Nicky Phillips | Schools Week

College of Teaching has training oversight ambitions

The proposed College of Teaching wants to be the “gatekeeper of standards for teacher training”, Angela McFarlane (pictured), a founding trustee of the fledgling organisation, has told professionals. Speaking at a Westminster Education Forum event on Tuesday about the future of teaching, McFarlane said she hoped the organisation would be in a position to take […]

New apprentice rules will squeeze school finances

Large schools and multi-academy trusts will be forced to employ new apprentices every year after new rules passed into law last week. The enterprise act paves the way for public sector apprenticeship targets, which are expected to require schools and trusts with 250 or more employees to employ a number of apprentices, equivalent to 2.3 […]

Teach First goes cross-country

Top graduates training under the Teach First scheme are less likely to be placed in London schools as the education charity ramps up its coastal expansion. New figures seen by Schools Week show the overall percentage of Teach First graduates in London, where the programme began, fell from 44 per cent in 2013 to 39 […]

Less of a U-turn and more of a Z-turn

Do you remember last Saturday? It was boiling hot and the world was sunny – not least because Nicky Morgan had announced on Friday afternoon she wouldn’t be making all schools into academies after all. Except, it wasn’t that straightforward. (It never is). At 6.30am on Saturday I therefore found myself explaining to listeners of […]

Steiner school in financial notices to improve

A Steiner school that failed to submit its annual accounts and a university technical college and academy trust with mounting debts have been issued with financial notices to improve. The Education Funding Agency wrote to Steiner Academy Frome, Daventry UTC and the Penketh Academy Trust over their finances, demanding action and suspending their right to […]

Forced academisation looms for coasting councils

Nicky Morgan last week announced a u-turn over the government’s controversial proposals to force all schools to convert into academies. Instead, it wants new powers to academise all schools in a local authority where the council is deemed to be either underperforming or ‘unviable’. The ‘triggers’ for both have yet to be decided, as John […]

Financial tipping point will force councils to academise

Proposals to academise all schools in what Nicky Morgan calls “unviable” councils will depend on whether a local authority has reached a “tipping point” in the number of schools that it still controls. Similar to the trigger for underperforming schools this tipping point is yet to be revealed, but also will be consulted on before any […]

£9.5m careers funding reaches schools in ‘cold spots’

Thirty-three careers programmes are to share a £9.5 million fund to run projects in areas of need across England. But who are they, and what do they want to do with the money? The Careers and Enterprise Company, set up by Nicky Morgan in 2014 and boosted earlier this year with a large chunk of […]

Brexit vote threatens school building loans

Loans totalling hundreds of millions of pounds to build new schools in the UK could dry up should the country leave the European Union (EU). The European Investment Bank (EIB) has lent more than £350 million since the beginning of 2015 to build new schools under the government’s Priority Schools Building Programme (PSBP). The bank […]