Nicky Phillips | Schools Week

State boarding schools: Partnerships: ‘Failures are not an option’

Holyport College, the first new free school to offer boarding places, opened in September and will eventually take 500 state pupils. It is a non-selective co-educational secondary school with a Christian ethos said to be modelled on an independent boarding school, with pupils divided into houses and doing homework at school. The aim is that […]

State boarding schools: Governance: ‘A multitude of extra requirements’

Strong governance and leadership are as essential in a state boarding school as they are in any other school. Our systems of governance need to include all the functions that are typically associated with day schools and academies – school standards, finance, curriculum, personnel, premises, finance and so on. However the boarding dimension creates additional […]

State boarding school special — for: Vulnerable children, quite literally, cost us a fortune

State-funded boarding schools run as a school, not as a care home, are the best solution for children failed by the education system Why should we care about what happens to the children we fail in the education system? Well, apart from the obvious concerns about wanting to make sure we do the best for […]

State boarding school special — against: It is the children who have to live away from home

If the government wants vulnerable children to be placed in boarding schools, what pastoral training will be given to bring standards up to those expected in residential care homes? Children are sent to boarding school for various reasons. Some people in favour of available state boarding say that children need stability while their Forces and […]

Rooney goes back to school

It was like England football captain Wayne Rooney had never been away when he recently went back to his Liverpool primary school. Rooney visited Our Lady and Saint Swithin’s Catholic Primary School days before he won his landmark 100th England cap last weekend. The school, which has been in contact with Rooney throughout his career, […]

Phab award for London schools

Pupils and staff from St Helen’s School and Merchant Taylors’ School in North London have won a national award for their contribution to the inclusion of disabled young people. The schools were presented with the Lord Irene Morris of Manchester award by Lady Irene at an annual Phab UK ceremony held at the House of […]

School funding changes: made simple

The way in which the Dedicated Schools Grant, one of the main components of school funding, is calculated is changing. The Department for Education says that, for the first time in a decade, funding will be based on pupil characteristics rather than historic levels of spending. With additional guidance recently brought out on this, Schools […]

Ananda remembers fallen relative, 100 years on

A Cornish schoolgirl has become the first in her family to see the grave of a relative who lost his life in the Great War. Marking the 100th year anniversary of the start of the First World War, 15-year-old Ananda Lee from Mounts Bay Academy in Penzance travelled to France to pay her respects to […]

Sikh free school shows off

Children from Leicester’s first Sikh free school recently showed off their new school to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan and Secretary of State for Schools Lord Nash. Falcons Primary opened on October 27 following a seven-week delay. Mrs Morgan met a group of parents, all active in the opening of the school, and saw a presentation […]