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19 April 2026

Author: Nicky Phillips

2 ways to switch girls on to engineering

Engineering can be a cool career choice – but ingrained biases mean that girls don’t always agree. One solution is to grab their attention between the ages of 11 and 14; it’s the prime time to turn their perceptions around Women have made great strides in the workforce on many fronts in the past few […]

How can we make schools more efficient?

Schools lose 80 per cent of their budgets to salaries, but they could be more creative with the remaining 20 per cent and drive down costs The education sector has grappled with efficiency for a number of years now and various initiatives have gone some way to improving operational effectiveness and a commitment to value […]

Nick Gibb, schools minister, DfE

Nick Gibb has three large maps taped to the walls of his Department for Education office. They show regional figures for pupils’ reading and writing achievements aged 11, the phonics pass rate for six- year-olds, and how many children passed the English Baccalaureate subjects at GCSE. If you didn’t know already that the minister for […]

Heads need support of local authorities to clamp down on school place fraud

Scores of local education authorities did not record data or had no investigation policy for tackling admission fraud, despite high numbers of parents appealing their child’s offer of a school place. Analysis by Schools Week discovered that authorities more proactive in catching admission cheats tended to have fewer parents appealing and lower rates of places […]

Phonics check uncovers failing disadvantaged pupils

Disadvantaged pupils in wealthy local authorities are not catching up to the reading abilities of their peers, show the latest phonic check results. The screening check, introduced in 2012, is an individual, oral assessment of pupils that requires them to read words and pseudo-words. But analysis of the latest checks, released last Thursday, show that […]

Pupils with a soft touch

A year 11 pupil from a Greenwood Dale Foundation Trust (GDFT) school has sent a touching message of support with a cache of 57 teddies to some of the neediest children in Africa and war-torn Syria. Heena Iqbal from Nottingham Girls’ Academy joined the trust in supporting the 2015 Teddy Trust Appeal to send soft toys to […]

Lucy Harrison, Sally Taylor, Kristal Brookes and Sarah Kerr-Dineen

Lucy Harrison takes over from founding headteacher Mick Quigley as the leader of the Archer Academy, a free school in north London. Ms Harrison, deputy head since April 2013, says she is particularly passionate about building student skills as independent learners. “I don’t want our pupils just learning subjects and knowledge, but learning how to […]

Jonathan shines in annual awards

 A 17-year-old student who has battled the odds to further his education was among a host of winners at the 2015 Shine a Light Awards last week. Jonathan Middleditch from Surrey was one of 20 winners acknowledged by comedian and author David Baddiel at a ceremony hosted by sponsors Pearson at their London headquarters. The […]