Nicky Phillips | Schools Week

May opens new drama centre

The Home Secretary Theresa May took centre stage at a Maidenhead school last week. The MP for the area cut the ribbon to mark the opening of The Jacoby Studios, the new performing arts centre at Desborough College. The facilities, which include a studio and theatre, will be used by more than 300 key stage […]

Contest win leaves Kent pupils in a spin

A team of six secondary school pupils from Kent has sped to victory in a national car engineering event. Year 10 pupils Dean Wickes, Jack Smith, Jack Gwynne, Harry Compton all aged 14 and Lewis Moorcroft and George Plumbe aged 15, from Greenacre Academy in Chatham last week won The Car Design Challenge at the […]

Icy deluge for primary staff

An open morning with a difference was held at a Rochdale primary school that raised £750 for a cancer charity. Parents joined their children from Littleborough Community Primary School last week at an open day where they took part in lessons before attending a Macmillan coffee morning. Children brought money into school for the charity; […]

We make it simple: how the government’s new 16-19 league tables are calculated

The 16-19 accountability measures are changing. As the government releases its (very dense) guide setting out how the new measures will work, Schools Week’s Philip Nye, a former National Audit Office auditor, takes on the gruelling task of guiding you through the key features What’s changing? The new accountability measures will give a significant refresh […]

More a quiet gathering than a party…

It was steady as it goes at the three main party conferences this year with education ministers signalling their intentions to reduce structural change The party conferences had one element in common this year when it came to education – an emerging sense of stability in a sector in which there has been significant reform […]

New primary school opens with no mains electricity and an ‘unreliable’ generator

A minister has been forced to intervene after a free school in his constituency has been without mains electricity for five weeks. The Heights Free School in Caversham, near Reading, opened in early September in temporary accommodation, and at the time of going to print was still without mains supply. The primary school has been […]

Clegg bites at Tory Right after a term of policy snubs

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg says that the Conservatives have been spitting “frenzied bile” throughout their coalition government, while suffocating his party’s education policies. During his speech at the Lib Dem conference in Glasgow this week, Mr Clegg attacked the “Tory Right” and former education secretary Michael Gove. “If power is still hoarded at the […]

Suffolk schools in council spat

A row has broken out between Suffolk county council and local primary school headteachers after every school was sent a letter by the council rating them as ‘red’, ‘amber’, or ‘green’. Each of the primary schools’ chair of governors and headteacher received the ratings on the September 26 – according to the Suffolk Primary Headteachers’ […]

Jobs for the boys at UTCs

As few as one in 20 students at some university technical colleges (UTC) are female, analysis by Schools Week shows, prompting claims that the current model is not the best way to help girls to get into traditionally male-dominated industries. The news comes after Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said that the lack of women taking […]