Nicky Phillips | Schools Week

Peer support for deaf pupils

The National Deaf Children’s Society has launched a new project to support deaf pupils at mainstream schools. Its “Helping Hands” toolkit will help school staff to launch peer support groups for deaf pupils. The project also will train pupils aged 10 to 18 to mentor other deaf students to improve their confidence, skills and aspirations. […]

Jo Brown, Geoff Muirhead, Geoff Bean, Mick May, Michael Blakey and Kathy Cowell

Jo Brown will lead Charles Darwin Primary, a new free school in Norwich, when it opens next year. She is currently part of the leadership team at Hevingham Primary School in Norfolk, where she has taught for the past nine years. Charles Darwin will be part of the Inspiration Trust and will work closely with […]

Pupils sign Mandela tribute

Two pupils from Lambeth Academy in south London have added messages to a tribute book to the late Nelson Mandela. The academy is the only school to publicly sign the House of Commons tribute book, which includes messages from Barack Obama, former UN secretary general Kofi Annan and three British prime ministers. Joining them now […]

Military-style resource developed for schools

A teacher who was expelled from school as a 15-year-old has created a military style problem-solving set of resources to narrow the inequality gap in education. Key 2 Potential (K2P) has been developed over nine years with the help of behavioural and military specialists, and aims to develop employment skills and reduce classroom disruption for […]

Rewarded with a cuddle

An alpaca, bearded dragon and a giant African snail are among the “zoo” animals that help pupils at Oasis Academy Foundry in Birmingham to become “calm and caring” students. Oasis Academy Foundry hub leader Angie Baker says the zoo, built up by the Amazing Animal Encounter, gives children who “usually find school difficult” an incentive […]

5 Ways Schools Can Work Together On Recruitment

Recruitment: is it a “challenge” or even a “crisis”? Or have we never had it so good in terms of vacancies filled? Is it the best time ever to be a teacher, as schools minister Nick Gibb has recently said, or are ministers sleepwalking while school leaders scratch their heads to find ever more inventive […]

RSC asks school for evidence ‘80% of teaching is good’ and ‘none is inadequate’

A regional schools commissioner has been criticised for requesting an underperforming school to grade its teaching – despite Ofsted ditching the controversial practice last year. Dominic Herrington (pictured above), RSC for south London and the south east, wrote to school leaders at Astor College in Kent, to ask for evidence that at least 80 per […]

Regional Schools Commissioner inquiry reveals “inherent” problems

The key performance indicators (KPIs) used to keep regional schools commissioners (RSCs) in check have been published “since day one”, says schools commissioner Frank Green However, Schools Week were only able to reveal the eight KPIs used to measure the performance of RSCs last December, four months after the new roles were created and after […]

600 schools selected for Ofqual’s National Reference Test

Letters have been sent to leaders of the 600 schools across the country asked to take part in the trial for the national reference tests (NRTs). Headteachers will receive the letters this week asking them to allow their current year 11 pupils to sit the English and maths test in the pilot next March. The […]