Nicky Phillips | Schools Week

Has collaboration over-reached itself?

Research studies on collaboration should switch their focus from staff development and support to pupil attainment Collaboration between schools is now seen as an important way to improve educational performance. Yet little is known definitively about what impact this has for improving pupil attainment. Despite the popular rhetoric, most studies are qualitative and focus on […]

Secondary moderns must have a voice, too

Grammar schools are back in the news with Nicky Morgan’s approval of a Kent school’s expansion. But they’ve never been away, with one in five students in England attending a school affected by academic selection The National Association for Secondary Moderns (NASM) sees the expansion of a Kent grammar school as a chance to raise […]

A task for would-be tycoons

Teenage tycoons will be bidding for the title of Student Investor Champion over the next few weeks as ifs University College in London launches its annual investment competition. The challenge gives teams of up to four pupils, aged 14 to 19, the chance to invest a virtual £100,000 in the stock market, with the most […]

Amputee joins mentoring programme

A former RAF skydiver who lost a leg after a parachuting accident during half-time entertainment at a premiership football match, has joined an education programme to inspire schoolchildren. Nigel Rogoff suffered life-threatening injuries when his parachute jump at Villa Park, Aston Villa football club’s stadium, went wrong in 1998. Now, the ex-serviceman has become an […]

Self-portrait takes top honours

Ciaran Brazier has been crowned the overall winner of this year’s Arts & Minds competition, an annual, UK-wide contest aimed at promoting race equality and diversity in schools. The year 8 pupil from Speedwell Centre, a referral unit in Blackpool for youngsters with medical needs, produced a striking self-portrait designed in a mosaic style. He […]

£10m literacy campaign launched in north east

A £10 million five-year campaign to boost literacy levels for disadvantaged primary school pupils has been launched in the north east. The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and Northern Rock Foundation aim to reach all 880 primary schools in the region to narrow the gap in educational outcomes between children from low-income homes and their more […]

Dr Gary Holden, Emme Ford and Tania Bingham

Dr Gary Holden is the new chair of the Teaching Schools Council, replacing Vicky Beer who was last month appointed as the regional schools commissioner (RSC) for Lancashire and West Yorkshire. Dr Holden, the chief executive of Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical School in Kent, a cohort one designated teaching school, says the council’s key aim […]

Why we’re not ‘shunning Islam’

Schools Week invited the Catholic Education Service to give more details about its decision to change how it teaches RE at GCSE (Schools Week, November 6). It is a decision, says the service, that has been much misinterpreted . . . Many of the recent headlines about the teaching of RE in Catholic schools have […]

Criminal check needed for access to National Pupil Database

Researchers and businesses applying for access to the national pupil database may be “put off” by new rules demanding a £25 criminal record check with their application. The Department for Education (DfE) announced last week that applicants must now submit a disclosure check when requesting sensitive information from its central database of pupil data. Organisations […]