Nicky Phillips | Schools Week

Green fingers win £1,000 top prize

Eco-warriors at Warren Road Primary School have won £1,000 to spend on gardening equipment after taking top honours in this year’s Stewart Garden schools programme. The school in Orpington, Kent, won this year’s challenge in which pupils aged 6 to 11 were asked to be creative with Stewart Garden’s products. Warren Road Primary impressed the […]

Governors deserve gongs too

A guide to support people who want to nominate school governors for national honours has been created. Produced by Martin Matthews, a national leader of governors, the Governors, do the Honours! booklet aims to “level the playing field” of nominations between governors and headteachers. Mr Matthews says the “behind the scenes workers” are failing to […]

Gender imbalance in top jobs spawns conference

An inaugural conference looking at boosting the number of women in leadership positions in education will be held in London today. The sold-out event for 200 delegates has been organised by WomenEd, a group born out of a collective concern about gender imbalance in the profession. More than 50 men and women will discuss with […]

Will Lucy Powell be a great shadow education secretary?

It’s too soon to say and she got off to a slightly shaky start, but three speeches in and the signs are that the government is not going to have it easy Watching Lucy Powell give a speech three times is a bit like observing a teacher in their first few months. The first time […]

TeachFirst changes advertising after ‘nudge unit’ shows teachers prefer a challenge

Education charity Teach First has adapted its advertising techniques after a report discovered applicants were more likely to respond to a “challenge” rather than ads appealing to their social conscience. Teach First, a teacher training scheme, was responding to research by the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), a group initially put together by the Cabinet Office. […]

Links between College of Teaching and AstraZeneca ‘put to bed’

A major contributor to the proposed College of Teaching’s crowdfunding campaign has defended its £10,000 donation. In the week since the Claim Your College campaign launched an online fundraising for seed-funding to start a new College of Teaching, it has raised almost £12,000 of its £250,000 target. However, commentators were quick to note that the […]

Annual report on special needs shelved amid ‘chaotic reforms’

Special needs campaigners say the government is trying to mask the impact of its “rushed” reforms for special educational needs after the publication of a key data analysis document was cancelled. The Department for Education (DfE) announced on September 17 that its “Children with special educational needs: an analysis” release had been shelved. The annual […]

Councils triple number of investigations into fraudulent school applications

Investigations into cheating parents treble The number of investigations into suspected school admission frauds has nearly trebled in the past three years with almost 700 offers of places withdrawn after cheating parents were caught out. A Schools Week investigation shows that the number of admission investigations launched by local education authorities soared from 470 in […]

Nick Gibb: We are taking the teacher shortage seriously

Schools minister Nick Gibb has admitted there is an issue with teacher recruitment and retention which he says the government is tackling. In an exclusive interview with Schools Week, he said that teachers should not “underestimate” how seriously the government is about tackling workload and also revealed plans to introduce a “simple computer-based” multiplication test […]