall education budget if elected this May. But any decision on whether to ring-fence separately funding for early years, schools and 16 to 19-year-olds won’t be made before the election, says shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt. Leader Ed Miliband announced on Thursday his party’s plan to protect the […]